Santa Cruz and a seafood lunch
Bus Routes: 483[Los Cristianos, Las Americas Est] to Golf de Sur, 115[Golf Sur, Santa Cruz] to Santa Cruz bus station. (246[Taganana, Almáciga])
Return: (246[Taganana, Almáciga])111[Los Cristianos, Las Americas Est] to Las Chafiras, 483[El Medano] to Los Abrigos
A friend of mine from England arrived in Golf de Sur at the beginning of the week after emailing to ask if I would provide more details of using the 'guagua'. [The square brackets denote the destination displayed on the front of the bus in my routes.] We met up at his hotel, conveniently the bus stop is just outside the 'Cordial Golf Plaza'. After a coffee and a tour of the facilities we went out to the bus stop so that I could explain how the local timetables work as, this being a one way system, both directions are displayed on the same stop. The times are also shown using the 24 hour clock with the hours along the top row(s) and the minutes underneath. I noticed that the 115 between Las Galletas and Santa Cruz also runs around Golf de Sur so, as I had not used this route, a plan formed in my head. If we started the journey at the hotel and finished at Santa Cruz it would be easy for Kev to find his way back, I had arranged to visit Teresa and Jose Luis (my landlord) so this would tie in nicely.
I could either catch
the 483 at 08:41 or the 470 at 09:05 to get me to the hotel in time
for us to catch the 09:35 to Santa Cruz. I opted for the 483 in case
anything went wrong so, of course, the 115 was about 10 minutes late!
We hopped on and Kev used his new Bono ticket for the first time.
The 115 pulls off the motorway at the San Isidro and Candelaria
roundabouts but misses out the airport so the journey time is about 1
hour the same as the 111. We parted company in the department store
opposite the bus station after I had purchased a new UV filter for my
camera, typically I had managed to break two in two weeks! I haven't
asked Kev yet whether he bought any of the designer gear he went off
to browse around.
I had arranged to meet
Teresa and Jose Luis at the 'Plaza de España' at 12:00 so decided to
stoll down the well trodden route I had taken at the carnival (March
blogs). Without the distractions I immediately began to notice the
modern architecture which makes up down town Santa Cruz interspersed
with the historic. As the south is relatively new it is easy to
forget how much history there is in the Canaries in deed once we had
met up at the plaza, now transformed into a lake, we visited the
preserved ruins of the 'Castillo de San Cristóbal'. These ruins are
under the 'Plaza' as, typically the government demolished the castle
to build the new 'Cabilo' and imposing plaza. Relevance to us, well
this is where Nelson lost his arm! The exhibits give a detailed
description to the battle and also the good will shown by the
Canarians towards the English sailors. Entrance is free and English
translations displayed, the young lady curator also spoke excellent
English and took great pride in showing us around. Well worth a visit
but easily missed as it is underground.
We then decided to
visit a nice little fish restaurant, a favourite of my hosts, just up
the coast. I have include the bus route in brackets as we went by
car. I did not realise how far we were going a we followed the main
road along the coast heading north out of Santa Cruz to the town of
San Andés. From the end of this road we took a narrow winding road
up and over the mountain (26 degrees to 12!). The views were
breathtaking and there is a wide range of native plants growing
there. Interestingly one side of the valley can be a lush green the
other barren rock possibly depending upon the direction of the sun.
We passed through Taganana after a delay for roadworks, apparently it
is relatively recently that the road was built before that the
village was only reachable by boat, and progressed further along the
coast to our secret destination.
The menu from a family
run kitchen freshly caught and cooked:
Bread and 'moca' sauce
Canarian potatoes
Octopus
Fresh whole fish and vegetable sauce
Paella
A very fruity red wine
Complementary 'chocolate' desert even though I was 'stuffed'
I don't know what the fish was other than it was fat and succulent
and came with some prawns and other shellfish. I hate seeing food
left but I just couldn't have managed another mouthful and I must
thank Teresa and Jose Luis for this wonderful treat alone never mind
the trip out! We finished off with coffee and a Vodka based liqueur
and at that point I think we could all have used a siesta. The
conversation flowed as Teresa, despite her protestations, speaks very
good English and they are both now learning French whilst I still
struggle to say “How are you” in Spanish.
Heading back to the car Jose Luis decided that we would return along
a different route heading the La Laguna then back to Santa Cruz. We
stopped at a couple of viewing points, unfortunately the view
disappeared in front of me due to the cloud rolling in but I managed
to capture the panorama at the next one. There are a myriad of walks
from 1.5 to 21km and more, all clearly signposted and well tended by
the foresters. There are also numerous barbecue areas of different
sizes to encourage the use of the outdoors. Jose Luis told me that it
is customary to have barbecues for family occasions, why cram 30
people or children into a small apartment!
We arrived back in Santa Cruz at about 18:00 hours in time to drop
Jose Luis off for his French lesson whilst Teresa ran me back to the
bus station before going for her lesson. I had missed Kev for the
return trip (or so I thought) so I caught the 19:00 111 back to Las
Chafiras which timed it nicely to catch the 20:20 to Los Abrigos. It
turned out that Kev caught the last 115 back to his hotel due to a
delay in his adventure on the sightseeing 'Red Bus' but it shows how
easy it is to get around as long as you remember to make a note of
the return times on arrival at your destination before you set off
from the bus stand.
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