Los Cristianos; Friday, 23 February, 2024

I hadn’t originally planned very much for the day, thinking I might just have a day relaxing in the pool or on the beach, but having experienced the size, or lack thereof of the pool and the fact that every sun lounger had been nabbed within minutes of the pool area being opened at 09:30 I decided to do something a bit more active instead.

I headed up to the series of bus stops in the centre of Los Cristianos that make up the bus station, picked up a one day travel ticket for €10 (plus €2 for the plastic card it’s delivered on) and headed off on a public transport tour of the island.

My first leg was the 473 bus North out of Los Cristianos along the Western coast of the island. The first 40 minutes or so were pretty dull as the bus worked its way through the resort towns of Las Americas and Costa Adeje, but once free of the tourist resorts, and the TF-1 Highway, we headed down on winding coastal roads past the banana plantations and open countryside of this part of the island.

I hopped off the 473 in the small town of La Arena, based around a shallow bay with quite impressive rock formations on either side of the bay and a wide sandy beach. I had a little wander around here, but with one eye on the clock as this was the most important connection to make, my next bus only ran three times a day, so I didn’t want to miss it.

Though I needn’t have worried too much as whilst I was wandering along the seafront I saw the inbound bus coming into town, a quarter of an hour late, which turned out to be exactly how late it eventually was when it made its way back for the next leg – the long ride on the 325 up through the mountainous Northwest of the island with another stunning and rapid ascent from sea level to 1000m+ mountain pass in a little over 35 minutes. The route continued through the mountains before a more gradual, but equally impressive, descend down into the small town of Icod before continuing along the main coast road to the end of the line in Puerto de La Cruz.

I spent about an hour wandering around Puerto de La Cruz, heading down to the castle on the seafront and taking the spectacular cliffs in the distance that we’d driven through, before heading back to the bus station to pick up leg three of the day, the number 102 all stops (should have caught the express 103) over to Santa Cruz.

After leaving Puerto de La Cruz this bus again climbed up into the mountains, although this time it was almost exclusively along the main highway across this part of the island. As we ascended up into the higher parts of the route the clouds closed in and we went through a pretty impressive rain storm which had the immediate effect of causing all the traffic to grind to a halt and what should have taken less than an hour to get across to Santa Cruz ended up taking over 90 minutes.

The rain had eased off to a light drizzle, accompanied by a warm sun and a rainbow, as we arrived into Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the capital of the island and the joint capital of the Canaries (along with La Palma de Gran Canaria). I did consider going for a wander, but with the delay on the previous bus and very long lines for all the buses heading back to Los Cristianos at the bus station I decided it was probably best to continue moving.

I’d just missed the 112 express bus back to Los Cristianos, but decided as it was express without any stops it was probably best to wait for the one a half hour later, at least with the advantage of being number 2 in the queue, given the queues for the stopping buses were already pretty long. It turned out to be a good plan, as the stopping buses appeared to be in a mess and only one put in an appearance whilst I waited for my bus, leaving just a couple of minutes ahead of mine and leaving a fair number of people behind. My 112 service powered down the motorway all the way to the turn off to Los Cristianos where it promptly joined a traffic jam stretching all the way from the town centre, which eventually took us over 30 minutes to inch our way the kilometre or so down to the bus stop.

Back in Los Cristianos, now close to the end of dinner time, I headed back to the hotel and had another unsatisfactory dinner before heading back to my room and turning in for the night.