Ok, I am going to be brutally honest about this!
As much as travelling is cool and everything, if exploring the world doesn’t give me a reason to smile and laugh a little, I feel it’s just a waste of time and even the most gorgeous places seem boring and dull.
This subjective inner feeling was once strongly backup up by reality. It was on my first trip to an insanely beautiful island: the sublime Mallorca.
One day, I accidentally found a gorgeous bay in a small village, by the sea.
That spot was nothing less than a tiny paradise: blue waves breaking against incredibly shaped rocks, amazing breeze of the sea, amazing sunset light. I felt high as if on ecstasy. But I was obviously pretty much the only person enjoying that incredible spot.
There were other people in that bay as well, but they were busy sitting on the balconies of their luxury 4-star hotel and looking at that gorgeous view with an expression on their face which seemed to say: cyanide, cyanide, I would kill for a drop of cyanide.
And not one or two or three of them, but almost all of them looked like they had received a death sentence and were now just quietly waiting for a cyanide flavoured puree.
How can you feel so excruciatingly bored and sad in front of such a magnificent view? How?!
That, for me, was a wake up call and a great proof that luxury hotels and awesome landscapes are just not enough. You need more: genuine curiosity, physical challenges and, in my case, humour.
So, whenever I travel, I am always on the hunt for the details which, with a little help from my imagination, are going to make me giggle or laugh out loud.
Those details that make the world resemble a funky Disney cartoon and make you forget about the other, les joyful things, inevitable in life.
That being said, here are the best things which made me smile on my first visit to Tenerife. There were quite a few things, many of them showing how funny and joyful the locals are.
Number 1: The Best Restaurant Ad Ever
After 4 hours of flight, there was this nice group of monkeys expecting for us at the airport Reina Sofia with the best invitation 🙂
Number 2: The Best Ad For A Dentist
The hashtag literally says: BITE HARD 🙂
In Tenerife you will see a lot of prominent buildings which look as if they could be banks or something of the like. No! They are dental clinics! 🙂 Don’t believe me? Ask the lion below 🙂
Number 3: Who’s The Dragon (El Drago?)? Little Jesus or Santa Claus? 🙂
Number 4: Ask A Scientist
I reached out to this NASA scientist to clarify the above dilemma. He said: “none of them, the two fellows are just monkeying around.”
Number 5: Ask An Old Wise Man
I asked this Old Wise Man to answer my above question.
He said he has other things on his mind and showed us this note:
Number 6: Wanted: Dead Or Alive
At first I thought the note says: My cactus is missing. If you find it, please bring it back.” But then the question arose “Hey, how do you lose a cactus?” Imagine, one day, the cactus just decided to flee home and hit the road. Like a pet. That’s pretty surreal.
But then, google translate came to my help. The note literally says: “If anyone encounters or has encountered a small painting with a cactus, please bring it to apartment 303. It has a big sentimental value. Many thanks!”
“Oooh, I seeee. The guy lost a painting with a cactus”. Now it makes sense. Except…it doesn’t make sense. How do you lose a painting? You carry it with you every day on your way to the supermarket, back and forth, lovingly keeping it all the time under your arm.
But then one day, in a gloomy twist of fate, you have to enter a shop where they don’t allow cactus paintings. You can see the big sign at the entrance: Please do not enter this shop with pets, machine guns, cactus paintings.
So you leave your cactus painting at the entrance, alongside a Yorkshire and other chihuahuas and tell him you’ll be back fast. Which you are. You are back 3 minutes later and in the haste of daily life, you accidentally take with you a chihuahua instead. You try to train him for a while to behave like a cactus painting until one day when you hit rock bottom and hang this note.
Number 7: Party with a Burlesque Snowman
It will heal all your dilemma’s and perplexities.
