"Isn't it a wonderful island?" a British accent interrupted my sleep and without feeling irritated, I secretly agreed to the lady, sitting behind me in the bus to the airport, for two reasons. One, it was indeed a wonderful island. Two, listening to English was music to my ears!!
Tenerife..when I first heard this name, it felt like a name of a beautiful girl..like Nilofar or Senorita. And in the midst of so many things happening in my life, I got a chance to go there. Unfortunately, our trip was shortened from 7 days to 5 days for some reason and then again to 4 days because of flight cancellation. Nonetheless, we enjoyed our short stay there to the fullest.
Tenerife is the biggest one of the Canary Islands. While our plane was landing, I noticed that, the inhabitation was primarily at the seashores and not much inside. Inside, it was a completely hilly terrain. As we came out of the Reina-Sofia airport, we realised, why it is called the 'the Island of Eternal Spring". It was beautifully sunny and warm even at around 7 o'clock. We took a bus to our hotel, Los Gigantes and our tour in Tenerife started.
What was most noticeable for us in Tenerife, was the life style there. The houses, the shops, the hotels and even the people were so much like in India. The similarity was too surprising. The outside structures of the two storey houses were exactly like what we can see in cities like Solapur or Nashik. The open hotels and the signboards displayed on them made us pinch eachother to confirm that we were not in India. Even the people talked pretty loudly. The bus depot, where we changed the bus, resembled Thane bus depot. Can you believe, I once saw the bus-driver spitting outside his window?!?
Since it was a Sunday, we did not get a fast bus to our hotel. Our bus visited even the smallest village in Tenerife. In the first ride itself, I realised that I had badly underestimated Tenerife. I thought it will be full of hotels and tourists. But, to my surprise, there were quite a lot of residential areas. Our bus crossed one mountain after another. I remembered, when me and my sister were kids, we were going through a zigzag mountain road with our parents in a car. After travelling for some time, my little sister innocently asked, "Why are we travelling on the same route round and round?". It was a hilarious moment for us. Anyways! Many times, we felt that we have almost arrived our hotel. But I was still waiting for the beautiful picture of Los Gigantes I 'd seen. At the back of it was huge mountain and immediately in the front was enormous Sea.
Finally, after travelling for around one and half hour on the zigzag mountain roads, we saw this view in real and then within minutes we were at the hotel reception. It was already 8.30pm and the hotel manager told us that, the dinner was only till 9.30pm. So we decided to freshen up fast and come down immediately. Whole day we were starving vegetarian food. Tired and exhausted, we opened our room and then the first thing I did was to open the curtains...
Oh my God!!!! What I saw then, was completely astonishing, overwhelming, thrilling, fascinating..ufff...the words are just not enough to describe the feelings. It was just roaring blue water till my eyes could see. I was thrilled with the idea of spending 3 full days here. I could have just sat in the balcony to see how this scene looks in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening, in the night. I always love to just sit on the seashore and look at the Sea. I feel, Sea is someone to whom I can talk for hours and trustfully tell all my secrets.
While I stood stunned & bedazed, my stomach continuously disturbed my thoughts for some substance that can be metabolized to provide me some more energy to keep cherishing that beauty. And I had to obey his orders and proceeded to dinner. The restaurant manager welcomed us and showed us a nice place to sit, from where we could see beautiful scene outside consisting of a well maintained lawn and garden and ofcourse, the Sea.
It was a buffet dinner and to our surprise, there was separate section of vegetarian dishes. The restaurant manager told us, the different kind of food that we can get there. As he came to know, that we are vegetarians, he asked us, whether we would like to try Canneroni (which I guess is a Spanish cuisine). I had never tried it. But on Amit's strong recommendation, I decided to taste it. We took some other vegetarian dishes. The menu was wonderful and the Canneroni was absolutely delicious. The deserts were outstanding. Frankly speaking, it is so rare for Indians (especially vegetarians) to get some food of our liking in Europe, that I never keep lot of hopes. Normally, there are options like salads, fruits, breads and at times, the deserts work like the maincourse. But in Los Gigantes, we indeed got delicious vegetarian food to eat.
So as our stomach got some work to do, we decided to take a walk around. Los Gigantes is a beautiful hotel surrounded by mountains on the back and sea in the front. There were two beautiful swimming pools overlooking the sea, squash & tennis courts, massage facilities, hairdressers and two bars, one with orchestra and one quiet.
We stood beside the swimming pool and could hear the orchestra. It's a different feel to see the sea in dark. Its outrageousness is even more intense in the night. It looks so mysterious and so entrancing, that its difficult to take the eyes off him. I thought how it must be when people thought that, the Earth is flat, her edge is at the end of the Sea and one will fall on crossing this edge. For a moment, I imagined going to that edge and looking down where exactly one may fall. The sky was full of stars. I remembered, when I was child I thought, we stay inside the earth. When I came to know the reality, I was suddenly scared of being exposed. But then I thought, it's okay, at least I am covered by the sky. But when my Grandpa cleared that misconception too, it was tough for me to believe that, sky was nothing but an empty space. Looking at the stars that night, I thought, when I believe Earth is just one small planet in this universe, I am supposed to believe what I am seeing in front of me, the ginormous sea, to be tiny!!! Then what should I think about me? And what about small insects? I am so hugely insignificant!! Once again I suddenly felt exposed. If someone looked from above, I was on a miniscule island of a small planet...surrounded by thousands of stars and planets. I couldn't see all of them. But they all could see me. I could understand why Yashoda fainted to see the universe in Lord Krishna's mouth.
Phew!! It was too much to think about. But I had a very calm sleep that night.
But as I saw, inadvertently I started walking towards the arches. Neither my vocabulary is enough to describe the spectacular scene nor my N73 camera was enough to capture the beauty. But as I approached the arches, I couldn’t stop clicking. As the Sun set, first it appeared prominently on the top..
