Last stop

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The island of Tenerife is the last port (except Southampton obviously) on this trip. Apparently the word Tenerife in the original inhabitants language, meant White Mountain, which is where we are going. The Mount Teide National Park. The mountain is a volcano, the third biggest in the World and the highest mountain in Spain at 3,715m. Big though it is, Mount Teide is in fact actually growing inside the remains of a much bigger volcano that collapsed into the sea 170,000 years ago and must have created the mother of all tsunamis.





We are driven through Santa Cruz, the capital of the islands, and a place where architects seem in thrall to Lego. It is the only explanation as to why all the buildings are simply square / oblong shapes with nothing of any real interest. We go through one part that the guide tells us is a World Heritage Site, there is nothing of any interest that we can see at all, even the graffiti is uninteresting. I can only hope somewhere else in the area is something stunning that we didn’t see.



Ascending up into the mountains we pass through large pine forests with a multitude of creeks that although dry as we pass, must be raging torrents when the rains fall. Emerging above the tree line we see the ‘sea of clouds’ stretched out below us, lapping up to the trees. The sky is a beautiful warm blue with the clouds forming a wonderful white blanket below the sky and at our feet. As we are passing along a ridge line we can see both the north and south of the island with the cloud sea stretching in both directions literally as far as you can see.



Driving ever upwards we leave the trees behind and pass into a zone of shrubs and tough grasses with large expanses of rock and sand. Gradually the shrubs get smaller and the lava fields become more obvious. We pass the group of astronomical observatories perched on the side of the mountain and move onwards to the main visitor centre.



Once there we view the remains of the old volcano caldera with Mount Teide looming before us. A whole range of geographical and geological features that we read about at school are easily seen, lava flows, volcanic cores, lava intrusions and so on. Massive isolated rock outcrops, a hundred or more feet high dominate the immediate vicinity, red, beige and black. It is impressive scenery and in it’s own stark way, beautiful.



After taking in the view we make our way to the visitor centre by happy accident as it was not signposted and was not mentioned by the guide. The information there is largely about the original inhabitants of the island and how they used the Mount Teide area. It seems they originally came from North Africa and because there are no sources of metal on the island did not really progress beyond an advanced form of Stone Age until the Castilians arrived in the late fifteenth century with all the benefits of civilisation, including warfare. Having subdued (eradicated) the natives this area was widely used for stock grazing, mainly goats, sulphur gathering and wood collecting on the lower slopes. In the 1950’s that came to an end when the area became a National park and other than visiting and astronomical observing, exploitation was largely stopped.



With the sightseeing on Mount Teide concluded we return to the ship.



We intend one more entry in this series after we get home. A general round up and overall commentary on the entire experience.

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