The city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife is on the north east tip of Tenerife. It is probably the most well known of the Canary Islands. A great landscape as the Nautica sails into the port, fluffy billowing clouds topping the mountains above the town.

The walkway from the port into the city has a long line of plaques documenting those who have visited the island since it was founded in the late 15th century. They came from all walks of life: European explorers, scientists, pirates, royalty of all ranks, novelists, poets and politicians. Some just passing through on their way to other places and some to rest and recover in the sub tropical climate. Tenerife is on the cross roads between Europe, the Americas and the route to Asia. It was a convenient stop over point for replenishing ship’s stores on the long sea voyages. An ideal holiday spot today!

Our excursion on the island took us to the Tiede National Park. Like all the islands Tenerife is of volcanic origin. Tiede dominates the skyline. It is Spains largest mountain at 3718m and the world’s third highest active volcano at 7500m above the Atlantic sea floor. The two volcanoes in Hawaii are higher.

There was a bit of drama at our first view point stop when the bus wouldn’t take off even though the motor was going. Had to wait an hour at the view point for another bus, nothing much to do except look at the view! Some were concerned we might miss lunch. There were no facilities and some became twitchy for a loo stop. Some gentlemen seemed to wander off among the trees. Luckily, it was a volcanic area and they found some lavatrees.

Tenerife began forming about 12m years ago on the ocean floor with three islands ultimately emerging close together. Then 3m years ago Tiede had a major volcanic event that fused the three islands together to form the present day structure.

Sometime after that there was a massive collapse of another much bigger volcano leaving a crater like structure with surrounding walls several kilometres across. Mt Tiede is part of this environment. What I have said here is pretty simplified I suspect, going from memory of the guides comments and a little bit of Wikipedia!

Anyway, our bus crossed this crater past numerous lava flows and valleys. The road was rather narrow with buses barely being able to pass each other and perched overlooking some rather steep drop offs when they did. Homealone didn’t see a lot of the scenery.

We ended up at another view point surrounded by remnant volcanic structures of all shapes and sizes. Interesting spot!

On the way back the guide played a recording of a piece of music played on a traditional timple, a five string plucked instrument looking a bit like a ukulele. It is background music on this video as we passed through the crater.

We had a very entertaining day on the bus excursion and wandering around the port area of Tenerife.

There is a lot to do in Tenerife, one could easily go back for a longer stay!

We sailed away in the gathering dusk for our last stop in the Canaries, Santa Cruz De La Palma.