Aqualand is the best

Humpity bumpily ride - Tom's fav

Matt didn't have the best night and was still feeling pretty rough this morning.  I wasn't surprised, I've been there and know how it feels.  Poor Matt is probably known as the local British hypercondriac as you can't even buy paracetamol from a supermarket here, but have to go to a Farmacia.  He is now well known by our local one and his bedside table is testament to most of his spending this holiday - he has certainly spent more on drugs than alcohol - you know he is properly ill when that happens!

Anyway, we had predicted this would be the case today, so Tom and I had booked to visit Aqualand in Costa Adeje.  He really wanted to have a day on water slides, there are two water parks in Tenerife, both in Costa Adeje, one, Siam Park has been voted the world's best and the second, Aqualand is a poor relation.  However, looking at the two parks, I figured that Siam Park would be heaving, and there would be lots of rides Tom wouldn't be able to do, so decided on going to Aqualand instead hoping it would be better for smaller children and less busy.

Fuel stop

We had an early breakfast and then waited outside the hotel at 8.45 for our ride.  It was only us and another lady who was going to Jungle Park, also in Costa Adeje.  It took 2 hours to get there - we went north and then across the island and down to the cost.  As soon as we got to the east side of the island, the sun came out, it was lovely to feel the sun on our faces and I hoped it would stay out for our time in the aqua park - I had plenty of towels and clothes with me just in case it was cold.

We were in luck, on arrival at the park, we stepped off the bus and it was warm and sunny.  It stayed like that for the whole day, in fact I got burnt, because I forgot my swimming cossie does a weird thing on my back and didn't rub cream into it.  My hunch turned out to be correct, the park wasn't full at all, meaning that we had a lovely leisurely time, the worst queue we had was probably about 30 seconds!

Larking around on the 'hot lava' ride

There were all manner of rides, ones where you have to carry an inflatable boat up the steps to ride back down in, ones which you do on your back, others on your front, some inside tubes, some outside.  There was even one where you lay on your back, went down a spiral tube in the pitch black and then got spat out onto a round 'coin spin' sort of contraption, where you went round and round until you dropped down the middle into a pool of water and then had to swim to the side.  I thought that was way beyond Tom's level of bravery, but he proved me wrong.  Twice.  I did it once and that was enough for me (I've become such a wuss since I had Tom, I used to be up for anything!!!!!)

Tom was the perfect height for the park as for the adult rides he had to be over 1.2m and for the kids rides he had to be under 1.4m and he is about 1.3m.  There was only one ride he wouldn't do and that was Kamikaze.  Now, I don't blame him as I wouldn't do it - it was very high and went directly down.  The only people we saw on it were Dad's being egged on by their children and wives, and quite often they came off having banged their arm or hurt their back.  This put Tom off, and I certainly wasn't going to push him to do it!

Thumbs up after a slide

Anyway, Tom was in his element, it took me an age to convince him to have lunch, he was far too busy, but in the end he submitted and ended up eating half a huge pizza with me.  We then did more rides and more rides and more rides.  There was a dolphin show at 3.30, but he wasn't interested, he just wanted to do more rides, so we did.  I think we were the only ones still doing the rides at that point, but it didn't matter.  The only thing that slowed us down was the fact that the ground was rough, and with no shoes on, it meant our feet started to get sore, (mine more so) to the point where nearly every step was painful.

Finally it got to 4.30 and we called it a day.  We got changed, had a look around the shop and then headed outside to get our bus back to Puerto de la Cruz.  We got picked up by the same mini bus, which took us to Siam Park where we got a coach back to the resort.  The coach was full of people who had been to Siam Park, it was chucking out time and there were hundreds and hundreds of people spilling out onto the streets on their way home, we certainly did make the right decision.

Racing along

The coach took us home the short and very bendy way, up and down lots of hairpin bends, with lots of horns being sounded at cars etc.  Tom fell asleep but was woken up by the bends, as we were all being thrown about.  Shame.  We did get to Puerto de la Cruz in an hour though, which was ace.  (It took 2 hours to get there the other way - via motorway).  We found a lonely Daddy in the hotel, he said it had been a long day without us, but he had managed to use the hotel spa, been for a long walk and found a good looking proper Spanish restaurant for us to have tea in.  He wasn't any better, but no worse, what a pants time to get properly ill!

After showers to get the salt out of our hair and a coat of aftersun for my back we headed out to said restaurant, El Camino.  Wow, the boy did good.  It was amazing.  The waiter was a larger than life character and a half, there was no menu - you had to go in to choose.  I went in, but didn't know what anything was, he told me it was all 'not tourist food' to which I said good!  He said we could do us a selection (with no olives or mushrooms)  He did us proud, it was wonderful home cooking and the waiter kept coming back to check on us 'the family' and Tom 'the boss'.  It was simply the best meal we have had here, couldn't tell you what we had, but it was all wonderful and the quantity perfect and the price ridiculous...it was so cheap it was almost insulting!

Inside El Camino

By now Tom was almost desperate to go back to the hotel for sleep, so we took him home.  It was a good day.