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Paradise Found
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| (Tuesday, 04 July 2006) Written by Cyberhiker |
| {mosimage}Sometimes, you just know when something is right. You can waste time in uncertainty, worrying about the direction your life is going, then something comes along and you just know it’s the right thing for you. That’s how I felt from the moment I landed in Tenerife for the first time in July 1995. It was getting on for mid-night and I was feeling all of the usual stress that you get from being cooped up in a plane for four hours and fighting to reclaim your baggage but somehow I just relaxed from the moment I set foot on the island. I can’t really put my finger on it any more clearly than that but I just felt immediately ‘at home’. Despite the journey and the lateness of the hour, once we had checked into our accommodation, I had to go out and find a bar to just sit and absorb the ambience of my surroundings.
The following day, as we lay on the beach, soaking up the sun, I suddenly turned to my wife and said, ‘this would be a great place to live’. Like most people, I had been abroad on holiday before and often thought how wonderful it would be to live in some of the resorts I had visited but usually, after being home for a couple of weeks this feeling disappeared. This didn’t happen with Tenerife. I came to feel ‘cheated’ whenever I was not there, as if I was somehow missing out on something that by rights should be mine. The urge to purchase our own place and eventually move to the island became a burning desire that I could not ignore. One thing that had immediately fascinated me on my first trip was the terrain. I am a hill-walker and my attention was straight-away grabbed by the unusually shaped hills and mountains. I knew I was going to have to get out and explore the surrounding countryside and the following year I did just that by climbing Teide. I had seen it on a coach trip on our first visit the previous year and had been so captivated by Las Canadas and the massive peak in it’s centre that I just had to go back as soon as possible and attempt to climb it. This I did in a memorable walk that took me eight hours to complete from the bottom to the summit and back again. In subsequent years I have walked a number of memorable routes and each time I am further inspired to keep on exploring this wonderful island. In 2003, after countless visits, we purchased an apartment off-plan in the village of Chayofa, just outside Los Cristianos and completed in April of this year. We had finally realised a dream. We have already spent two holidays in the apartment and we will be making two more trips this year before moving permanently in early 2008.
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