Tuesday, April 5: Santa Cruz, Tenerife
Bob: Since Ondina had mentioned the big volcano on Tenerife, we had booked one of the tours offered by Costa that included a visit to the Teide Volcano. As our ship was maneuvering into the harbor at Santa Cruz that morning, I had checked that my GPS's maps included a detailed street map of Tenerife, and found out that it did. So I took it with as we joined 11 other English-speaking folks (Americans and Canadians as far as I could tell) to board our tour bus. The bus wound its way first northward through the streets of Santa Cruz and then westward out through the suburbs and into the countryside of the rural areas of Tenerife. Tenerife is a volcanic island with soil so porous that there are no streams, rivers, or lakes of any kind. That complete lack of surface water means they have to use the water accumulated in deep aquifers plus de-salinized seawater to meet the needs of a population that has quadrupled from 200,000 in 1950 to around 800,000 in 2010. The island was not, however, as arid as, for example, the island of Malta in the Mediterranean appears to be. Like Malta, all available plots of earth that I saw in the suburbs and privately-owned rural areas of Tenerife were intensively cultivated. Once out of Santa Cruz, the road westward followed the ridge or crest that runs down the middle of the island. For a long time we were driving along in a layer of clouds and couldn't see much except the gardens and banana plantations at the lower elevations and then the forests lining both sides of the road as we entered the higher elevations of the National Park area. Our guide talked about the forests in general but more specifically about a pine tree native to the Canary Islands that had has three really long needles that allow it to collect and condense water from the morning dew and fog that blankets many of the coastal and upland areas of Tenerife. That pine tree collects so much more groundwater than the average yearly rainfall in Tenerife, which is quite scant, and was so much more effective than ordinary pine trees in doing so, that it was protected from being cut down by national law. We saw examples of that Canary Island pine tree "up close and personal" later that afternoon in the botanical gardens in Porta Cruz, and sure enough tiny little drops of dew were dangling at the end of most of the long, graceful pine needles. In fact, those needles seemed to be about 10 inches to a foot in length, which is way longer than the needles of any pine trees that I have seen back in the U.S. As the road continued to ascend, we finally broke above the cloud layer and had decent views through gaps in the clouds down to the shoreline below us, and above us to the snow-capped summit of the Teide Volcano looming up in front. That road had been so curvy that the relentless and rhythmic shaking back and forth had started to make me queasy, and two women on our bus became sick enough to vomit, whereupon the driver pulled over at a wide spot on the shoulder for a short break. As I had also been getting nauseous, which happens very seldom to me, I was also glad for the respite. Some of the people on the bus compared the drive up the mountain as similar to the "Road To Hana" in Maui, Hawaii, which also is a twisty road up the side of a volcano, but I would say that the road up to Volcano Teide is a lot longer than I remember the Road To Hana being. |
Monika: After five at sea days, we finally spotted "Land Ho!", although when we got up around 7 a.m. we were already close to the dock in Santa Cruz, Tenerife. We had booked a full day tour that would take us to the highest volcano on the island. We were supposed to be at the gathering point already at 8:15. I wanted to get up at 6:30 to have time to eat and get ready. But the day before we had not really gotten to bed until midnight, so I slept till 7, at which point I nudged Bob awake. We got dressed and hurried up to the buffet but first stopped on the sun deck for some pictures of Santa Cruz. By the time we returned to our cabin, decided what to wear, and got all our gear ready, it was time to go downstairs. We did not have to wait long before we were taken to the bus, since there were only 16 people on the English speaking tour. That made getting in and out of the bus at our stopping points very efficient and gave us more time to walk around and look at things. Our guide was named Carlos and spoke very good English. He explained the geography and history of the island while we were being driven to a very large crater. We drove through a forest of pine trees and Carlos told us how these pine trees contributed to the underground water reservoirs that were used by the inhabitants. There are no rivers or lakes on Tenerife, the only fresh water can be found underground. Even rain and snow is not common. But the pine trees draw the water out of the humid air and store it underground. After driving through the forest and climbing quickly from sea level to over 6000 feet we reached the rim of the crater. |
