Things you didn't know about my internship on Tenerife!

Almost parched on a vulkan in Africa! 

Today i wanna tell you a story you probably didn't know about my time on Tenerife yet. But I can tell you that this for sure has been one of the toughtest and most adventurous experiences I throughlived up to this point in my life. I'll probably remember this day forever but if you'd ask me to experience it once again my answer would most likely be a definie 'no'.

Let's start from the very beginning. My two best friends from Austria came to visit me for a week on Tenerife and that day we stayed at the beach, afterwards the two of them went back to their air bnb to have some dinner and pre sleep a bit. I myslef had to go to work at the bar/café at 5 o' clock pm and I've been fulfilling my tasks as a servant there until 11 o' clock pm when one of my friends came for picking me up.

We went to their air bnb where we woke up our other friend, had a smoothie and packed our stuff together. At 1 o' clock am the three of us put ourselves into warm clothes, tight shoes and left for the hightest mountain of Spain, the 3718 metres high vulcan 'El Teide'. Even the drive was quite a struggle cause the traffic regulations especially in the city were kind of confusing and complex.
But the ride in general was beautiful, one hour through the forest and later on the desert of the national park at night and we could see the almost full moon.

At 2:20 am we fairly motivated started walking. The temperature was okay and it was amazing hiking through this moon-like landscape while the moon and stars were shining bright. Around three hours later we arrived at the 'refugio' where we ate and drunk something. At this time we've already been rather tired, after some minutes of relaxing we continued and went for the peak.

7:18 am. We were honoured to experience a stunning sunset or 'amanecer', how it's called in spanish, after an exhausting last half an hour of climbing rocken stairs at exteme wind at roughly 2 degrees celsius. Newly energized we started our 1300 altitude difference climb down at quater to 8 am. Our legs were tired and the cool breeze of the night has been replaced by the merciless heath of the sun. It got worse and worse every minute passing and idiot me somehow forgot the second water bottle at home and so not a lot of time passed until we ran out of water. and food.

The heath was unbearable, we stayed up the entire night and have been walking for 8 hours now. Our state was changing between almost falling asleep, with our scarves slung around our faces, no talking and starting to go crazy of the sun and lack of sleep, thinking about newspaper headlines of our end up here and playing desert golf with a stick and one of the light vulcan stones.

Almost parching and starving we finally reached the parking space at 11 o' clock am and the path was a lot longer than we remembered. With our last bits of energy we reached the car were there was no water either but pears never tasted as good as the ones we ate then. For only one of us had a driving licence she had to drive down for one more hour hoping for her not to fall asleep and steering us down the edge of the road.

We had a quick stop at the gas station and were heading back to Puerto de la Cruz again where we had to give back the rented car. It was a true mess and the roads tricky as ever, her tiredness didn't make it better and there was no way we found the spot where we had to park the car. I was constantly feeding my friend with dark chocolate to keep her at a well mood but even that couldn't prevent her from stopping at the next best place at one Point and eventually having a nervous breakdown.

Calling the man of the 'rent a car' with our last reserves of phone battery we could manage to park it somewhere else and telling him where we are. With lots of chocolate and positive energy my friend and I managed to calm the other one down and walk home smiling again.

At 2 o' clock pm we finally opened the door of our air bnb and straight fell on the bed and asleep which we kept doing for the next few hours. The three of us had our long desired shower plus dinner and then we were laying down again for the rest of the evening and night, now excitedly talking and laughing about the adventurous last day.

I apologize for the novel-like text I worte but I couldn't tell this experience properly in 250 words, I hope you enjoyed reading this little adventure of mine and maybe you'll play with the thought of going on a trip to the Teide too if you'll happen to be on Tenriffe one day.

have a nice day or night!

xoxo

Christina :)