This week I’ve been fantasy house-hunting along Tenerife’s northwest coast where its history is laid out like a cross-section beneath a microscope.

I encounter scenes that have escaped from someone’s private collection of oldRoque El Camello photographs; evidence that Tenerife’s ancestors were much better environmentalists than today’s islanders (not too difficult I hear you mutter); a sudden realisation of exactly what it was that the botanist saw and a derelict factory that’s passing itself off as a ruined monastery.

Oh, and I’ve spotted at least three derelict haciendas, any one of which deserves no less than to have my name on its deeds. All I have to do now is earn enough money to buy and then renovate one…well I did say I’d been fantasy house-hunting.
Time travel Tenerife’s most beautiful coastline in Living Tenerife’s March 2008 issue.