Welcome to Tenerife

Most of you know that I love independent travel and despite the fact that I usually scoff at people who plan every little detail ahead, I did book my apartment for the first week. I really wanted an ocean view and I started searching online and saw some fantastic places, but when I realized that almost every place I checked was already booked, I had to forget my principles.

So before I left home, I knew I would stay *somewhere* in Las Palmas for two nights, before taking the ferry to Santa Cruz, Tenerife. There I would take a cab to Los Gigantes, where my apartment was waiting for me. Turned out that there is quite some distance between the two and the ride would have cost me quite a lot maybe €100, but Jason, my apartment-host was kind enough to offer me a free pick-up and ride in his car. All I had to do was to hop off the ferry and find him in his “red Ferrari T-shirt”. Piece of cake, right?

By now, you may have guessed that the answer to that question is no...

Just after getting off the ferry, I saw this guy waiting in a red T, ok it wasn’t Ferrari but I had to check. Turned out he wasn’t my man waiting for me. So I had to keep looking. So I was walking back and forth, with my rather heavy bags, in the outdoors arrival area, looking for this guy. Nobody. Went outside to check the parking. Nothing. Went back in. Maybe he was there somewhere after all, perhaps in the cafeteria?

A man suddenly grabs my arm, gently but still decidedly:
“Policia. Documentos por favor.”
“Typical.” I think to myself. Here I am just looking for a dude I have never seen, and the cops think I have something fishy going on. “Not to worry. They will release me in a sec.” Right?

So this guy has got a woman and another guy in his company. All three in plainclothes, and suddenly I am surrounded. Like I would make a run for it, sure, but quite intimidating, nonetheless. Anyway, they make me show my passport, ferry tickets and whatnot. They hold on to all this stuff while I try to explain that I have a pick-up waiting for me. But they are not too keen to understand English, nor my (attempts at) Spanish.

And then they ask me, (still holding on to my papers), to grab my bags and follow them inside. The joke starts to wear thin as they usher me into a tiny wooden booth. And when the officer in charge pulls out a pair of rubber gloves, and puts them on I think to myself: “This is not happening. This is NOT happening.”

They start looking through all my stuff and the search is not finished when my phone rings, it is my rental guy. They refuse to let me answer it. Then I beg them to pick it up just to let the guy know, but they refuse that too. And those gloves have me quite spooked. Perhaps I have seen too many hard-boiled movies. Who knows? The guy in charge uses the gloves to go through my bags very thoroughly, but he never touches me. I can tell you one thing: when they are done and hand me back my papers, I make a huge inaudible and invisible “Phew!”

Back outside, I find my guy. The Ferrari T is black not red, and he had been a few minutes late, so that is why I didn’t find him, and that presumably, what had attracted the cop’s attention. No problemo, after a few minutes I can laugh about the whole thing, and we have nice long drive around the half of Tenerife, from Santa Cruz to my apartment in Los Gigantes.