Bob: In any case, the road straightened out as we continued toward the peak of the volcano. We turned left before we reached it, however, and drove down into one of the biggest volcanic calderas I have ever seen. The caldera measured about 15 kilometers in diameter, if I recall correctly, and showed many signs of the rough, black basalt resulting from recent volcanic activity. "Recent", however, in this case might be measured in thousands of years as Tenerife is a rather arid island and erosion of the raw basalt due to water and plant life would be quite slow. Parts of the crater look for all the world like a lunar landscape, and our guide told us that space agencies had in fact brought out the landing robots for planetary excursions to try them out. Curiously, other parts of the caldera looked like the arid rock scapes in the Southwestern United States and had supposedly been used for filming Westerns! Somehow I couldn't quite see the logistics of bringing a filming crew all the way to Tenerife rather than just using someplace in the desert Southwest of the U.S., but maybe they do. |
Monika: The crater was formed not that long ago, geologically speaking, when the enormous volcano slid into the ocean carving a valley towards the ocean. We drove along the rim of the crater and then through it. It looks like a moonscape with little vegetation and different types of volcanic rock scattered all over. Part of this landscape is an existing volcano, Mount Teide. It is about 12,000 feet high and as such the highest mountain in Spain. On top of it was even some snow. The volcano is still smoking and rumbling but has not had a violent eruption. A road goes up to about 7500 feet, were you can take a gondola to get even closer to the top. We first stopped for some photo ops of this strange, surreal landscape |
Bob: The highpoint of our visit to the caldera was a stop at a set of unique rock formations near the center of it. To me, one formation looked like nothing so much as a huge hitchhiker's thumb stuck up in the air, waiting for a ride. Another formation was tall, slender, and tapered just like a human finger except on a gigantic scale. When I looked up close at the base of one of the columns, however, I was astonished to see an aggregate of medium-sized rocks embedded in some kind of softer, lighter volcanic rock. I had always thought of volcanic rocks as being formed in fairly uniform layers, and that was clearly NOT the case. If anything, the embedded rocks looked surprisingly like a natural form of concrete. The landscape surrounding those rock pinnacles was also very impressive in a stark, severe sense. One rock formation off in the distance had eroded into a columnar form somewhat like Devil's Tower in the U.S., but on a much smaller scale. Off in the distance we could see the far wall of the caldera with its jagged spine of mountains. Our guide said that the top of the volcano that used to sit atop the caldera had been 5,000 meters high and had slid off into the sea on the North side of the island. Since the other calderas I have visited have been the result of huge volcanic explosions, I was surprised that one had just collapsed peacefully that way. Who knew? |
Monika: We then drove to a place where there were strange rock formations. They were the result of chimney volcanoes that had blown their tops and only left fantastic formations behind. We had about 45 minutes to walk around and take pictures of these formations and Mount Teide was watching over it all. |
Bob: The current volcanic cone of Teide is 3,500 meters high, and on the day we visited it still had a light coating of snow from the winter on top. Our bus stopped briefly at the lower station of the cable car that runs nearly to the top, which was about 2,600 meters above sea level, but we did not have a chance to get off and take the cable car. For any of you who might think of doing so, the line to get inside looked to be at least an hour long, the cost was reported to be 25 Euros, and you need special permission to walk from the top station of the cable car to the actual summit of the mountain, which can only be obtained at the park office back in Santa Cruz! |
Monika: Our meeting point was a Parador, one of the state owned hotels that the Spanish government seemed to have put at the most interesting places. There was also a small chapel, and Carlos said that it belonged to the Parador and would be opened if guests wanted to get married. |
Bob: After the National Park our next stop was Porta Cruz where we were scheduled to have lunch. Our guide jiggered the schedule, however, so that we visited the botanical gardens first and then had lunch, which minimized the driving time so that we had more time to explore the town after lunch. The Jardin De Aclimatacion De La Orotava (Roughly: Orotava's botanical gardens for plant acclimatization) were royal botanical gardens that had been designed to acclimatize plants acquired from Spain's far-flung colonies in preparation for transporting the useful ones back to Spain for agricultural use. Our guide gave us some of the history and significance of a few of the major plants such as coffee, bananas, and various trees before we were turned loose to wander around on our own for a while. One of the oddest "trees" I saw there had a smooth, silvery, ringed kind of surface leading up to a bunch of palm fronds up on top, and I would have guessed it was a palm tree. On the contrary, it was a "Drago", which was not a tree at all but rather a huge, primitive relative of the onion plant!! Goodness. |
