Playa de las Américas; Friday, 11 December, 2020

I’d stayed overnight at the Sofitel at Heathrow, mainly as they offered a special Covid-19 test and rest rate that included a Covid test that Spain required for entry into the country. The results were guaranteed to be back overnight so that I would be good to fly in the morning, but of course they weren’t. I wasn’t too worried, as I’d checked in advance and it was possible to have a test on arrival in Tenerife – though at yet more expense given I’d already paid for the test in the UK, but I thought that as it was a four and a half hour flight, even with a significant delay in test results they would be through before I landed and that would be nice and simple.

I had a smooth journey through the airport and onto the flight and a smooth journey down to the Canaries. As we pulled off of the runway I powered up my phone to download my test results – needless to say, they still hadn’t arrived. I passed through the airport waiting to see where I needed to be directed to get a test, but nobody actually wanted to see test results, only to do a temperature check so in the end I was very quickly out in arrivals, where I was met by my transfer.

I’m assuming it was due to excess drivers waiting around, but despite booking a private taxi transfer to the hotel I was instead given a private full-size coach transfer. It felt like a bit of a waste of fuel to transport one person and a single suitcase the 30Km or so along the coast.

I went to check in at the hotel and it was at this point that the lack of test results became an issue. The hotel explained that until I had the result they couldn’t check me in. I tried to make contact with both the Sofitel and the testing company, but neither wanted to answer the phone, so in the end I took up the hotels offer of a discounted test at the local hospital.

I quickly caught a cab up to the clinic, and 10 minutes later I was in an examination room having a swab pushed up my nose, at the same time my phone pinged to tell me that my overnight test result had finally come through. The results from the hospital test came back not much later so by the time I made it back to the hotel I had two negative tests for them to chose from.

I was finally able to check-in to the hotel and dropped my stuff off in my room, thankfully with still a small amount of time left before my evening tour started.

I’d booked onto an evening starwatching tour, as The Canaries are ranked as the third best place on the planet to be able to watch the night sky – partially due to their location, but mostly due to the combination of the height that you can get up to on the mountains. With the clouds below you blocking light coming up from the resorts and the low humidity reducing distortion in the air above you are guaranteed to get good views.

The tour started with a pickup from my hotel, followed by a couple of other pickups from the local area before we climbed up into the hills and stopped around 5pm for a very early dinner in a restaurant at about 600m altitude. It was here that we met up with the other two groups who had been picked up from other parts of the island. After dinner we headed back into the buses and continued to climb, up to over 1900m high up the side of the volcano from where we were several hundred meters above the top of the clouds, and had spectacular views of a river of cloud flowing below us. We stopped here for a good hour to take in the stunning sunset, accompanied by glasses of cava, before heading a 100m or so back down (and about 3KM along) the mountain to where we stopped to watch the night skies.

We had a very interesting nearly two hours watching the stars appear in the sky with the guide – a qualified astrophysicist – explaining all about them, using a laser pointer to highlight different stars and areas of the sky. Alongside that they had set up a telescope through which we were able to more closely observe parts of the sky – including being able to see both stars of a binary star system, the aftermath of a supernova explosions, and look outside of the Milky Way and stare into the approaching Andromeda galaxy.

After a final look through the telescope at Mars – the point being to show that in reality the planets are pretty boring compared to the stars – we finished with cups of hot chocolate to warm up with before being driven back down to the mountain and dropped off at our hotels – in time to make the 23:00 curfew that was coming into force on the island.

Weather

Sunny Sunny
AM PM
Hot (20-30C, 68-86F)
25ºC/77ºF