As part of our exploration trips, we visited Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands belonging to Spain, off the Moroccan coast. In these exploration trips we take our family to a place for a couple of months to experience it and see if we could create a base there. Tenerife caught our attention because of the climate, the very affordable cost of living, the language and its relative closeness to the European continent, which would make it easier to travel back to Holland to visit family and friends. It was perfect to fly home from for Christmas, a holiday we have not celebrated in Holland since 2013. Tenerife is a haven for cyclists and Steven rediscovered his passion for the mountains here.

We chose the small town of Puerto Santiago on the westcoast of Tenerife to make our temporary home. We rented a small apartment that had a pool (Isa and Vesper love to swim) and just a few hundred metres from the ocean and the beautiful vulcanic black beaches of Tenerife.

Family life
There are amazing things to do on the island if you spend time here with kids. We went to visit El Teide national park to see the vulcano and watch the sunset. There is some great barbecueing on a sunday and roasting food with the kids about half-way up the mountain. We visited the fisherman’s museum with Isa and we took both kids to an indoor playground. Close to our house we could play at a square overlooking the ocean, eat an ice cream and play at the outdoor gym. We would go to the Playa Chiquita beach often, although it is impossible to swim in the ocean or be near the shoreline at this part of the island because of the strong current and big waves crashing on the beach.