Middle-aged flash packers

Our apartment has been somewhat over glamourised by the artfully taken and out of date photos on Airbnb. 

As most of you already know, S and I are in the Booking.com camp when it comes to choosing our holiday accommodation for the very reasons we are experiencing now. 

The apartment is ok, but the beautiful, modern furniture shown on the roof terrace has been replaced with an “up cycled” table and some worn rattan chairs. The balcony furniture is a shadow of its former self with a rickety table and faded chairs, and the  view…ah, the view. 

A sea view was promised and there is a sea view to be fair, and it’s nice. Yes, the view is partially obscured by high rise hotels and apartments, but that’s fine and as long you keep looking in that direction , all is well. But don’t look the other way. Unless you like looking at a gully full of rubble with some unwanted furniture in it along with broken piping. I’m not saying this is our host’s fault and it’s only natural that he wouldn’t wish to draw attention to it, but Mr P, you need to work harder in this case to make your apartment nice enough to compensate and you haven’t.

Still, we shall no doubt hardly notice it by the end of the week , especially if we keep eating huge meals and drinking far too much wine as we did last night.

This morning we woke up with thick heads but manfully scurried around throwing things into rucksacks to meet up with our friends Jan and Nik aka fellow road warriors. What are they doing here I hear you ask? The same as us. Couldn’t find anywhere else to go that was warm, dry and relatively close at this time of year. 

They are staying 10 minutes drive away in a very fancy hotel in Costa de Duque. Lucky for us, they were kind enough to provide us with a picnic lunch from the remnants of their fabulous breakfast. Food safely secreted into our rucksacks, we set off on our walk to La Caleta. 

La Caleta once upon a time was a tiny fishing village. Obviously it isn’t that anymore but it still has charm and has several top notch fish restaurants.

The path to La Caleta hugs the coastline so is very scenic with the added benefit of a sea breeze to cool us down. It was hot today , the first time ever that we have been to the Canary Islands and not felt too cold in shorts and a T-shirt. Are the weather gods smiling upon us?

We went past La Caleta and followed a rough path that weaved its way across the headland. In theory we could walk to our resort, La Paraíso, but that was too far on such a hot day so we made it as far as Playa Puertito, a small beach, very popular with locals. There is just one beach bar/restaurant there which is extremely popular but we managed to bag a table and get some much needed drinks. The food looked really good too, but thanks to the wily Road Warriors, we had no need to buy lunch.

Our return journey seemed to go quickly and it wasn’t long before we were back with the masses. There is a 10 kilometre promenade that runs from Los Cristianos to La Caleta and it seems so much busier than when we came before. Having said that our first trip to Tenerife was in 2020 – covid year – and very few people were travelling. 

We had intended to join J and N for a swim in their luxury resort but S was feeling a bit woozy after too much sun so we headed back so he could recover.

Our apartment complex is certainly not luxurious, but there are plenty of sun loungers and lots of different languages being spoken which provided much debate as to where our fellow swimmers came from.

Later, we dragged ourselves in to the heart of La Paraiso to see what our resort had to offer.

It’s a tale of two halves. We had the best curry we’ve had in ages. S had an Afghani curry which came with a deep fried egg (!) and my Kharai curry was outstanding. So that was good.

Not so good is the “strip” upwards from the Hard Rock Hotel. Atmospheric it is not. Maybe it will look better in the day.

Now let’s rewind to the Hard Rock Hotel. And I do mean rewind. If anyone mentions the Hard Rock Cafe to me I immediately think of middle aged men with long hair, motorbikes, guitars and Arnold Schwarzenegger. It belongs in the eighties. Why on earth does a Hard Rock hotel even exist? What am I missing? Maybe it appeals to younger people who have no idea about the eighties and this seems like a new concept? I don’t know but I don’t  think it’s doing that well. Despite its neon flashing lights on the outside , there don’t seem to be many rooms with lights on inside.