Tenerife Return — Lisa's (& Steve's) Travels

Since we were flying home from Tenerife, we came back and chose to stay on the south end of the island, both for proximity to the airport, as well as to hike in Teide National Park. Mount Teide is the conical peak of a volcano that is visible from some of the other Canary Islands, like Gran Canaria…

we saw it on the horizon when we hiked up to Roque Nublo

… and very easily from La Gomera (the last island we just came from) -

The peak is at 12,188 ft and is the highest point in Spain, as well as all the Canaries. We had not planned on hiking that mountain, but one near it, for some awesome views. I had read reviews that sunrise light on Mount Teide is beautiful, so I dragged Steve’s butt out of bed, and we drove up very curvy roads in the dark. As we got near, the horizon was lighting up -

As we came around the corner and saw the volcano for the first time, we found that we had timed it perfectly -

It was really cold (35 degrees), and we sure weren’t used to that on this sunny island trip!

We got to our trailhead and found a sign saying it was closed on Mon/Wed/Fri because they were hunting/culling wild sheep. Yep, we were there on Wed.

We scouted around for another trail and found a 3 mile hike around Roques de Garcia. I hadn’t read anything about it, so it was to be a novel exploration for us.

This turned out to be a fantastic consolation prize. Mount Teide was always in the background…

… and the roques themselves were gorgeous…

… especially in the early morning light -

Initially, we thought they were fairly small formations in a compact space, but then we got to walking around them. Wow!

I just loved how Teide would peek in from time to time -

This was an amazingly varied landscape -

(the trail in the bottom right was where Steve was standing when I used him for scale)

When we started our walk, the rocks were in shadow, and there were very few people around.

As we finished, the sun was warming us nicely and lighting up the rocks as well -

Here’s a brief video to show the extent of the volcano (and just a hint of the crowds swarming the park) -

As always, use the link at the end of this post to open it in your browser, so you can watch.

As we drove back down to the coast, we found a veritable sea of clouds -

And thus, another one of our adventures comes to a close. Hope you all have happy and peaceful holidays!