Tenerife Day 2 – Parador Cañadas del Teide to Santa Cruz de Tenerife

This morning we left the slopes of the Teida volcano and headed to Santa Cruz on the north east edge of Tenerife.

It was windy as we left and it kept getting more and more windy. The wind blew trees down and created quite an amazing drive. On top of that the wind is blowing massive amount of sand from the Sahara Desert over Tenerife. Visibility is almost zero and the sky is an eerie pink color. If you Google Tenerife dust storm you can see some amazing pictures of the dust storm from space. They call this weather phenomenon a Calima.

To add to the excitement Carnival is going on right now. Our plan was to check into our hotel, leave our bags, and then return the car to the airport. The plan basically worked out but we couldn’t drive all the way to the hotel. A lot of streets are closed for Carnival so we eventually found a place to park (probably illegally). I stayed with the car and Duke took the bags to the hotel and checked in. Then we found our way to the airport. No flights are flying in or out of Tenerife because of the dust storm. We turned in the car, took a bus into town and walked to our hotel.

We rested a bit then went out into the giant Carnival party, walked around and people watched.