After almost 20 years, posts here will now only be occasional (
Of course, here in the ‘north’ we’re perfectly okay with rain; we see it as the ingredient that provides us with our beautiful tropical vegetation and consider the few occasions when we get whole days or even a whole week of rain as a small price to pay for our surroundings.
It’s said that Tenerife has one bad month of weather a year and it’s just a question of waiting to see which month that will be. But this year, it’s proving to be a November/December crossover and is teetering on the edge of being more than a month.
Given the appalling summer that Britain has just experienced and the continued downturn in the value of the pound, this unusual spell of ‘poor’ weather has led to an unfortunate set of circumstances. Many hundreds of Brits are finding themselves with two weeks in one of Tenerife’s southern resorts with no sun and a great deal of time on their hands. Naturally, the tendency is therefore to spend more time in bars, cafes and restaurants parting with more of their significantly reduced euros than they would normally do, and has in turn led to many people complaining that there’s nothing to do in Tenerife without the sun and that it’s far more expensive than it used to be.
Well, here’s a simple and cost-effective solution to the whole question of what to do in Tenerife when it rains…
Get out of your resort and explore.
There are endless possibilities of places to see and things to do that will cost you a fraction of what you’ll spend by killing time in resort bars.
Other than the cost of getting there, exploring Tenerife’s fascinating landscape and historic towns doesn’t have to cost a céntimo if you don’t want it to. But by leaving your resort, you’re automatically increasing the value of your euro anyway, so lunch, a cold beer, a coffee, soft drinks, ice cream all cost considerably less around the island.
There are some excellent museums on Tenerife. Not the sort that house exhibits gathering dust that will threaten a revolt from your offspring the moment the front door looms into sight, these are positive fun houses! Like the Museum of Science and the Cosmos in La Laguna which has hundreds of wonderful scientific puzzles to play with including lifting a Mini with just one hand, getting lost in the mirror maze and casting shadows on a wall that stay there after you’ve moved.
Then there’s the Museum of Man & Nature in Santa Cruz with its morbid collection of Guanche mummies, or the Military Museum in Santa Cruz in a working barracks which has a scale reproduction of Nelson’s unsuccessful attack on Santa Cruz amongst its arsenal of military paraphernalia.
And if you go on a Sunday, every museum has free entrance.
Make your holiday go further; see the island and save money while you’re doing it, then come back and tell me there’s nothing to do on Tenerife when it rains!