Spanish Señorita's

Not a trip for Katy a she would have needed more than one seat on the plane, but we recently headed off to Teneife to do some Lava Tube exploration with the Wessex Cave Club of which there are pictures on my photo website if you want a break from Land Rovers

But back to the main topic, whilst heading up Mount Teide we spotted a couple of Santana Land Rovers, the first of which was this very smart 2.8 turbo diesel military vehicle. It was was a mostly pristine later model being driven by the Army who were out on what looked like a training exercise. Luckily the men with guns were in a god mood and did not mind me taking a few pictures.

This one was of course fully fitted out with radio and other kit inside so no pictures of that I was told, but the outside looked very nice, and if you look carefully you can see the leaf springs showing at the bottom. Santana never changed over to coil springs.   

These later models have a large number of developments made by Santana which many people think very highly of, however there are quite a few coments on the internet about issues with spares and parts in the UK and an eventual ending of the Santana / Land Rover relationship so I don't think I'll be buying one unless I move to Spain

Next we headed up tthe Mount Teide cablecar and I spotted a very tired old badge on the back of what looked like an old Series Land Rover, and it was of course another Santana.

This time one of venerable age which  has clearly had a hard life as you can tell from the state of the badge, but as it't been living in a pretty dry climate (it's often above the clouds here) it's not looking too bad on the outside  

 What was looking bad was the inside of this poor "Landy"... It was being used as a rubbish truck and all tho oil and mess from liquid rubbish was leakin gout of the back door.Still it's acheived a great age and is still being useful so it's not a bad advert for the Santana's