Driving on Tenerife – A Magical Mystery Tour

Tenerife’s ‘mas o menos’ culture is amusingly quaint 75 percent of the time; the other 25 percent it has you pulling your hair out and screaming ‘HOW CAN YOU BE SO ESTUPIDO?”

The other day we watched a bloke outside the bus station in Puerto de la Cruz methodically peeling the backs of some leaflets before dropping the discarded paper on the ground at his feet. The fact that he was standing beside a litter bin at the time was bad enough, but when he then proceeded to stick the leaflets onto the bin itself, the urge to run across and ram his head into said receptacle was almost too much to resist. Maybe he felt dropping his litter, being beside the bin, was ‘mas o menos’ putting it in the right place.

On Thursday we had to head south for a couple of meetings. I love driving on the old country roads on Tenerife, it’s proper driving; however the motorway is the most practical way of getting from north to south in the shortest possible time. It’s a straightforward drive except for the bit where the TF2 joins the TF1. There’s been road works at this spot since the dawn of mankind and every time we drive it there’s a different detour, just to keep you on your toes. This time was no different, but a big yellow sign a good couple of hundred yards from the road works made it clear which lane we should stick to.

The left lane veered of to Santa Cruz, the right to Tenerife South; easy peasy.

The Road to Who Knows Where

Or it would have been had the sign been accurate. As we sailed along in the right hand lane passing the fork of no return, we noticed another ‘Tenerife Sur’ sign on the left lane a few yards beyond the junction and could see a road leading from the lane we weren’t on which clearly joined the TF1 in the direction we wanted to go.

Our ‘detour’ was obviously an older version and they just hadn’t gotten around to making sure all the road signs were in harmony yet.

I don’t know what it is. There seems to be something lacking in the national psyche when it comes to being able put accurate detour signs in place. I’ve driven up single track roads to discover, after a couple of hundred metres,  a sign informing me that the road is closed (usually right beside where the work is taking place). Call me Mr Picky, but it would seem sensible to put a ‘road closed’ sign at the beginning of the particular road that was closed. Still, I suppose it doesn’t do any harm to practice my ‘reversing long distances in a narrow space’ skills. You never know when I’ll need to put them into practice to escape renegade cops or Somali pirates or something.

Another annoyingly common little practice is the one where workmen erect a detour sign at the start of the road works, then maybe another at the next junction after that, but then…nada mas. It makes some journeys a bit of an adventurous mystery tour, but it is hellishly infuriating.

Like I said there are plenty of times when ‘mas o menos’ has you smiling and looking at each other with a ‘this is all part of living in a different culture’ gleam in your eyes.

There are other times when being ’mas o menos’ just doesn’t cut the mustard, when charming becomes moronically stupid and even potentially dangerous…not having accurate temporary road signs is one of those times.

Okay…What exactly do you mean by “We love walking”?

I’m getting wise. Not in a general sense, that would be far too much to expect, I mean in some specific little unimportant areas. In this case, the British and walking.

Returning from the south of the island last week, we stopped off at the quiet little hamlet of Punto de Abona to eat our bocadillos overlooking the pretty little beach. On opening the car door, I was nearly sent spinning into the sky like a wayward kite. The east coast has an almost constant breeze, but today it was stronger than normal.
“Maybe it’ll be more sheltered at the beach?” Andy suggested.
“No it isn’t,” before I had the chance to reply, an English voice beat me to it from the inside of a car parked next to us. “It’s like a sandstorm down there.”
The English couple in the car had the same idea as us, but had been forced by the wind to have their lunch inside their car.

We decided to do the same and got back inside the car and rolled down the windows. It turned out that the couple were staying in Puerto de la Cruz and were driving around the island stopping off at places which took their fancy. Good on them. We chatted for a moment about places on the island before the woman mentioned that they enjoyed walking. It was at this point that I made the mistake which I’ve made numerous times in the past; I assumed that when she said they liked walking, she meant they actually liked walking.
“Really?” As someone who loves exploring Tenerife on foot, and there are some fantastic places for walking on Tenerife, I’m always interested in hearing others’ views on where they’ve discovered. “Where have you walked?”
“Oh…” the woman thought for a second. “Along the promenade at Los Cristianos…”
She went on to name a couple of similar such ‘walks’.

My mother-in-law and late father-in-law were exactly the same. Gerry would regularly announce:
“Marge and I love walking; we walk everywhere.”
But take him out for a walk that lasted more than a kilometre, or involved going downhill or worse, uphill and the big man would raise an eyebrow and look down at me and say:
“Now why the fek would we be wanting to go up there?”

What they really meant, like lots of other people, was that they enjoyed a good stroll. Nothing wrong with that, but if you happen to be on holiday on Tenerife and mention to some stranger that you love walking, then proceed to list strolls along various town’s seafront don’t be surprised when they let out a scream – that’ll be me.

Stop Acting the Goat

I’ve become accustomed to pretty much anything I see on Tenerife’s roads, but today was a new experience for me.

I reached a roundabout between La Orotava and Puerto de la Cruz to find my progress hampered by these fellows. They’d clearly found the grass on the island in the centre of the roundabout irresistible and, as the rest of their herd headed homewards up the hill, these two kept their heads down munching away,  oblivious that they’d brought traffic to a standstill.

After a few moments one of the Billy-come-latelys looked up, spotted they were being left behind and, deciding it was time to rejoin the others, trotted happily across the roundabout and after their mates.

I have to say that by the way they didn’t observe who had right of way and their appalling road positioning, they’d picked up a couple of bad habits from some of the local human road users.