Tenerife and Arrecife Canary Islands
 

we will be on a cruise ship in April that makes two stops in Tenerife and Arrecife. Please advise what we should do there and if you are aware of any private guides. Thank you.

How long are you in Tenerife and Arrecife? What are your interests? If you are into hiking, the Canaries is a beautiful and great place for it. There are also biking tours of some of the islands, but they are pretty physically demanding.

What are you looking for?

Claire

On Tenerife I'd take the trip up Mount Teide, if you have chance. The landscape round the volcano, which at over 12,000 feet is the highest mountain in Spain, is realy wierd and fantastic.

If you visit the north of the island, there is a nice botanic garden in Puerto de la Cruz, apparently one of the oldest in Europe, with all sorts of exotic plants growing outdoors. There were also some nice terraced gardens and some old Canarian houses with carved balconies in Orotava and the hotels and houses all had colourful gardens too. We didn't go near any of the big southern resorts, when we were in Tenerife, they really don't look enticing to me.

Lanzarote has a real "other world" feel about it, the volcanic landscape looking like something you would expect on the moon. There is the volcano itself, which last erupted a couple of hundred years ago and the temperature below the surface is still hot enough for then to build a restaurant where the chicken is cooked over a volcanic vent. Adding to the "other world" feeing are influences by the local architect and artist, Cesar Manrique (http://www.lanzaroteisland.com/english/cesar_manrique/), who built his house into an old lava flow, using large "bubbles" in the lava as rooms. He also designed a cactus garden and a restaurant, and concert hall, also built into volcanic caves, with a lake at the bottom containing little white blind crabs, apparently found nowhere else. I'd recommend a trip to the cesar Manrique Foundation, which was his home.

I agree with the Mount Teide suggestion, the views are spectacular on the climb up the mountain, and the scenary is more like a vision of Mars than Earth. I was pleasantly surprised by Puerta de la Cruz as well

Just in case you are wondering, you don't have to walk all the way up Mount Teide, the area round the summit is a national park and accessible by car or bus. There's then a cable car going up to near the summit - though we didn't go up that far. Fantastic views - if you are not above the clouds.