- Los Abrigos Harbour at Night
So here’s the thing: – I wanted year round sunshine, local culture and a language to learn. I toyed with Luxor in Egypt but it was too big a leap to make. The weather of Tenerife South makes it an easy choice – no big swings between summer and winter and flights from as little as £60 return.
So why Los Abrigos? Well while it’s very nice to have the English ‘Ex-Pat’ community around you, I really wanted to see the other side of life in Tenerife. In addition there is not much point coming here to learn Spanish if everyone around you is speaking English – that includes most of the locals working in tourist resorts.
Los Abrigos is 15-20 minutes walk from San Blas, Golf del Sur, which is very English, but the town itself is still largely Spanish-speaking. The restaurants on the harbour front are all locally owned and although there are one or two English bars here, most are locally owned and have limited English. What better way than to learn to speak Spanish than to have a drink or a bite to eat, cheaply, and to chat to friendly locals who are more than happy to help you with your Spanish.
Other travel places to visit
- Holidays to Spain – Travel Agent with holidays to almost everywhere across the world.
- Flights to Tenerife – Useful place for taxis and transfers from the airport
Learning Spanish in Tenerife
Let’s Learn Spanish is devoted to adding online Spanish exercises. Quoting from the designer:
“First of all I can not emphasize the importance of reading everything you can in Spanish. I read everything that passed through my hands, but you can be selective and focus on those readings that are of interest to you. But I don’t think novels are very useful as it can be very different vocabulary. No doubt this can help give you a crash course in language and gives you the basics of grammar, if it has not already done that. Watch original movies and try to dissect what they say: for example, first trilogy of Star Wars in the original and the video stopped every few minutes, imagine how each movie dragged!
The second most important thing is to practice as much as you can on your writing. That I think is a good idea to have a “penpal” or someone with whom you can correspond by letter. If you are a college student, your faculty certainly will have a language center where you can shed light on this or even suggest other ways “cheaper” and faster to improve your writing in Spanish. If all goes well, this a penpal can become a friend, who can be a good contact in the future.
Guide to Los Abrigos 