Tenerife the Land of 11 Volcanoes, Canary Islands Spain

El Teide Volcano in the background displays its large caldera proof of the eruptions that formed this island.  Plant life here is very diverse even from the south to the north of the island.

We flew in late into Tenerife, Canary Island, Spain from Milan which we unexpectedly had to overnight in Milan because we missed our connection from Sicily.

We had a nice mountain view of the Dolomite Mountain Range in Milan Italy from our Moxy Hotel room.

Sunrise over the mountains in Milan, Italy.  Wispy clouds look like smudges on my camera lens.

I've always wanted to go to the Canary Islands because they are in a very unusual spot and they are considered a winter playground for Europeans. Canary Islands are off the West Coast of Africa and they belong to Spain. The first day we arrived we were tired so we actually took a day off and I worked on my blog and and I continued to try to get my son a flight for Christmas that would get him to us before Xmas day. Darren had a chance to relax as well. If you've never traveled for 3 months, you might not understand that you need to take a break every now and then from site seeing. It was a beautiful day out and I hung out on our large balcony. We were staying at the Wyndham Residences in Costa Adeje in the South of Tenerife Island. 

Some lovely scenery as we drove down the highway.

Tenerife is quite lunar looking in the south.

Scrubby plants called Broom and jagged mountains surround you in the south of the island.

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The next day we decided to get out and about and drove to Los Gigantes which is a big black cliff and it was created from a prior volcanic eruption.  It ended abruptly which caused this gigantic cliff where it meets the ocean and apparently there's good diving there.

Los Gigantes in the background.

The town contrast beautifully with the Los Gigantes.

We stopped at the Mirador or the lookout and took some pictures and drove around the area and came across one of the natural pool areas which are on the coast and they are naturally created by lava flows.  This one was supported by cement to make a nice, safe, warm swimming area. 

We did not bring our swimsuits that day.

We went to the Lidl grocery store which is also in Spain and picked up groceries for the week.  We came home relaxed and I had a bath which are hard to come by in Europe. 

We had already lost a day in the Milan airport area and we woke up to a cloudy day which was not a good choice to visit El Teide the UNESCO World Heritage Site and Volcano National Park on the island. The volcano is at a high elevation and can get engulfed in clouds, plus then it rains on you for the whole visit.

We decided to drive north not realizing that Tenerife is like a continent with completely different climates at both ends.  When we left in the south where we were staying, it was warm with sporadic clouds. It was a one hour drive up to the north of Tenerife.  I quickly had an understanding of the weather change in the north.  It was much cooler by roughly 10 degrees, so I slipped some pants on. It's a lot like the Hawaiian Island of Kauai where it's rainy and wet and a different climate in the north, than the sunny south of Kauai. I had my pants but forgot my raincoat, dah.

We first stopped and parked at Cristobol de la Laguna or short La Laguna which is a historic town that dates back to the 1500s.  We walked around for about an hour and we parked in the University parking. There was a university here on Tenerife and the parking was only .55 cents of a Euro which is the cheapest we've had in all of Europe so far. 

There were many palaces in this little historic UNESCO World Heritage Site town. There's a big old church, museums and a bell tower.

One of the churches.

We walked around and saw the sites and stopped in and checked out a menu.  The owner came out and let me know that it was GF.  That was enough to push me on to the next restaurant.

Is anyone else out there a door fanatic?  I love interesting doors!

Bell Tower in the background and Dragon Tree in the front of the photo.

All of Europe is getting ready for Christmas and putting up the lights.

The Mashrabiya on the second floor testifies to the Arab influence in Tenerife.

I had to pan out on this photo of the Cathedral.  Two Dragon Trees flank the church.

This was a very pretty Mashrabiya made out of metal and glass, traditionally they are made out of wood and are built to hide the female away from prying male eyes.

Another example of a Mashrabiya more for decoration than privacy.

A Dragon Tree.

Dark lava rock building makes it look very gloomy when made of this stone.

A central park close to the University of La Laguna.

A tiny old church in La Laguna Tenerife.

We also wanted to get to Parque Rural de Anaga which is a UNESCO world Heritage Site Biosphere.  We wanted to make our way there and do some hiking.

The road up to the top of the park was up an old volcano that is heavily treed and wooded now and it was very curvy with hairpin curves and very dark because the tree canopy was very thick and we were driving through a cloud so that was very spooky but pretty.

In the cloud.

View of the La Laguna below.

Driving the length of the island. It is so clear that this is and was a volcanic island where the roads have been sliced through the hills. You can see the different variations of rock, soil, gravel that have been layered by each volcanic eruption by the different colors and textures of the rock layers.  It is a very fertile island which grows bananas and lots of them. There are crops for miles and what's interesting for all my GF family and friends is that they make banana flour from the bananas here on the island and we within one block ran into two gluten-free restaurants in the downtown historical core.

We got to the top and there was a Mirador or lookout and it was a total and complete white out. We were in a cloud and you could not see 20 feet past your face so we continued the drive and went down and then ended up at a town called Roque Negro.  It was a pretty little village that invited you to come and look around.  There were eight houses in total.  There were posters about how the Earth that you were standing on used to be in the center of the planet but it was spewed out in a volcano.  This was a super serene and quiet little hamlet and it was beautiful. It did mention that it had good agriculture lands with the soil created from the volcanic eruptions.  The village had stunning ocean and mountain views.

Gorgeous scenery surrounded this little hamlet of Roque Negro.

