Tenerife

For years, I’d been telling myself I should escape the grey Berlin winter, and for years, I never actually managed it. Every spring, I’d ask myself again why on earth I hadn’t. This time, I decided to finally break the cycle and plan a proper stretch of time somewhere sunny, with longer days, milder temperatures and ideally some good hiking on the weekends. It wouldn’t be a holiday in the traditional sense: I’d work during the week and make the most of the weekends outdoors.

Tenerife came up as a recommendation from a few friends, so without overthinking it, I booked a month there. I chose Santa Cruz, the capital, as I’d heard it was less touristy than the south, and being the main city, I figured it would be easier to meet people. A slightly too expensive Airbnb and two plane tickets later, I was all set.

Santa Cruz itself is a fairly small city, and pretty much everything is within walking distance. I genuinely didn’t take public transport a single time within the city. That’s very convenient, but it also means you’ll have explored most of it quite quickly, and it won’t keep you curious for very long. I soon found my favourite ramen place with good vegan options and a lovely café with a big terrace where I could happily spend hours reading.

Being away from Berlin was great for two reasons. First, the weather was consistently mild, which meant I could spend every evening and weekend outside, and that really did me a world of good. Second, while I love Berlin and seeing my friends almost every day, it felt surprisingly nice to slow down, hibernate a little, and spend long evenings reading and writing. At least for the first two weeks. After that, I started to genuinely miss real human connection and my friends back home.

One thing I found really disappointing about Santa Cruz is that there’s basically no way to get to the sea from the city itself. The entire shoreline is taken up by the port, which is closed off to the public. How do you build a city right by the sea and reserve the whole coastline for cruise ships and cargo, leaving none of it accessible to the people who actually live there? The nearest beach was a 45-minute bus ride away.

On the other hand, public transport on the island as a whole is genuinely excellent. It was really easy to hop on a bus and get pretty much anywhere, including up into the mountains for a hike. I quickly met some lovely people at a language exchange meetup, a Venezuelan woman and a Spanish guy, both speaking French, and we ended up doing quite a few hikes together, which I really enjoyed. Standing in the mountains and looking out over the sea is something I rarely get to experience, and it was wonderful every single time. Some of the hikes we’d found on random blogs turned out to be a bit risky, but they paid off by leading us to hidden beaches where we could swim without sharing the place with another soul.

All in all, this month in Tenerife was fantastic and gave me exactly what I was looking for: calm, mild weather and beautiful hikes. My only regret is that I didn’t make it up to the volcano. I wasn’t smart enough to do my research in advance and only discovered once there that you need a permit to reach the summit, with a waiting list of about three months! Next time, I suppose.