La Laguna and the Northeastern Coast

La Laguna adjoins the larger port city of Santa Cruz with a tramway. Center of education, culture and religion, it is preserved by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site and vibrant capital since the 15th c. We drove there under a flawless sky with white fleece hanging just at the mountain tops. We took the long route, through Santa Cruz, which was lively in the sunny morning. Jugglers performed in front of traffic stopped at lights, prostitutes sat in their folding chairs just behind the market Nuestra Senora de Africa, street musicians warmed up under the sun. But San Cristobal de La Laguna was much cooler, closer, cleaner, streets of Spanish and medieval architecture, the Moorish Mudéjar style. It is unmistakably a colonial outpost, with the rough stone carved facades of aristocratic homes bearing family shields, while the real beauty is in the polished Canarian woodwork of massive doors and carved balconies.

La Concepcion, the oldest church in Tenerife, had high massive vaults of carved wood, gleaming ship-like vaults of the central nave, more Moorish and Canarian carved designs in parts of the ceiling, disks of faded paint. An elaborate cedar chair that curved upwards to deliver sermons seemed almost pagan with a large savage phoenix-like bird gripping a hoary spear in its cruel talons, seated on a globe entwined with a snake, with sacred paintings on the top of the chair.

The virgin of Tenerife looks like our Lady of Guadalupe dressed like Queen Elizabeth I, even when she holds the naked crucified Christ on her lap.

We climbed the dark stone tower of the 17th c, and viewed the green ridges and mountains while at our feet lay a grid of neat 18th c. streets. La Laguna had been the Capital, with her government buildings and grand mansions of the elite--including a Dutchman and an Italian who had come to help rule the colony, and whose decor reflected their origins. Villas had inner courtyards circled with Canarian wooden balconies, carved eclectically. The most beautiful and perhaps oldest building we saw was a red convent to San Augustin, with a forest in its cloister, next to the burnt remains of its church 's soaring vaults, and upstairs immense chambers of dark polished wood.

A Spanish tourist tried to photograph a chic, sleek woman but she put up a stern hand--No. He wanted to title it "La Laguna."

We drove out in the finally warm sun to the wooded northeast of the island, Las Mercedes Forest, in the Agana region. A virgin tangle of laurel and palm entwined with ferns, moss and vines, woven and matted so thickly the road sliced through it like hair rising from the head of the layered rock. Inside the cool thicket it was fragrant and moist. Logging has been forbidden since the 15th c. since the condensed fog on laurel leaves yielded four times the water for Tenerife as did the rain. It has the highest biodiversity in Europe.

We drove up to 1000 m and stopped at one mirador after another to view the pleats of green mountains and ridges of red rock bristling with sage, the steep ravines and lush green forests, and just beyond, the ocean where clouds wreathed the next island, Gran Canaria. Then down the treacherous hairpin road, recently built, through glaring sun and deep shade. We wound along the sheer edge overlooking jagged black peaks rising from a foamy ocean, down to Chamorga, a village of square white houses tumbling into the steep rock. From there hiking trails lead up the volcanic rock, and down to the sea. Pens of hunting dogs heralded our arrival and a little old pooch followed me till I pet him, The people had planted a forest of dragon trees, a prehistoric tree that is Tenerife's own.

Then we drove to the savage ocean, thundering around the black lava rock. We were headed for Taganana, famous for sea food, but comprising mostly muddy construction along precipitous roads. We got stuck at neighbouring Benijo where amidst mud and rubble and a lone farm animal lying, black and sleek, in a cabbage patch, there are reputable seafood restaurants from which drove elegant Spanish doňas. Then we drove back the hairpin turns of a ribbon of a road trimming the skeletal mountains. The ridges were worn down to the hardest veins of red ore, ribs jutting out of the shears of rock. Always in the distance we saw the great volcano El Teide, rising in the fog.

