Santa Cruz, Tenerife Canary Islands

Hello all!

    I hope all is well with everyone! I am doing wonderful. As many of you know, instead of going to Morocco, Semester at Sea decided to make a stop in the Canary Islands for two days and one night. This group of islands are part of Spain and are located of the coast a little ways from Morocco. These are the islands that many Europeans travel to for their holidays. It was a quiet little area and the main attraction was an active volcano.... and of course I had to go to the top in hopes of seeing some bubbling lava on the very first day! The picture below is what the volcano
looks like from the ground. 


After the tour of the volcano me and my friends walked around the town. And since it was a Sunday nothing was open until about 7 o'clock that evening and many of the people were taking their siestas so it appeared to be a ghost town. I have officially decided that the one thing I am going to take back to America with me and try to incorporate in every day life are siestas and a slower pace lifestyle. It was so odd and somewhat frustrating when a store would say they opened half hour ago but still has not opened because of this idea that time was unimportant. For example, the city buses have schedules like we do at home, but instead they show up whenever they get there and leave whenever they choose. Compared to the ones at home which are there on time and leave on time. So there so called schedule was completely useless and frustrating when us "busy Americans" were trying to get around and be to places at a certain time... like the ship!


The second day my friends and I decided to venture to the beach. As always it was a wonderful time. We drank Pina Coladas as well as sun bathed and snorkeled near the shore. One of the most interesting things about the Canary Islands in the landscape is very mountainous and so there would be little villages built in the crevasses of the hills and when it got to steep to keep building they stopped and that was the ending point of that village. So there were multiple areas where people would live jam packed on this hillside. It kind of reminded me of what I would think Greece would be like. 

All in all the Canary Islands were beautiful and there was so much to do and see. I was not there long enough to experience all of it but I would most definitely come back!

See you all in the next post!