Hitchhiking in… (4) Tenerife

Introduction

The highest mountain of Spain is located in Teneriffa or let´s say it IS Tenerife. I wasn´t aware of that and have been suprised, when i discovered the majestic summit during our passage, two days before we reached the island. Tenerife has different faces between mass tourism, outdoor sports and some abandon and green places which wait for exploration. Green humid north combined with lifeless volcanic landscape in the centre and a 3718m high peak of the El Teide. I liked it.

Statistics

From now on my Hitchhiking in… -series will be provided with some statistics. I am logging my hitchhiking with the log-style we use in our DTSG-Competitions. There will be an extra article soon to explain my logging.

Hitchhiked distance: 360 km

Number of lifts: 19

Average waiting time: 8 min 13 sec

Waiting time total: 2 h 36 min

You can download the log here. Feel invited to play with the statistics.

My Route

Our route was designed for two days. First we hitchhiked in the north and went to Camorga and Igueste to find the end of the road. Please turn over if possible. Later we visited Aquamanza at the edge of El Teides´ high plateau. We set up a tent there and started early in the morning to climb El Teide. Afterwards we did a little detour to the south to go back to Santa Cruz in the end. 270 km hitchhiking in total.

People

Also in Tenerife we met alot of tourists which gladly stopped to take us. Certainly it seems that there are again more spanish people, which are a bit more friendly, than on the mainland. Retrospective it was a bit more difficult to hitchhike in Tenerife than in Lanzarote. Sometimes i had this „Spain-Feeling“ again, when we had to wait a bit longer and no car stopped. All-in-all the hitchhiking was good.

Streets

Compared to Lanzarote, Tenerife has a decent highway with 2-3 lanes which leads around the island. Also here you have again the nice Spanish slip roads, which provide good hitchhiking positions. In bigger cities like Santa Cruz it was a bit difficult to get a lift as there is much traffic and very few space for stopping. Beside that you have beautiful small country roads in the north whitch provide a spectacular view but have less traffic. Anyway i enjoyed the waiting in opulent nature around you. Good time to relax and just be.

Tactics

Basic hitchhiking in Tenerife. The highways can be hitched very good via the slip roads and furthermore Tenerife also has well equipped service areas. It´s pretty decent and not as confusing as in Spain. In the cities we used the „traffic lights-trick“. We could catch most of the lifts directly behind the traffic lights. Just wait till the red light appears and talk to the waiting cars. At least this worked well to get out of the cities.

The mountain road in the north wiggles itself around the tight serpentines, up and down. Here is not much keeping area which can be dangerous with the steep roads. Positioning along the crossroads worked perfectly here. Just wait for confused tourists, they never know where to go, cause the signage is a bit suboptimal in the countryside.

Fotos

I will provide more fotos of streets and hitchhiking from now on, cause this is the purpose of the series „Hitchhiking in…“.

Specifics

The El Teide is with 3718m the biggest summit in Spain. A climb is definitely worth the effort. Who wants to reach the peak has to register before to get a permission. Waiting time when i was thre was about 21 days. If you dont want to register you can climb before 8 am which will make a night camping on the top necessary.

In my personal opinion the north is the most beautiful part of the island. Sepentines, average mountains, rain, cool air and especially end of roads. It is not very often that roads just end somewhere. In the north there are 3-4 of those places and if you are enthusiastic about exploring the end of something you should take that way!

The highway is very good for a fast transit all around the island. Compared to other islands this is definitel worth a comment. You won´t find this very often.