Taganana

It was sunset as we drove home on the autopista, along the glaring sea's edge, while windmills turned vigorously. A long long drive of a day that sharpened our appetite for Tenerife, for its many footpaths we have not taken, secret black beaches we have skipped, tropical forests we have not yet hiked, days we have missed in the matchless sun.

The Road to Santa Cruz

Arico Nuevo

Headed northeast in Tenerife, I drove through the arid clay and rock of land sliced through bouldered layers, and dropping steeply into barrancos; and through the folds of vertical and treacherous ravines where sometimes doors appeared in the side of the rock. 

A door at the bottom

Often there were door-shaped holes, but sometimes there were actual wooden doors fitted into the pale dry sediment, which sometimes connected with roofs on top of the embankment. There was little sign of people or cars, as I drove the hairpin curves of the interior and its waterless land, sometimes with dried grapevines, and terraced with muddy bricks.

Arico Nuevo

We stopped at Arico Nuevo, which had been new in the 18th c, when aristocrats of the island built these white adobe homes with their elegant tile roofs and imposing wooden doors, circling and nestling in ingenious relationship with the precipitous land. Along our drive was the Camino Real, a hiking sendero that traced the Marian triangle, which linked sites of the Virgin's apparitions (even before the Spanish arrival, they claim). Giant windmills marched to the sea, and further on they were still, until our drive home when like faceless clocks they twirled their three arms.

Church at Guimar

We descended into a more ruddy clay, moister and richer, through villages, where only a few grizzled old men in tatters scratched their stomachs along the main street. Then we entered an entirely different climate as the land turned to dark, purplish volcanic mountains, sprouting candelabra of slim cacti and we were driving through clouds. Chain mail held up the rock in placces.

Guimar has a view of the sea and so-called pyramids discovered by Thor Heyerdahl, who thought he had proved that the Guanchas were in touch with Mayan and Aztec cultures, but later scientists disproved his theory. The pyramids have given rise to an exquisite museum, though they had been discovered to be simply the folly of locals who loved those dark volcanic stones.

Candelaria

In Candelaria we descended again to the sea, where it is said that a statue of the Virgin washed ashore 100 years before the arrival of the Spanish, and was worshipped by the Guanchas, children of the volcano. Their own imposing, all-too-human likenesses stand in larger than life bronze statues against the beating shore with its black volcanic sand. The sea was calming to wade in, the gritty black sand seemed healing after all the twisting, hair-raising roads. The basilica, which dates form 1959, has what is said to be the original statue of the virgin, while a replica dominates the altar. We had fish soup and paella on a terrace of the church's plaza, and fed a hungry cat with the chunks of chicken that appeared in the fish soup.

Guancha chiefs, Candelaria

Then on to the big city, Santa Cruz. Like Cagliari it faces its port majestically, with daring architecture by Calatrava and its Plaza d'Espana with a rippling pond and tourist offices like volcanic hillocks planted with cacti. Santa Cruz is airy and tranquil, some quarters Spanish Baroque or grandiose Art Deco, others are low colorful adobe with cheerful terrace cafés and Canarian wooden balconies. The museum/library is a vast masterpiece, with reading rooms like modern cathedrals dripping with long ceiling lights.

Plaza d'Espana, Santa Cruz

The parks are enchanting. Principe des Asturias hs a dirt dog run around its Baroque cupola, and feels like an enchanted forest of lauriers and palms. On benches around the cupola sat strange marginal people--an obese woman sprawled on the lap of a watchful young man, a colorful, handsome hippy who looked like Chekhov, drinking tea from a miniature porcelain pot and sewing, next to his bicycle laden with belongings that resembled the paraphernalia of a clown. Another park envelopped us with its tropical forest and fragrant herbs--we could smell curry in the air.

Principe d'Asturias, Santa Cruz

Then we crossed an elegant bridge over a dry river to Our Lady of Africa, a carnavalesque outdoor market. The beautiful white and dark stone church with its high narrow square tower housed the original wooden cross planted at Santa Cruz, but it was closed. So we headed back in the sunset.

The Market, Santa Cruz