The island of Tenerife is only 73 miles (117 km) from Grand Canary (63 nautical miles, if you are feeling navy-ish), so we were there bright and early. Tenerife is the largest island of the Canaries, and I’m touring the volcano park.
Mt. Teide is the tallest mountain in Spain, and Teide National Park covers much of the island. We climbed over 2000 meters (1.2 miles) in an hour, so I was feeling the elevation as we stepped off the bus for our first pictures.
To the right of the view is a city and then the coast. It was funny how the clouds are only over the sea. This whole area is a landslide from 500,000 years ago.
As we continued on the bus the tree line became obvious. Sorry for the glass reflections.
Here is the view of the volcano from a rest stop / restaurant / tourist stand. There is no water lines from the coast, so it must be trucked up every day.
Our next stop was at the “Mines of San Jose”; they used to mine pumice here. More recently NASA has used this area to test planetary rovers.
Here’s a hiking sign, in case you wanted to walk (!!!) the path up here.
Here’s the parking lot across the road. Note the multiple colors, showing different lava flows over the centuries.
Our next stop was at the visitor center cafe. Heck of a view with amazing stone structures.
Around the cafe were these meter+ red flowers called the Teide Bugloss.
As we returned to the ship a great caldera was on my side of the bus. Each color a different lava flow.
Here’s a crappy video just to show you all the volcanic rock as we drove in the park.
Silversea set up our snack times at the cafe by bus number as there was not enough bus parking (or any parking) for all of us to arrive at the same time. Our guide spent much of that time complaining about how the island council is asking locals to use public transport while also granting more individual vehicle rentals for tourists. As someone who has grown up in tourist areas, it’s fun knowing that the same complaints exist world wide.