Los Realejos

The fireworks start at eleven o'clock sharp, but the roads close two hours earlier. By seven, families are walking down the TF-5 hard shoulder carrying dining chairs, cool boxes and the sort of patience that comes from knowing this display outshines anything back home in November. This is Los Realejos in May: a town of 37,000 that still makes its own gunpowder, still argues about which of its two historic centres lights the better fuse, and still hasn't worked out how to sell itself to anyone who isn't already lost.

Two Towns, One Argument

Realejo Alto and Realejo Bajo sit 250 metres apart in altitude and several centuries apart in attitude. The upper town clusters around the sixteenth-century Iglesia de Santiago Apóstol, its plaza filled with elderly men in flat caps who greet the priest by name and treat the bar terrace as their living room. Walk downhill for ten minutes and you reach Realejo Bajo, where the Concepción church squats in a tighter grid of streets that remember sugar cane rather than bananas. The rivalry is gentle but persistent: whose procession has the better band, whose bakery makes the lighter bienmesabe, whose bar staff still speak only Spanish because they can.

Between them spreads a town that refuses to behave like the resort it could so easily become. Puerto de la Cruz is fifteen minutes east by car; the airport, forty minutes south. Yet Los Realejos keeps its coach parks empty and its beach—Playa del Socorro—a black-sand crescent shared by surfers, grandmothers and the occasional bewildered tourist who followed the wrong sat-nav setting. The Atlantic here has temperament: red flag days outnumber yellow, and the current that whips along the base of the cliffs means swimmers stay close to the lifeguard tower whether they like supervision or not.

Fireworks, Fog and the View that Disappears

Drive up to the Mirador de La Corona just before dusk and you can watch the Orotava valley fold itself into evening colour: banana plantations giving way to terraced vineyards, the peak of Teide floating above a lid of cloud like an afterthought. Then the fog rolls in from the north-east and the entire view vanishes in the time it takes to open the car door. Locals call it panza de burro—donkey's belly—and treat it as public transport: if you can't see the road, walk. Visitors tend to wait, engine running, until the grey peels back or hunger drives them downhill to where the air clears and the smell of wood-grilled sardines drifts across the TF-5.

That smell intensifies in mid-July when the Fiestas de Santiago Apóstol turn both town centres into open-air dining rooms. Long tables appear in the plazas; whole pigs rotate on spits; someone's uncle controls the volume of the salsa band as if negotiating international borders. The highlight comes after midnight when rival pyrotechnic crews launch from opposite hillsides, trying to out-do each other with colour patterns audible across the island. British repeat offenders book their apartments a year ahead, claiming the display beats anything they grew up with—though they also admit the first year is disconcerting when no one explains the schedule in English.

Walking on Volcanic Receipts

Los Realejos doesn't do gentle strolls. Footpaths start steep and get steeper, following water channels carved through basalt that shred the soles of fashion trainers in under a kilometre. The Barranco de Ruiz drops 400 metres in its first thirty minutes, past terraces so narrow that farmers once harnessed themselves to iron rings hammered into the cliff. Stone channels still carry irrigation water; look closely and you'll see dates carved into the rock: 1892, 1904, 1936—each drought year answered with new masonry and the stubborn belief that bananas would grow anyway.

Higher up, the Camino de la Candelaria switchbacks through pine forest where the temperature drops five degrees in as many minutes. Here the path widens enough for two walkers, though rarely for two opinions about whether you're still on the right route. Mobile signal flickers; the safest navigation is to follow the sound of barking dogs—they always know where the nearest village lies. Turn a corner and the Atlantic reappears, suddenly 600 metres below, the wind carrying salt you can taste before you see water.

What to Order When No One Translates

Start with papas bonitas, the small pink-skinned potatoes that arrive dusted in sea salt and accompanied by two bowls of mojo. The green version tastes of coriander and mild green chilli; the red gets its colour from pimentón and its kick from unidentified local peppers. Order a plate of churros de pescado while you decide on mains—bite-size white fish fried in batter light enough to convince you the calories don't count. Locals wash it down with a glass of Listán blanco, a crisp northern Tenerife wine rarely exported because the vineyard is only six hectares and the winemaker's cousin already reserved next year's production.

If you prefer caffeine to alcohol, request a barraquito: layers of condensed milk, espresso, frothed milk and a twist of lemon peel. Specify "sin licor" unless you want the lunchtime version laced with honey rum. Payment is cash only in most neighbourhood bars; the nearest free ATM hides inside the Concepción church plaza, guarded by an elderly woman who pretends not to understand requests for English menus.

The Seasonal Deal

Spring and autumn give you the kindest light: mornings warm enough for short sleeves on the coast, afternoons cool enough for a jacket in the upper barrios. Winter brings cloud that can sit for days, though when it lifts the air is so clear you can count the agave spikes on the cliffs above Puerto de la Cruz. Summer is reliable for sunshine after 11 a.m., but car parks at Playa del Socorro fill by ten and the walk back uphill with surfboards feels twice as long under a thirty-degree sun.

Wherever the calendar, pack a layer. Altitude here is sneaky: the miradors sit at 400 metres, high enough for the wind to remind you this is an island formed by volcanoes that haven't quite finished. Leave the flip-flops for the beach; volcanic grit has no respect for exposed toes. And trust the sat-nav only as far as the official car park on Calle La Parra—after that, the lanes narrow to single-track tunnels between whitewashed walls that were never designed to accommodate a British SUV.

Los Realejos won't give you postcard perfection. It will give you a town that keeps living after the coach parties leave, fireworks that start because someone’s grandfather always lit the fuse, and a view that disappears just when you've framed the photograph. Turn up without expectations, stay long enough to drink coffee with condensed milk, and you may find you don't need the view to remember where you've been.