TICKET TO RIDE

Award-winning travel writer and Tenerife resident Joe Cawley finds that the best way to see the island’s hidden gems is to use public transport

When you think of Tenerife, resort hotels and loads of pasty, white tourists desperate for tans usually spring to mind – n’est pas? When I turned up on this island in the early 1990s from Bolton in the north of England, it was the same and I was one of them. The difference is I stayed, opened a bar, wrote a book and now I’m a local.

The thing about being a tourist is that you often get stuck following the crowd – doing the same things, hitting the same bars and beaches and gazing at the same views.

But if you want to get away from the tourist trail there is a solution, and it’s one you probably wouldn’t have thought of. Forget hiring a car, get on the bus – or, as the island service is commonly known, the TITSA (Transportes Interurbanos de Tenerife SA). The local bus network provides the key to independent exploration on Tenerife, including the best beaches, village trails and hidden haunts. It’s also fun, cheap and easy to use.

Get one of TITSA’s “Bono” cards and the island is your oyster. Available from main bus terminals and a few other select outlets, the prepay card (€12 or €30) gives you a 50% discount on journeys over 20km, which makes most trips cheaper than a pint of beer. Plus there’s free admission to several museums in the capital, Santa Cruz.

Although I know the island well, I haven’t gone bus-to-bus across Tenerife before. So Bono card in hand, I decide to experiment and do just that. Scouring the bus station at the resort of Playa de Las Americas, I spot the number 473 about to leave – the perfect starting point on my journey, as it skirts the oft-neglected west coast beaches, all the way up to Los Gigantes.

Apart from myself and a few other intrepid travellers, most of the passengers are local commuters. Punching my ticket, I remember to tell the driver where I’m going to make sure I get off at the right stop – something that’s crucial if you don’t know the island.

It’s worth spending about half a day exploring the north-west town of Los Gigantes, but for me, this time it’s merely a transit point. We arrive and I catch a glimpse of the headspinning cliffs from which the town takes its name, before hopping on the 325, destined for Puerto de la Cruz.

As we wind our way up into the mountains past walled banana plantations and patches of wild cacti, we finally get away from the built-up resort areas. The views and the work of Mother Nature take my breath away. There are palm trees in place of apartments and carpets of pine needles instead of pavements. All of a sudden, the driver manages to really take my breath away. I hold on in fear, as every five minutes or so he slots the 325 between an oncoming lorry and an alarmingly steep drop.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 4:21 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.