FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX: Tenerife

Mount Teide on the left and Santa Cruz on the right, highlighting the altitude change!

It was great to wake up to a new destination. Today we learnt that there are 7 main islands within the Canary Islands archipelago. Lanzarote yesterday is the easternmost and Tenerife today, another volcanic island, is the largest. We booked a tour of Teide National Park at the last minute through Viator due to the change in cruise lines, and spent the day with Maria. She was an elderly lady who was ex national park employee. Her English was not the best but she managed to get through a whole heap of technical information! Most importantly she was super sweet and thoughtful. We got off the ship at leisure, walked along the LONG dock and managed to find her at the carpark meeting point where she was cleaning her car for us!

Along the way, she talked about the fascinating geography of the island and the resulting flora. 5 microclimates from sea level to the summit of Mount Teide at 3715m! All on an island of only about 80 km long and 50km wide. As a result, the temperature ranged from a lovely 22 degrees at the port to a chilly 2 degrees at the highest point that we reached on our tour at about 2350m. The children found the climate changing a bit whacky and were bemused that it was difficult distinguishing between the skyline and the clouds when looking at the Ocean. Oma and Opa were completely focused on the fact that bananas were a major produce on the island.

Once we stopped near at the top, we were treated to picturesque viewpoints reminiscent of the surface of Mars created from the previous eruptions and lava flows. Our last stop was lunch where we had our first tapas including Canarian potatoes (excellent), calamari (ok), and Spanish ham (good). Maria then gave us a free city tour before depositing us back literally in front of the ship, after sweet talking the port security to let her drive us along the LONG dock. It was nice waving to the other passengers making the trek on foot.

Although we had a great day, it was somewhat bittersweet remembering that we were not our full intended original travelling party. We rang Nana and Grandpa to say our Christmas Greetings with some sadness.