A wisp of a cloud enters from the left.

A heavy cloud descending.

Terraced land made it possible
for agriculture on these steep slopes.

Black Rock (Roque Negro) meets blue ocean.

I wondered how old this tree was in the middle of the town square.

Orange Tree with ripe fruit at the bottom of this photo.

Cloud descending on us from above.

This was a cool photo of a few houses built into the side of the cliff where a chunk of the rock had fallen away to support a few homes.  They would not of had much of a front yard but you could see your enemies coming for sure.

Alas the cloud was over us again and it began to rain and it was time to say goodbye to this peaceful little hamlet of Roque Negro.

We stopped and parked at a walking trail and hiked up the Carmen trail. It was very wet and soggy and muddy in areas and quite slippery due to the drizzle that we had experienced up on the mountain top. We decided to head out anyways. It was a refreshing humid walk and it had some views but most were socked in by the cloud.

Moss is prevalent on the trees in this area.

Someone took some time to carve out these stairs from the rock.

A close up of some mushroom variety growing from a dead tree trunk.

I spotted these cute little Fungi on the side of the dead tree trunk.

Darren unprepared for a hike and in his Birkenstocks.

Ferns are abundant in this cold rain forest.

We headed back to the car or at least tried but the signage was not great but we only took a couple of wrong turns.

The next day we headed towards the UNESCO El Teide Volcano. It was an hour drive. We had already decided that we were not going to take the criminally expensive Cable Car ride to the top at 48€ per person for an 8 minute ride. That would convert to around 170 CND for the two of us.

El Teide is pretty from far away.

Cacti

A Mirador stop to look at the ocean and a small town.

3 completely different looking Cacti.

The drive up to El Teide was very interesting and very beautiful in its own way. The different colors of the lava ranged from black to brown, gray, red, green and orange. 

This is another point of El Teide called Pico del Teide.

Large cones have been created over the centuries.  There are over 300 Cones on the island of Tenerife.  There are 11 major Volcanoes on the island.  After hearing that I thought to myself, 'what the hell are we doing here?'

Once the lava rocks break down, they are loaded with minerals that create extremely fertile soil.  This little Coniferous Tree seems to think so.

Notice the top crust of another volcanic flow and how everything under it is cracking away and producing soil.  I find Volcanology extremely interesting.

A cloud moves in from the left.  You can see that some trees are growing on this black lava rock that was from an eruption in the 1798 and it lava flowed for 99 days creating new earth for this island.

It was very interesting to see the different lava flows that have come from the eruptions of El Teide. There were many stops along the way and many photo opportunities and all included posters to read and learn about this force of nature El Teide. 

El Teide is considered active but dormant by scientists.  The last major eruption was 1909 and there has been seismic activity since and CO2 is being emitted.

There is nothing growing on this land which has not broken down enough yet to be fertile.  This lava flow has been too recent.

Coloration of the lava flows has always puzzled me.  The more red looking rock is a more recent flow due to oxidization.

If I was an Immortal and visited Tenerife again and went to this exact spot in roughly 200 years there would be trees growing on it.

There is a cloud rolling in behind Darren.

I found this testimony quite interesting form 1798.

Mount Teide or El Teide is 24,600 feet from the ocean floor and is considered the third tallest volcano in the world.  The poster above explains the side venting.

Two of Hawaii's volcanoes are taller at 9000 feet compared to El Teide at 7500 feet high on land.

We continued on our drive and got to the top area, where the road ends.  

I am standing in front of the Shoe formation.  The hollowed out area looks like a ladies shoe or high heel.

Very cool rock formations have been left over from the lava flows.

You can see the black lava flow above which was more recent from the 1909 flow.

You can see in the middle of this photo green hydrothermal alteration in the volcanic rock.  The green color is created by rain water seeping into a fissure and a chemical reaction takes place to alter the color of the lava.  A landslide has also happened here to uncover the green color.

A cone has formed on the volcano and can be seen in the bottom half of the photo.

Jagged volcanic rock.

Three different colors of lava rock most likely attributed to three different lava flows.

Lunar looking landscape.

The green volcanic rock is very pretty and does stand out.

El Teide in the background.

Green volcanic rock juxtaposition against black volcanic rock.

There was a visitor center and it was free just like this entire UNESCO World Heritage site of El Teide which is actually quite remarkable because we've been at much less interesting sites around the world that we paid dearly for. This was a nice, pleasant surprise to not have to pay money to see this beautiful and continuous creation of Earth. The visitor center was very interesting, probably one of the best visitor centers I've ever been in. It looked fairly new but parking was not that great. I had to go in first, Darren waited and then eventually found a spot.

There were different displays of things, even skeletal remains of ancient peoples found in this area.  There was a glass floor and we walked over them.  That somehow seemed wrong.  This volcano provided income for the Canarians and in the form of collecting and selling sulfur and pumice, which supplemented their income. 

A display of a basket with yellow sulfur.

The volcanic soil is quite fertile and vineyards have flourished here for hundreds of years.  Canary wine was highly  prized in Europe in the 16th-18th centuries.

There was information about the indigenous people that were here as well, they believe from the 5th century until the Spaniards came.

Wonderful rock formations just outside of the Visitor Center.

Tenerife is an interesting island and worth checking out.  I would not come here for a beach holiday because the beaches are black and dark brown and hot.  Although millions of Europeans come here each year.  Annually, 7 million tourists descend on this island.

The water is a dark blue due to the dark color of the rock/sand under it.