Of banana farms and fishing towns

From our last hotel in Puerto Santiago, where we spent our last 5 days in Tenerife, we were able to cross the street, go across an empty lot, and - so we thought - cut through a banana farm to walk to the coast. We started off on our trek, successfully entered the banana farm through a side gate that was open, and started trying to find the exit closest to the coast, which unfortunately, didn't exist. The friendly workers kept pointing us in the direction of the exit, which was by the street, exactly the direction we didn't want to go. So we cobbled together a question in Spanish of how to ask for the exit by the beach, and were told we had to walk down the street and then cut through another lot to the coast. At least we tried, got a cool glimpse into a banana farm, and one worker even chased us down and gave us an armload of delicious ripe bananas!


















We didn't walk between the trees, we always stayed on the paths between the walled-in areas where the bananas were growing. There were always doors open into the actual banana fields, so we could look in and check out the plants.


















A lot of the giant bunches of bananas were bagged, apparently to protect them from pests that would harm the fruit.



















We made it to the water! The coast is quite stony, composed of rock that was formed from the volcanic eruptions that also created the island. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera and didn't take photos of Punta Blanca, where we took a longer break. It was an area made up of not only black stone, but also layers of white stone, rounded by erosion and creating an almost space-like feel to the area.



















Our walk along the coast took us from Puerto Santiago once again to the village Alcalá. The distance from our starting point to Alcalá was about 4-5 kilometers. In Alcalá we were able to observe the crabs at the harbor enjoying whatever they were picking off the rocks and eating!