Trifter

Day 3

This is the day we used to visit the Teide, the island’s highest peak, and a dormant volcano over 3.700m high. The road to national park around the Teide was again a narrow mountain road, but better than the one going to the north of the island. Slowly the landscape changed from the banana plantations, greenhouses and low shrubs, to thick pine tree forests. As you go higher you can see the marks of the fire in some of the tree trunks, and from time to time the forest is crossed by coladas of lava from old eruptions. On the top there is a plain, part of a huge caldera, at approximately 2.000m. At that altitude the last trees disappear and there are only some xerophyte bushes and grass, with some endemic species. Most of the landscape is covered with different kinds of lava. In some places it is more reddish, in other places it looks dark, in others clear, in others it looks like oxide. Along the road there are observation points with good information panels where you can learn something about the different kinds of lava and the geological history of the place.

View of the Pico Viejo volcano.

Coming from the west the first huge volcano you see is the Pico Viejo or Old Peak, which is a huge extinct volcano of around 3000m high. Next to it stands the majestic Teide. Huge and snow capped in winter. In fact it can snow in winter in all the area over 1.800m but snow never stays too long on the ground.

The Teide from the Roques of García.

Temperature that day at the very end of March was about 9C around 11 a.m. There is a cable car that takes you form the base of the Teide up to 3.500, climbing about 1.100m in about 8 minutes. Both on the way up and from the top the view is simply fantastic. You can see the many colours of different coladas from the last eruptions of the Pico Viejo in the 18th century to the older ones of the Teide itself in the Middle Ages. At that height you are well over the clouds level, which are often all around the edges of the plain. From the place you leave the cable car you can have a short walk to see the caldera of the Pico Viejo, walk all the way down in about three hours, or walking to the top of the Teide 200 metres higher. For that you need to get permission from the local authorities. On the top you can feel that the air is thinner and you have as well to be careful with the sun. It is colder, and often very windy in exposed slopes so you don’t feel the sun. A return ticket to the top costs 25€ which is not that cheap but definitely worth it. As soon as you start climbing you forget what you paid.

A lava waterfall in the Roques de García area.

After descending we went back half a kilometre to have a walk around Los Roques de García. Los Roques are the remains of some volcanic chimneys, with really strange shapes. Only the inner part of volcano, the centre made of solidified lava has been respected by erosion. All the area is surrounded by younger coladas from the Pico Viejo, some of them creating unwalkable bad lands full of sharp edges, others already eroded and even crystallised in hexagonal columns, and some darker one that look like piles of melted chocolate. At one point there is a place where dark and more liquid lava lies like a waterfall between two peaks. In lower parts there are round big bushes among the ones you see from time to time small lizards rushing somewhere. The entire walk takes about two hours, a little effort and lots of satisfaction. We went back via the north of the island, crossing an area of thick fog, rain and very thick forests. It is really beautiful there, absolutely green and humid. As if we were somewhere in the Alps.

Days 4, 6 and 8

Diving, Loro parque and the pyramids.

See please next article.