Tenerife Trip - Part One - The Preparations

Since I turned 18 I dreamed of going on a friends trip or travel to somewhere where I haven't been yet.

I am lucky enough to have met some of the most incredible people throughout my studying yeas. And together we created our little travel group. As you can imagine being a student on a pretty tight budget we were aiming for a trip that would came up in budget of 500 € for a week of travelling with all expenses except food covered. After a bit of research and prices comparison our final decision came down to Sicily, Tenerife or Albania. But your heart lies with Tenerife so that is where we decided to travel to.

Tenerife Island

Tenerife is an island from group of Canarian Island who lies next to north west Africa cost. They are becoming quite popular among tourist for multiple reasons. Few main ones being: all year round warm climate, friendly people, affordable prices, big tourist diversity in attractions and big selection of sports of all kind. They are mainly known for being a great surfers spot and a host place for many dolphins and whales species. Next to these Tenerife is also home to leftovers of tropical forests in Europe with Parque and Anaga forests. But primarily the Island was a homebase of local fisherman's back in the 17th century and its infrastructure in the old parts of the town is still greatly supporting that part of the Island history. It will also not disappoint in biodiversity of animals and plants since there are many botanical gardens with over thousands years old trees, and ZOOs with rare parrots and butterflies all pver the island.

The transportations

Our search for this travel started with planning out the transportation. We started with plane tickets. We were searching for good deals on sides such as Skyscaner, Kayak, eDreams, Nomago...

We decided to travel for seven days in time speare from 18th September to 30th September. We landed on those dates out of two reasons: first one bing a fact that we still had our university work up to 16th of Septmeber and 2nd one being the closer of maine summer season. 2nd one is actually more important if you travel on a budget. During main season tickets will be expensive. And after they will be a lot cheaper. We searched our plane departure place in cities that also offered a low cost transporters such as EasyJet, Ryanair, WizzAir... We also considered a possibility of flying out of nearby airports, which were for us Venice, Milano, Vienna, Zagreb, Treviso, Budimpesta, Ljubljana...

When we were checking the tickets prices we compared the final cost of them - meaning we added one return way ticket, 1 hand baggage, 1 checked in baggage of 20 kg and travel insurance. After weeks of researching we booked tickets from Milano Bergamo of 20th of September at a price of 125 € per person. We booked them on a Wednesday night since that is a time the least amount of people is buying ticket and they usually cost a few euros less. We saved up 40 € per person with that.

The next transportation cost we had to cover was an airport transportation. We were choosing among few companies to drive us there (Prevozi Oblak, Prevozi Anja, GoOpti, Nomago Travel...) but we landed on a FlixBus as that turned our to be the cheapest option. We paid 65 € for a round way tickets for a 8 hours long drive with luggage. For comparison, the cheapest ticket of other offers were starting at 100 € per person.

For the island traveling options we landed on half public transportations and half time car rental. We rented a car at Ryanair car rentals. We decided on a medium size car for 5 people with big trunk and manual shift. We paid 115 € for 4 days rental using our 15 % discount that we have gotten through booking our plane tickets on Ryanair official site directly. In that price we paid rental and full insurance for the car. We also decided to buy our bus tickets directly on the buses as we would have go, since we planned to walk or bike around a lot as well.

The accommodation

Primarily we were considering staying at the hotel. We quite quickly discovered that most of better at least three stars hotels were located on far north of the island. Which was a first factor we did not like too much. Traveling on a budget we culdn't find a hotel with price lower than 240 € per person without any food included. If we added breakfast we were looking at a prices of 300 € and up. So we droped the hotel idea pretty quickly and started looking out for an apartments.

We turned to Airbnb since we have used it before and had a good experience. There we found over 300 apartments for 6 to 8 people in price range of 60 to 110 € per night for a whole group. We landed on a apartment in price range of 70 to 85 € per night which had 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, ac ventilation, parking space, was in a 200 m ration from the beach, was closer to bus station, shops, restaurants, but still in a calm area. At the end we paid 655 € together with Airbnb fee and a cost of apartment clean up.

The final price of prepayments for accommodations, transportations and insurances came up to 1720 € for 5 people for 7 days. That makes it at around 350 € per person. Looking at the growth of the prices in the last few months this was a dream deal.

If you are interested in how our journey to Tenerife continued, keep an eye n my blog for the new parts to follow. But until then, all I can say is see ya later alligator ;D.