I woke up early on the Monday of my 50th week in Europe and walked outside of our condo to watch the sunrise over the Tenerife Sea. It was such a perfect little moment of surreal realization on the coast of the ocean with a decaf coffee in hand. I’m living my dream. This week, my parents and I island hopped throughout the Canary Islands. We started off with snorkeling under giant mountains in Tenerife before heading over to the mystical forests of La Gomera. For the second half of the week we flew over to Lanzarote and spent our days hiking in volcanos and jumping off the pier with locals. To round out our island tour we jumped over to Fuerteventura to snorkel with giant fish, drive through sand dunes and save an umbrella. A truly amazing trip with two incredible parents.
OUR TIME IN TENERIFE
Our first excursion in Tenerife was a sea safari guided by a local fisherman. After being picked up at the piers in Puerto Colon, we jetted out into the ocean to drive around and spot as many animals as possible. During our little safari we were able to see jumping tuna, dolphins playing, whales swimming next to the boat, turtles diving into the ocean and even flying fish. The flying fish was my favorite animal that we saw. During out excursion we also boated to a secret beach underneath Los Gigantes and snorkeled with fish using jet packs. It was insane! The second half of our time on Tenerife was spent hiking through lava fields, looking out over Miradors and navigating cliffsides.
To read more about our time in Tenerife, click here.
LA GOMERA
La Gomera is the second smallest island of the Canaries, and it is also known as “the magical island.” Geographically it is made up of windy mountain roads, moss covered forests and tiny beach side towns overlooking Tenerife. While we were on Gomera we hiked through Garajonay National Park, looked out the glass floor mirador in Agulo and enjoyed the sweeping shorelines in Hermigua.
Alongside the contrasting and enchanted nature scenes, La Gomera also has a well-preserved culture. My favorite part of La Gomera was the whistling language used by the inhabitants of La Gomera to communicate across the deep valleys of the island. The language was used before Spanish settlers came to the Canary Islands in the 16th century, but slowly declined throughout the years until revitalization efforts began in the 90s and the language gained official protection as an intangible heritage.
To read more about our time in La Gomera, click here.
LANZAROTE
Lanzarote is a unique island, and one of my favorites that we visited. The island is covered with cacti, volcanos and lava fields, making it look like the moon. Geographically, the island is so similar to the moon that the European Space Agency uses Lanzarote as a base to train astronauts. Lanzarote is also a hot spot for surfing and it is referred to as the Hawaii of Europe.
While we were on Lanzarote, we spent a lovely time wandering through the Jardin de Cactus designed by César Manrique. The Jardin was the last great work done by Manrique and it beautifully arranges 4,500 specimens of cactus from five continents. We split the rest of our time on Lanzarote evenly between hiking through volcanos and jumping into local swimming holes. We got to see the green pools at Charco de los Clicos, hike inside Cuervo Volcano and wander through the lava fields of Timanfaya volcano. We toured through the Cueva de los Verdes and stuffed our face with Paella on the main strip. It was a beautiful time!
To read more about our time in Lanzarote, click here.
FUERTAVENTURA
Last, but not least, we went to the island of Fuerteventura. Fuerteventura is the second largest island and the oldest Canary Island, formed 20 million years ago. It is also home to one of the top 25 beaches in Europe, Corralejo. This beach was our first stop while on Fuerteventura and it was a lovely dune beach with tons of tide pools to explore. In addition to Corralejo, we also went snorkeling at Playa de la Concha. While I was snorkeling, I saw a giant fish swimming in the sea grass and then I remembered that fish have teeth and that freaked me out and I swam straight back to shore and grabbed my bottle of wine. My favorite beach on Fuerteventura was the Popcorn Beach. The beach is unique because it is covered in small white algae fossils that look identical to popcorn! We had a fun time walking through the beaches and collecting little handfuls of popcorn. Such a trippy place!
To read more about our time in Fuerteventura, click here.
