After three days in Barcelona, Katie and I flew to the island of Tenerife for a much needed detox.
We rented a car and spent our days cruising around the island blasting Spanish hits, occasionally stopping at perfect 75 degree weather beaches where you could make like the Europeans and lay half naked. It was certainly relaxing.
One afternoon, we visited Mt. Teide, the volcano that formed the island, and it was the most incredible drive (also the most terrifying because of the fear of crashing a car I can’t afford.) It started out winding through a forest of pine trees which smelled like Christmas and was oddly pleasing. The middle of the drive was above the clouds, which made the entire island look like it was blanketed with snow. The summit of the volcano just looked like a different planet- it was rocky and barren and beautiful in its own way. I felt like Mark Wahlberg in that one movie where he grew tomatoes on Mars, except I wasn’t stranded and I didn’t have to grow tomatoes. Nor was this actually Mars- but you get the picture.
Speaking of pictures, all of those moments were, in fact, picture perfect.
My end goal is always to encourage people to travel, so I try to make it look as effortless and fun as possible through social media.
And it’s easy- all you have to do is post a few carefully selected photos, most of them in sunglasses or facing away dramatically (bonus points for both!), so that no one can see that you’re actually sweating profusely, then you slap on a light filter and top it off with a semi witty caption. Voilà!
But this blog is for reality, and reality isn’t always perfect.
Katie and I spent our first two nights in the cutest little Airbnb, tucked away in the small fishing village of El Pris- complete with a balcony overlooking the ocean.
It seemed pretty perfect to us, but reality decided to set in around one in the morning while we were watching Killer Kids in Spanish (a strange yet satisfying combination) and a cockroach crawled out from under the couch.
A cucaracha, one might say…
And the next thing you know Katie is standing on a chair screaming that the floor is lava and I’m picking up a coffee table book about Tenerife yelling, “not today Satan!”
I slammed down the book and successfully killed la cucaracha, only to have her baby roach appear a few minutes later. After another brief moment of terror, bebé cucaracha met its demise in the same manner.
Shaken and out of coffee table books, we retreated to bed, from where we listened to Daddy Roach singing the song of his people throughout the night. Naturally, I did not sleep a wink.
Needless to say, we packed up pretty quickly the next morning and headed to the other side of the island for a one night stay at a fabulous beach front resort.
All in all our entire stay in Tenerife was absolutely lovely, regardless of the incident with our little friends. It just goes to show that whenever something looks too good to be true, there’s likely a funny story or two lurking behind it.
At least it keeps things interesting.