About The Real Tenerife
We love experiencing the differences in any destination (culture, food, traditions) we visit. Despite the way it is generally portrayed in the UK media, Tenerife is a destination that has fascinating traditions by the bucket load – black, volcanic sand bucket load clearly – as well as culture which is unique; Spanish yet with a passionate nature fuelled by the connection with South America.
The Real Tenerife is aimed at travellers with similar tastes to ours. It won’t suit, or probably be liked, by anyone who only wants to spend a fortnight snoring on the sand but hey, there are masses of other websites around for them. Our continuing mission is to promote those aspects of Tenerife and the Canary Islands that we think would appeal to those discerning travellers out there.
In some ways it is a love letter to Tenerife but, like most love affairs, there are the occasional spats – so not everything in The Real Tenerife is presented through rose-tinted spectacles.
Who Are We?
We’re Andrea (Andy) and Jack Montgomery. We’ve worked as travel writers for over two decades. In 2003, we swapped our lives in Manchester for the north of Tenerife without much of a clue about where the jump would lead. A case of mistaken identity (you’ll have to read Andy’s book, The Banana Road, to find out more) about a week after we arrived sealed our fate, and led to us becoming feature writers for a magazine on the island.
Jump forward two decades and, between us, we’ve written for UK newspapers, airline magazines, main international guidebook publishers, Tenerife Tourist Board, Canary Islands Tourist Board, travel companies, hotels, Spanish websites, PR firms … pretty much a wide spread across the travel writing scene, including being the resident Canary Islands’ specialist for The Telegraph.
While building up reputations as travel writers for others, we also developed our own brands – The Real Tenerife and Buzztrips (a travel website dedicated to Slow Travel), including the Real Tenerife series of guides. It was these which led to a collaboration with a specialist UK Slow Travel company, for whom we created walking and discovery holidays, writing over forty specialist guides for off-the-beaten-track areas across Europe (including La Gomera, El Hierro, Gran Canaria, La Palma, and Fuerteventura).
And we’ve both written travel memoirs. The Banana Road (Andrea) is a personal account of our life on Tenerife which has surprised and shocked even close friends. The follow up to that is Camel Spit & Cork Trees (Jack) about a year of living in Portugal (we relocated to Portugal in 2017), including an exploration of different areas there. Incidentally, the follow-up to that is currently being written.
We know for a fact that the Real Tenerife is different because we know how many years and how much effort we’ve spent exploring, researching, experiencing, interviewing, and tasting all things Tenerife, a lot of which is documented in thousands of travel articles as well as in this website. A lot, but not all…
Contact Real Tenerife: If you’d like to chat to us about anything, then just drop us a line at jack@therealtenerife.com or andy@therealtenerife.com
I have read so much about Masca and would love to walk it but not with all the traffic of people that do it. I understand that these trip walkers end up on the coast get picked up by boat and get shipped off to Los Gigantes. Is it possible to do it the opposite way round ie. Take the last boat from Gigantes and walk up the Maca Valley with no one coming down and enough light and catch a bus to eventually get me back to Peurto de la Cruz, early October would be the plan.
Regards
David Lowe
It’s a super walk David. We last walked it a few weeks ago and got there early enough to be ahead of the big groups so only encountered a few people along the way. It’s definitely possible to do it by catching a water taxi from Los Gigantes to Masca Beach and walking up to Masca, plenty of people do it that way. The later you leave it though the logistically more problematic it becomes where public transport is involved. Your main problem would be the service which connects Masca with either Santiago del Teide or Buenavista del Norte (you can pick up a bus to Puerto from either depending on times) as there are only about 6/7 buses a day between Santiago and the last stops relatively early as there’s no demand outside of main tourist visiting hours. The other thing is you might encounter groups heading down the barranco anyway as I think the last water taxi from Los Gigantes is quite a bit earlier than the last boats leaving Masca Beach (I could be wrong though). The bottom line is the Masca walk is so popular that if you’re restricted to public transport it’s going to be difficult to avoid walking groups. This could all have changed by next October as there are currently plans being discussed to restrict numbers to Masca. We’ll be posting any updates on our Walking Tenerife website.
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Hey Jack and Andrea! I’m Stevie, and my husband is Tree, and our soon-to-be 6yr old daughter is Soleil. We moved to the island a year ago after traveling through North and mostly South America in a van for 7yrs, and then moving to mainland Spain for a year. Our intention was to only spend a year here and then continue on with our nomadic lifestyle, but we’ve fallen in love with Tenerife. We currently live in Santa Cruz and have found your website to be incredibly helpful. Thank you! I hope we run into you somewhere. We’d love to buy you a bottle of Listan Negro and share stories. Warmest wishes–Stevie
Hi Stevie and apologies for the late reply. We’ve been travelling in the south of France and then the Scottish Highlands throughout September and internet access has been of the ‘Slow Travel’ kind. Travelling through South America by van must have been quite an experience, we’d love to hear about your adventures. We drove part of the Carretera Austral in Chile a couple of years ago and it was an incredible experience. It would be great to share a bottle of Listan Negro, but at the moment we’re working on writing projects in Portugal. We’d planned to pop back to Tenerife this month but have had to put that on hold for the time being.
We have been using the 2015 edition of “walk this way Tenerife” and have completed a number of most enjoyable walks. We have encountered one problem however and that is the GPS locations in Appendix 14 for the start of some walks appear to be incorrect when compared with my garmin gps and google maps.
Specific examples are: Erjos Pools – page 80 GPS per app 14 28.19071 -16.48272. Actual GPS 28.3176764 -16.8050852
Chinyero circular p 86 GPS per app 14:- 28.17078 -16.45749. Actual GPS 28.2845278 -16.7624729
Holiday Mountain, Los Cristianos also has an incorrect gps
I should be grateful if you could review these aexamples and comment. If indeed they are incorrect could you issue an amendment, perhaps on line.
Regards
John Middleton
You are spot on John. I’ve no idea what happened with the GPS. We have an updated list with all the correct GPS locations which we’ve been sending to buyers who use GPS who contact us. I’ll email you the full list. We’re also in the process of updating the book itself.
Glad you still enjoyed the walks. The book was partly written out of frustration at an over use of GPS in a couple of guidebooks we’d used when we first started walking in Tenerife. So although we do record routes using a Garmin we tend to keep the GPS side of things to a minimum.
Hi Jack and Andrea, we’ve been spending the last 2 weeks in Tenerife and have completed two of your North Island walks (Los Organos and the shorter alternative route La Caldera to Aguamansa). Both walks were stunning and the directions spot on – thank you for writing them, they’ve been highlights so far. In case helpful, the ‘broken down wooden picnic shelter’ on La Caldera walk seems to have been removed but the mound is still there. We also unlaced the boots at Paso Del Teide which we can highly recommend. La Caldera bar/restaurant looked permanently closed.
Thanks again and happy travelling.
Laura
Hi Laura,
We’re really pleased you enjoyed the routes, Los Organos would be in our top five of Tenerife walks. I’m not surprised to hear the broken shelter has completely gone, there was less and less of it each time we passed. Also not surprised the Caldera bar was closed. I guess it will be some to before we see who and who doesn’t survive the current situation. I’d be surprised if that one stays closed though as La Caldera gets absolutely rammed at weekends and holidays (during normal circumstances). We’ve never actually eaten at Paso del Teide, so thanks for the tip.
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