We arrived in the Port of Santa Cruz, the capital of the Canary Islands, around 8:00 AM. Tenerife is the largest of the Canary Islands and is located 180 miles west of Africa. After our seven day cruise across the Atlantic Ocean, Larry and I embarked on a excursion to see the number one sight of Tenerife, the "National Park Las Canadas". The bus drove through the city of Santa Cruz showing us many businesses and residential areas. When we boarded the bus we could see that Tenerife was very mountainous, with high jagged peaks and small communities sitting in the narrow valleys. The bus went down two lane paved roads that wound around the mountains where we saw grape vineyard and terrace gardens of potatoes, tomatoes, cabbage, and corn. Many of the residents have a terrace garden because everything is basically brought in by ship and they enjoy having the fresh vegetables that they can grow on their own. The temperature today was perfect... 74 degrees. Our guide said that this is the typical temperature and that many Englanders and Germans come to the Canary Islands for vacations each year. Tourism is the number one business. During our drive we saw many tropical tree, palms, oranges, bananas, and kumquats. The terrain changed five times. After leaving the city, we went to the terraced areas, and next to the woods called La Esperanza Forest with tall green pines rising to the sky. Here we stopped to take scenic pictures of the clouds below that were forming from the Portugese trade winds and Mt. Teide, a volcano that erupted over a thousand years ago. Mt. Teide was over 12,000 feet and had snow on the top. It was beautiful against the blue sky. We also saw a unusual rock formation that looked like a daisy although it was called the "Rose".
Again we boarded the bus to ride even higher into the mountains, and arriving at the National Park. Here the terrain changed again to a mixture of volcanic rocks and plants that were beginning to flower. We stopped again at a restaurant and had tea and binkies, a vanilla shortbread cookie. We had an enjoyable conversation with another couple from Hawaii and Great Britian who had just bought a third home in Orlando. Why would you need a third home? Their flight from England to Hawaii is 24 hours and they need a place to stop over and rest between the two. The restaurant also served a hot chocolate and coffee. After this short break we went back to bus to ride past a gondolla ride up to the top of Mt. Teide which acended 3000 feet in eight minutes and would take you about 200-300 meters from its crater. We were told that it would take about 30 minutes to walk to the crater at that height due to the air being so thin. We were astonished to find that the ride carried 40 people at a time. I am glad that we were not taking that ride.
The bus progressed on to an area that had unusual rock formations and another volcano that had blown its top completely off. We climbed steep steps and then rugged terrain to the highest part to take pictures down into the flat dormant crater. This area is refered to as the moon surface because of the volcanic rocks.This area is also famous because the movie, "Clash with the Titans" with Liam Neilson was filmed here.
Next we road back out of the park and took a different road heading back toward Santa Cruz. We passed a national conservatory with the largest telescope in the world and back through another forest of tall Tanerife Pines that had survived a forest fire. The guide told us that the pine was able to always withstand fire because of its hard wood. Evidence of fire appeared on the trucks with the bark being black. The guide told us that the needles would reappear within a couple of years after a fire.
After passing through the forest we, came to another unusual land formation called "A Piece of Cake" . Here we saw a layered slab of land that looked like a giant's slice of cake with various layers of chocolate and vanilla. Also the clouds had formed a larger barrier between us and the sea below. It was a beautiful sight and very unusual.
We journeyed on passing homes, more vineyards, terrace gardens, and the airport. It was a beautiful day with lots of sunshine . We were surprised that when we arrived back at the ship, the clouds that we had seen covering the city had left, leaving a gorgeous day behind. We decided to walk down to the cyber cafe and try our luck at checking the email. The service was much much cheaper than the ship, but the connection was very weak. We walked toward the town and enjoyed taking picutres of the marina and flowers that were on the island. It turned out to be a wonderful day off the ship.
The internet is not working well, so I will add more pictures once we are in a better service.
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