Tenerife, Canary Islands 4-22-2007 .

Tenerife is the largest of the Canary Islands. An archipelago of seven islands lying off the north coast of Africa but is politically a self-governing region of Spain. Everyone here speaks Spanish and many speak English. It is very European-like. It was an important staging post for the early explorers like Columbus on their way to the New World. Today, tourism is their biggest industry. Mostly people from Spain, the UK and Germany are their most common visitors. They say they have 9 million visitors a year to these islands. Unfortunately, this year of 2007 is the 3oth anniversary of the worst commercial plane crash in history. In 1977, two jumbo jet liners, one KLM and one TWA collided, killing over 700 people. There has been a monument built at their airport as a tribute to the lives that were lost.

Because Tenerife is caressed by trade winds, they have a very mild winter. They have one of the most diverse landscape for such a small place of anywhere I have ever seen. In a matter of hours you can travel from the busy port, to verdant forest land, to an arid lunar-like landscape, walk on volcanoes, see golden sand beaches and even look up high to see a snow capped Mount Teide which dominates this island. The island is free of pollution and rarely has cloud cover, especially high clouds. This makes it a perfect place to build an observatory. We saw their current observatory which you will see in the pictures but they have under construction a new observatory which will be the largest one in the world! This came in handy for our study of space week at school!! I would like to make another trip back to this place. The guide said the best way to come here is to fly to London and then take a direct flight to Tenerife from there. By the way, they have not had another plane crash since that disaster in 1977!! Let's look at our wonderful day...
Mountain views.
A view toward the harbor from our bus that was headed to the top.
This was taken from the ship of the harbor before we left for the day.
Harbor view. Look how mountainous this place is, I had no idea!

We saw so many different types of trees they were glorious.







The crazy looking picture that looks like streaks of paint is actually layers of rock that they found when they cut through the road. It gives someone that knows, some idea how long the island has been here! Kathleen and Nicholas found some rocks to climb on.




Actually, all of these rocks are leftovers from volcanic eruptions. They make beautiful forms.



We ate lunch in an old convent. The whole area used to be a wine vineyard. Some of the grapes still grow but not as many as years ago.
Here are some grapes growing.
Kathleen and Nicholas on the way back to the ship knowing that this was their very last 8 hour tour!!!
A clear beautiful day. Does any of this moon-like, Mars-like area look familiar? It seems that the first two Star Wars movies were filmed here and so was The Planet of the Apes!


This tree is called the Dragon tree. It seems that when it is cut the sap it bleeds is red and looks much like blood!!!! More pictures of the convent and me waiting by the Blessed Virgin to go to the restroom. I will say, this was the most beautiful public restroom I have been in since I left the USA!!!



The sign for the convent, no nuns still here. It is a restaurant now. A larger picture of the grapes and a picture of their newest building. Their Opera house. It is a site! It looks like a giant wave. The day was a shock. We saw so many different types of landscape. Very beautiful. The people are all very friendly and would love for you to visit!! We had a great day.