Tenerife, no canaries or canneries.

Tenerife is the largest island in the Canary Islands whose name origin is still something of a debate. I have heard of the Canary Islands all my life. In my imagination, they were tropical volcanic islands like Hawaii only with a lot of explorer history and pirates! Well I found that while my history was basically correct my sense of the present was flawed. The Island of Tenerife now has between 900,000 and a million residents and millions of tourists. Sorry, no room or open beaches for visiting pirates. The picture below shows a freeway connecting the north and south shores with bananas fighting for real estate on both sides.

We arrived in port early in the morning amidst container ships and offshore drilling rigs, again unexpected.

As soon as I got off the ship I stepped onto a waiting bus for the Viking included island tour. Bob did the sae. Jenni went to the national park with Brenda. Our first stop was a scenic overlook from which I took the top photos. Then we visited the botanical garden which was tall in trees but short in flowers.

We walked around the town of Puerto de la Cruz.

As we drove cross island, back to the ship we went through the main city Santa Cruz de Tenerife which has a street festival in process

We got back on the ships and were disappointed to hear that our much anticipated trip to Morocco and Casablanca was being cancelled because of a storm forecast for the Bay of Biscay. We would instead get a day in Portsmouth England added to the cruise. Weather is one of the big factors in a world cruise and has cost us five key port visits,