Trip To Teide

Dear O'H dear and Lovely Tea Jenny,

The 10 of us went on a bus tour to Teide national park and it’s amazing volcanic landscapes. Our tour guide, the very lovely Tanya told us every time we stopped how long we had to wander around and NOT TO BE LATE BACK TO THE BUS. She explained that when she said 20 mins, that meant 20 mins and NOT 25 mins. For the avoidance of doubt, this message was repeated in Spanish, English and German. She also held up an iPad with the return time in huge font before letting anyone else off the bus.

The landscape is quite spectacular. Striking rather than beautiful. We took the cable car up to the viewing point on Mount Teide, the highest point in Spain and looked at the clouds below us. Thankfully there wasn’t enough time to trek to the summit as the oxygen level changes were very noticeable and everyone was slightly breathless.

We jumped back on the bus but 15 minutes later, we still hadn’t left as someone hadn’t made it back. Tanya said that tardy blokes’s mate had managed to get him on the phone so we knew he was safe and that he was 5 mins away but as it was cutting our time at the last stop, it was up to the rest of the bus whether to wait or leave without him. It was all very exciting and I was hoping that we were being secretly filmed as part of a social experiment. We magnanimously agreed to wait but when he hadn’t appeared 15 mins later, Tanya took the executive decision to ditch his ass.

I felt quite bad for him until Tanya explained that it meant that we no longer had time to have a proper lunch at our last stop and he was renamed from tardy bloke to n0bface. I do not need to tell either of you that depriving me of food is a very bad idea. Thankfully there was still time for coffee and cake so crisis averted. I did laugh at the end of the tour when Tanya bid everyone farewell by thanking them for being on time!

We had a family evening which was lovely. After a day on a bus with lots of people, it was really nice just being the four of us.

C

PS Tanya told us that some bits of the park (see extra) has been used in a few films including Wrath Of The Tw@tting Titans. It was all I could do not to ask her for that 90 mins of my life back.