Wahoo! So guys we made it, and spent three lovely weeks on Tenerife. I’ll try and make this one ever so slightly briefer than the post before.. well here’s hoping...

FINDING OUR FEET: Raph and Kiera initiated themselves with El Corte Ingles, a super posh Spanish supermarket/everything-you-could-ever-want-need-and-think-of chain. We reveled in the air conditioning and Kiera drooled in front of the cake counter until something fat and creamy was purchased.

In the afternoon Dan, Raph and Kiera went to Candelaria a nearby town with Guanche King (called Menceys) Statues by the sea. They were the last menceys on the island before the Spanish conquestadors finished the Guanches off. Same old stinking story...

Oh and PESTO PASTA that evening! A green, stringy Mount Teide on everyone’s plates.

THE ROAD TO EL PORTILLO: The epic journey to Teide. Raph, Kiera and Dan got up early and marched with more than the kitchen sink on their backs, the 40 minutes to the bus station to catch the only bus of the day to Teide. It was there we were told that the bus didn’t leave from Santa Cruz, but from Puerto de la Cruz, a 35 minute bus ride away! We had ten minutes before the bus left. There was no way we would catch it.

Half an hour of improvising later, which involved the purchasing of a map, flicking through bus timetables and a ‘just go for it’ pep talk, we found ourselves on the bus to the Caldera, the closest we could get to Teide. We walked a good 14km that day along the GR101 up towards the mountain, stopping every so often to film the beautiful scenery, crossing aqueducts and trying not to cry under the weight of our bags. We were aiming to get to El Portillo before the end of the day (which became El Tortilla, El Paso, El Taco, El Puerto Rico etc. as the gradient steepened), but we were still in the forest by the time the sun went down trying to follow little blobs of red and white paint in the dark. In the end we deviated from the path as it branched out in some sort of desert tundra. Raph lead us up to a road and plonked himself between two road signs with the map, determined not to move until he’d worked out where we were. Once Dan and Kiera had reassured him that we weren’t that far away from where we needed to be he allowed us to go back into the desert and set up camp. The temperature had plummeted since we were a couple of thousand metres up and happily we snuggled into our sleeping bags, Kiera slipped on a pair of thermal trousers for good measure and handed out some croquettes (the BEST thing the canaries has to offer, but only the ham and cheese ones) and a fat fluffy muffin.

Raph set up his camera for the time lapse of the stars we would do that night. We timed it so that the alarm would go off every 8 minutes and whoever was on watch would sit up, switch on the camera and take a photo.... oh what a night. Never want to hear a vibrating phone again.

We woke up - yes we did manage to sleep briefly - in the middle of a path of a stunning savannah, looking down through the clouds at the sea below. No sooner had we moved into a decent position to eat breakfast then a train of thirteen Spanish kids and adults trampled through our camp. This was our first clue. We should have seen it coming really. Once we had packed up and made our way up to the road again, what did we see not 200 metres in front of us? Tourist heaven. A big bustling restaurant, souvenir shop, Germans on their motorbikes, tourist information around the corner and our bus stop. Hah, we felt so stupid. The information centre is really worth a look. We watched a great video on Teide and walked through a lava tube that gave you the sensation of being about to fall to a very fiery death at any moment.

We then went for a walk to capture some beautiful shots of Teide, and found ourselves distracted by tens and tens of lizards of all sizes, all with a taste for Nutella tortillas. Raph had them climbing all over his camera and Kiera had one jump on her face. Dan just laughed and threw more tortilla at them.