Teide

12-18-2008

I woke up at 6:30 this morning and took the 477 bus to Los Cristianos. After an hour of walking and wave watching there I took the 342 up La Teide, the highest mountain of the Canary Islands.

This island is extremely unique. Due to the differing altitudes as you climb/drive up the montain, there are differing micro-climates. There are completely different plants growing below the clouds, from where the clouds sit, to above the clouds where nothing grows. Once you get above the town of Vilafor, about a fifth of the way up the mountain, everything is part of the Parque Nacional del Teide.

I got off the bus above the clouds at a basecamp/hotel, Parador de Turismo. From there I hiked four hours, eight kilometers, along the sunny, windly, and beautifully serene Siete Cañadas route. While windy at times, every so often I would be surrounded by cliffs and rocks that completely blocked the wind. When they did, I heard a silence like I've never heard.

That eight kilometers led me to one of the other two basecamps on the mountain, El Portillo. From there, I had another four hours of bus journey to get back to Puerto de Santiago, but again. Worth it’s weight in credit crunch.