Driving through the hills

On Thursday we chose different side of island to explore - we were going to drive along the hills in the middle of the island towards West. The road was climbing into hills and it wasn't long since we were in the middle of thick pine woods. It smelled divine, and luckily there were couple of lookouts, or miradors as they are called in Spanish, where we could admire the view. This is the view over the Santa Cruz to the NE.

The roar climbed through pine forests to the next mirador, some 1800m high. To the West there was a great view to Teide over the pine forests. The mountain is magnificent, but the surroundings are equally stunning.

To the NW we could see the island of La Palma in the distance.

Captain above the clouds.

After driving through the pine forests some more we climbed to over 2000m, where the surroundings changed. There were no more trees and the landscape looked much more volcanic.

There were some crazy rocks...

...and beautiful colours, just like on Lanzrote, just with more plants.

And above the pretty hills was Teide. The black on the side of Teide are lava flows, not the forrest, up there is way to high for the trees.

On one of the hills nearby there is an observatory.

We continued towards Teide through what seemed more and more like lunar landscape.

And Teide was closer and closer and looked less and less high.

We didn't stop at the lower stop of the cablecar, but we could see all the people waiting in line. There were also hundreds of parked cars and buses around. It is a bit crowded for our taste, but we are planning to ride up with cablecar on one of the next days, I know we would be sorry if we didn't.

We stopped a little bit further by the group of incredible rocks. Of course it was very crowded here as well. But is was stunning, the colours and shapes were just crazy.

These are called cathedrals, they are remains of the columns of lava that remained after the crater of volcano eroded away.

And again, there's Teide in the background. The white near the top are white rocks, not snow. Friends that hiked up right to the top told us that there are few patches of snow there, but they are not visible from below. Although I've seen the photos of Teide covered in snow, as well as the pine woods around it, and there are signs on the road reminding the drivers to put the chains on the wheels of their cars when there's snow.

This is the view to the South, on the other side there were also some pretty hills and colourful rocks.

Captain found himself a chair in the shade, although we were so high and the air was about 16 or 17 degrees C, it was still warm in the sun.

Some of the rocks defied the gravity.

After a while we drove further and came by this mini crater, I guess the sulphur coloured the rocks yellow, but I'm not sure what made others green.

The view of Teide from the SW side, again with lots of black lava flow...

...and some more craters.

After a while we drove over the ridge to the SW side. The scenery changed again, here it was warmer and there were pine forests again.

Here they were partially burnt down by a forest fire, they have quite many here, most of them caused by an arson, the second cause is carelesness, only a very small number of fires is caused by lightning. What a pity. My reason for this photo was a great view of island of La Gomerra, it is in the middle above the clouds, and you can also see a part of the La Palma to the right and to the left just barely visible, there is El Hierro. We were lucky to have such good visibility.

Driving down toward South the pines woods were not so dense any more, it was evident that the temperatures are higher here and water scarcer. Still on one of the miradors we discovered one of the biggest pine trees on the island.

Captain reading the information board...

...that said:

We drove down to the South coast through many villages and vineyard and fields. It was not very pretty, no nice buildings or flowers or parks, it looked like it was all just serving a purpose. But we found a nice spot on the West beach near Montana Roja, the red mountain. With so little swell from North as on that day, it would be even possible to anchor on this side of mountain. The water was inviting, but still too cold for swimming, at least for us.

On the East side of the mountain the beach is reserved for kiters and surfers, there are some good waves there from the wind.

It was almost evening as we drove back to the marina. It was another full and beautiful day.