Heron

Sunday, February 9, 2020

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.

Friday, February 7, 2020

Arriving to Tenerife

After all the excitement of driving around Gran Canaria and visiting Aquarium we had some quieter days. We frequently made at least a walk to our favourite bakery or to farmer's market, or to North town beach. On our way we discovered a pretty community garden, it had lots of vegetables...

...way too pretty scarecrow - not sure, if any bird would be afraid of this...

...and even some flowers, which attracted butterflies. There were benches around and locals and tourists alike enjoyed sitting there, us included.

We also did some small boat projects, Tomaz mended the dent in the hull that we got on our first day in marina, I managed to clean a big dark sticky stain that our biggest fender aka "Big Berta" made, and we made some fender socks and bought some and now all our fenders are dressed up and will no longer leave marks on our or our neighbour's boat.

On last Sunday morning we left the marina, the plan was to sail along South coast to the SW corner of the island, find ourselves a nice anchorage and sail towards Tenerife the next day. The weather was very calm, with very small waves, the calmest that we had here. We were a bit worried that there'll be too little wind for good sailing, but looks like in Canaries you can't have a good wind and seas calm enough to anchor for the night at the same time. Wind was indeed very light, and from completely wrong direction, so it took us almost the whole day to get to the famous dunes of Maspalomas on the SW tip of the island.

This is the lighthouse on the West side of the cape, just around the corner from the dunes.

A bit further North, in front of the hotel beach near Pasito Blanco, we anchored our boat. It didn't feel too rolly, and we had enough for the day. We managed to prepare dinner just in time for sunset.

The sea calmed down a bit more in the night, so it wasn't too bad and we managed to sleep quite well. In the morning wind picked up and we lift the anchor before sunrise. We had a nice sailing with just enough wind to sail on genoa alone and pretty calm sea all the way along the West coast of Gran Canaria. The coast was mostly steep and rocky.

From NW corner we could see the valley where Aldea is with its plastic covered plantations, and we could just spot the Roque Nublo to the right in the back.

Behind Gran Canaria wind died and we had to motor, which was not a problem in relatively calm sea. While we saw couple of flocks of flying fish and a group of dolphins hunting in the distance, I was hoping to see more - turtles, whales maybe. The sea was calm enough to have a good chance of spotting splashes or any kind of action even in the distance, and I kept my eyes peeled, but unfortunately nothing came by to say hi. I was really disappointed. At least wind picked up some 20 miles from Tenerife and we were able to sail again, so at least captain was happy. We sailed directly to Santa Cruz marina. We were considering spending another night on anchor somewhere on the South coast of Tenerife, but after checking the weather the night before we saw some strong wind forecast for Tuesday, so we decided to better be safely tied by then.

We tied Heron to the pontoon in marina at around 7 in the evening, there were two very friendly marineros to help. Next morning the SW wind started, already at breakfast it was blowing constantly between 20 and 25 knots with gusts to 31. We were glad we were already in marina. The wind managed to carry lots of sand and dust with it, so the visibility was really poor, maybe a mile, and it looked like there was a yellow haze or fog over the island. We made a short stroll through town and while it made a very pleasant first impression, we'll need to make some photos of it some other day, when the visibility and light are better. In the afternoon we did couple of small boat projects instead of walking around. It wasn't until the night that the wind calmed down.

Next day, on Wednesday, we got a car, we rented it for a whole week, and we made our first day trip. We decided to drive to NE part of the island, through the hills, and to the North coast. While the visibility was much better than the day before, it was still not the best and I guess the photos might look a bit lifeless because of that.

Our first stop was an artificial beach, that is made of the sand from Sahara. We wanted to see it out of curiosity and we were pleasantly surprised. It is quite long, almost a mile, it has showers, lots of trees and palm trees for shade, there's a breaker in front of it to keep expensive Sahara sand on the beach, but also keeps swimmers from getting too far into the sea, there are hundreds of parking spaces, also shaded by trees, and all this is for free. You only pay for drinks, ice cream, locker and lounge chair, if you want them. While I'm not a fan of mass tourism that Spain is practising, I have to say that there are lots of free attractions - like picnic places, lookouts, beaches with showers and toilettes, all clean and with good roads leading to them and plenty of free parking spaces. It doesn't feel like they are just after our money and it's a good feeling.

As the road climbed into the hills, we got a birds eye view of the whole beach. We just might drive here again one day, and if we're brave enough get into the water.

Road through the hills was beautiful. Everything was green and it looked like spring. And there were some crazy rocks there...

...that I don't know how they stay where they are.

On the North side we came into clouds and couldn't see to the coast. Apparently the humid air from North Atlantic bring 4 times more moisture than rain. Because of it grapes thrive here, as well as other vegetables. And it's 10 degrees colder than on South side, which might be good on a very hot day, but it's also grey and cloudy.

We drove to the coast to the town of Roque de las Bodegas. It got its name several hundreds of years ago when locals were trading wine with ships that came to anchor in the bay. The locals would row their boats with several barrels of wine, tide to the boats by ropes, out to the ships. The big rock near the coast offers just enough protection for boats to get in and out of the water, although in these days boats go out to fish and not to tow the barrels of wine. But the wine that we tasted here is still very good.

We strolled through the town ad saw this cat community in one yard. There was also a fourth cat, sleeping in a box.

The coats is wild and rocky.

The bay was used by surfers, and the beach was used by paragliders.

Before returning to the car we thought to make a stop for a drink and ended up having a complete lunch. We stopped in La Una restaurant and when we saw the menu we had to try some dishes. It was delicious, we might even drive back across the island again just for the food.

Captain tried the temperature of the black sand and it was quite warm. We know the sea is cold, some 18 deg C.