Tenerife Six days at the 5-star Sheraton La Caleta, Costa Adeje, Tenerife. The hotel was fantastic. All four of the hotel’s restaurants were fantastic (and were responsible for a modest weight gain of 3lbs). The weather was not quite as “arid” as the guide book had lead us to believe though.
Parque National del Teide We didn’t get to the hotel until quite late on Sunday evening, so there was no time to do any sightseeing that day. However, first thing Monday morning we headed for the highest point on Tenerife - Pico del Teide. Pico del Teide is also the highest point in Spain and the third largest volcano in the world. This is the view of Pico del Teide on the way up. At this point we’d already driven from sea level to an altitude of 6,700 feet (2,050m), which is pretty much as high as anywhere we managed to drive to in the Canadian Rockies, and we're only just over half way to the top.
Teleferico A few miles up the road from where the previous photo was taken is the cable car station, which takes you up to an altitude of around 11,700 feet (3,560m). This is still several hundred feet short of the 12,195 foot (3,727m) summit. You need a permit to go right to the top, which we didn’t have. On a clear day you can see the entire island from here.
Proof Proof that we made it to almost 11,700 feet on Teide.
Lava Lots and lots of lava about. This is an active volcano after all (last major eruption in 1909).
Lava One of the rare photos that Judith's taken of me where she's managed to get both my head and my legs in the shot. However, the fact that I'm about 100 metres away has probably helped.
Pico del Teide The view of Pico del Teide from the Visitor Centre. Nice sky. If you look carefully you can see the cable car towers running up the right side of the volcano.
Roques de Garcia The Visitor Centre is just across the road from the Roques de Garcia. These formations have been created as soft rock has been eroded to expose the harder rock from previously subterranean volcanic dikes. Exciting.
Roques de Garcia The view of Pico del Teide from the Roques de Garcia.
Lava Field This is the edge of the lava field from the 1798 eruption, as seen from the Roques de Garcia. It was apparently quite a small eruption, with the lava only covering 5 square kilometres on the south-west face of the volcano.
Roques de Garcia Judith at the Roques de Garcia.
Polo From back to front - Pico del Teide, the Roques de Garcia and our VW Polo. Only 55bhp from its 1.2 litre engine, but it was largely fit for purpose and was nicely proportioned for the winding mountain roads.
Balcony Back at the hotel, this is the view from our balcony.
Bouganveillia Lots of these lovely colourful flowers around.
Seafront Tuesday. Spent the day walking on the seafront. Took a few photos of the some of the posher hotels, but nothing worth sticking on my web site. This is a photo of Judith a few hundred metres west of our hotel, which can just be seen in the top-left of the photo. Very windy all day, which was whipping up the surf a treat.
Las Montanas de Anaga Wednesday. Doing a loop of the island. Up in the north they apparently get much more rain and the landscape is therefore much greener. This is the view looking south towards Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
Las Montanas de Anaga Given the terrain, the roads are excellent and most are surprisingly wide. Although it's still nerve shredding to meet a bus or lorry coming the other way on a tight bend.
Clouds Travelling south (back to the allegedly arid bit of the island) but the weather isn’t doing us any favours. The guidebook says that if you take the TF-24 up into the mountains from La Esperanza, there are fabulous views across the clouds to Pico del Teide. At 3,500 feet all we were seeing was the inside of clouds.
Snow! At 4,000 feet it started to snow. And the higher we went, the more it snowed. By the time we got to 7,800 feet (2,386m), it was snowing a lot. The road was getting hard to follow and we were dressed in shorts and t-shirts. Doh! We decided to beat a hasty retreat and head down to Puerta de la Cruz. As the weather was doing its best to do us in, we thought it might be prudent to spend the afternoon in Loro Parc.
Loro Parque In Loro Parque they have penguins...
Loro Parque ...and flowers...
Loro Parque ...and trees...
Loro Parque ...and fish...
Loro Parque ...and crocodiles...
Loro Parque ...and (most importantly) giant tortoises. They also have lots of dolphins and killer whales, but I couldn't be bothered to take any photos of them.
Garachico On the way back to the hotel from Loro Parque we passed (high above) the town of Garachico. This town was largely destroyed by the volcanic eruption of 1706. Looks okay now though.
Rainbow! I don’t get many opportunities to photograph rainbows. And I think this might be the first double one I’ve ever snapped. So today’s pants weather hasn’t been all bad then.
Los Gigantes Wednesday. Went to Los Gigantes. Los Gigantes is famous for (as you might be able to guess) its gigantic cliffs, which rise almost 2,000 feet (600m) vertically from the sea. Quite impressive.
Los Gigantes Boats at the foot of the cliffs, giving them a bit of scale.
Pico del Teide Friday. A view of Pico del Teide two days after the snow. Presumably on Wednesday it would have been quite snowy where I'm standing. However, by Thursday the snow has retreated to around 9,000 feet. It was still pretty chilly though.
La Gomera The view of La Gomera from our balcony. But you'll have to look pretty closely to see it. We could see the lights of San Sebastian at night, but during the day the whole island was almost constantly shrouded by mist and cloud. This was the best daytime view we had of it all week.
Dinner The view from our table at dinner one evening. Nice. Credit where credit is due, the Sheraton la Caleta is a very nice hotel indeed. Especially if you stay in a Club room. Highly recommended.
Playa de las Americas The view of Playa de las Americas on our last night. I used an 8 second shutter with the camera balanced on a wall to get that two-shot panorama.Overall I think that Tenerife is a pretty nice place. But I still think that Gran Canaria is my favourite Canary Island.