Monika: We now drove back down the mountain to the other side of the island to a little beach town called Porta Cruz. We made a short photo stop at a curious stone formation called "The Rose". In Porta Cruz we first stopped at the Botanical Gardens. They were started in the 18th century by the Spanish king, to acclimatize plants from all the overseas colonies, before they were to be brought to the Madrid botanical garden. Well, the Madrid botanical garden never got built and the one in Ponta Cruz has all the beautiful trees and flowers. On the name tag you not only get the Latin and common names of the plant but also the place of origin. |
Bob: The gardens included many quite beautiful flowers, including the most colorful bird of paradise flowers that I have ever seen. I think I also saw different colors of hibiscus, but most of the plants were just so unfamiliar I had no idea what they were short of reading the little plaques underneath each one. The only problem with that was that each plaque gave the Latin name and Spanish common name, neither of which was really effective in cluing me in. Still, very pretty. |
Monika: First Carlos took us around to show us the most important plants and then we had another 20 minutes on our own to take pictures to our hearts content. Bob had the new Olympus and I had the underwater camera and we both enjoyed taking lots of pictures and of course were one of the last ones back on the bus, but luckily there were no Germans to look askance at us. |
Bob: From the botanical gardens our bus worked its way down through the rest of Porta Cruz to the main tourist area and shopping promenade right on the sea shore. There we were dropped off at a McDonalds (!), from whence we walked five minutes toward the swimming beach where we had lunch at the restaurant in a very nice seaside hotel. While we ate, we chatted with a Canadian couple from Alberta who were part of our small English-speaking tour group. After lunch we walked over to the nearby black-sand beach and watched the Atlantic swells breaking on the seawall. Apparently some folks surf on the area right off of the beach, but no one was trying their luck at that the day we visited. We enjoyed the pretty gardens along the seaside pedestrian promenade just outside a public swimming area owned by the city, I think, that included some nice saltwater pools. We also explored the shops along the way in which Monika found a nice blue two-piece swim suit and I found some nice post cards for .30 Euro each. At the far end of the promenade we were rewarded by finding fresh German "Haribo" brand candy sold in bulk at a candy store. We are particularly fond of Haribo licorice, so we picked up some to smuggle back onto the ship. Just as we were ready to reboard the bus, I also found a perfect refrigerator magnet with a beautiful scene of the volcanic caldera and Teide with a price of only 1.60 Euros on it at a tobacco store. But the store was locked for siesta, I guess, and I couldn't get anyone to open the door and take my money! Arrgh! Being a tourist on a schedule can sometimes be so frustrating! Closing the loop back to Santa Cruz took only about 45 minutes, so we arrived back at the ship with half an hour to spare, but we both figured that was not enough time to run back down the pier and out of the port area into town and have any time left over for shopping. So we had dinner with the gang, put our feet up while we downloaded pictures, and turned in early to rest up for what we expected to be a long day of walking around town in Funchal, Madeira, on the morrow |
Monika: From the botanical garden, we went to the waterfront were we stopped for lunch at a hotel. It was a very good buffet lunch with wine and water at each table. We chatted with another couple and enjoyed the meal. After the meal we had another hour to enjoy the waterfront. The beach was black, composed of rock from the volcano of course. Waves were splashing up onto the rock drenching a fisherman who was trying his luck. Along the walk was also a swimming pool filled with ocean water but in a nice setting. And then there were lots of little stores and boutiques. We finally stopped at a store where I found a really pretty two piece suit. Bob would have liked for me to get one with less material for the same price, but it was a rather boring red, whereas the one I ended up had a nice design on it. Maybe I should have gotten both.... We also found a nice cloth patch with a scene of Tenerife on it for Annalise and some postcards for us. Our final stop was a Haribo store where you could buy the candy in bulk. Of course, we had to bring some licorice back to the ship. By now it was time to hurry back to the bus. We were going to be picked up at the McDonald's store, an American influence even on a little island in the Atlantic Ocean. We got back to the ship a little after 4. With 'All Aboard' being at 4:30 we felt, that we did not have enough time to go back out into Santa Cruz and just repaired to our room and then up to deck 10 for some sailing away pictures. |
| Index |
| Prolog | Map of Transatlantic Cruise | Map of Drive in Ireland | Epilog |
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