Incredible Canary Islands Sunset Seen from Above the Clouds

Preview shot of the article below.  Facebook picks up the first photo in a blog post, so it has to be one of the best, even though it is totally out of order.  I hate this, but it's true, people won't come see the rest if the picture isn't that interesting.  Read on for the story.  This photo catches the sun just as it slips over the horizon. The mountains of La Gomera, over there across the ocean, are visible on the upper left.  

So, back to the order of things as they should be, starting here.  After a short hike where we took that photo of the pines reclaiming the lava in front of the volcano, it was late in the afternoon.  Instead of returning to the lodge, we decided to explore the other side of the park.  Since we were in the Mount Teide National Park, we were still at a pretty good altitude.  As we came around the bend in the road, we realized we were looking down on a cloud bank over the ocean, beyond the pine forests.  What a cool view! 

I stopped the car along the side of the road to take the photo above.  This part of the park has no view of the volcano, so it was pretty quiet.  Only a few cars passed while we hung out taking photos.  Here's Jennifer taking pictures.  

In most places along this road in the national park, there is nowhere to stop and park your car.  You have to find one of the few places without guard rails, cliffs, or boulders.  We found one place with a short concrete parking pad just a little further down the road, with one car already parked on it.  We had a bit of an adventure there, as I didn't realize the pad had about a foot-high dropoff at the back side of it.  I was trying to wedge our car next to the other one by parking at an angle and backing in.  In the middle of this process, I heard someone outside the car yelling "STOP!"  I turned off the car and put on the emergency brake so I could see what was going on.  

A couple was coming back to the car parked next to us.  They were the ones who had yelled.  I looked down to see that I had driven one of our back wheels off the edge of the concrete pad - it was hanging in midair, with a vertical drop of about a foot below it.  Luckily, all I had to do was get back in the car, and drive forward a two feet.  Whew, that could have been a real pain!  

This is one of the pictures taken minutes after all that excitement. There's nothing but ocean under all these clouds.  

As obsessed as I am with photo opportunities, it immediately occurred to me that was an amazing setup for a sunset.  So, despite the fact that we were almost two hours before sunset, we decided to stick around to see how it turned out.  It was definitely worth it.  

I know most of you are looking at these on mobile phones.  That kills me, because these should be seen on as large a screen as possible!  Well, at the very least, please rotate your phone sideways to see these full-screen on that teency device!   

In this early phase, you can see the rays of the sun filtering through the clouds just near the mountaintops of La Gomera, another Canary island just west of us.   

The photo below is really deceiving.  At first glance, that bright spot in the sky looks like the sun, but the sun is below the horizon.  That bright spot is actually a reflection of the sun in the high altitude, icy clouds.  

In this one, another Canary Island is visible to the northwest, the island named La Palma.    

A little closer view toward La Palma.  The pleasure in watching this slowly evolve in front of us is unforgettable.  One of the most amazing sights I've ever seen.

Moving on to a couple of nights later, we watched the sunset from the rocky shore near our hotel.  I know, way too many sunsets, but looking the other way was just a long row of hotel buildings, so this is what you get.  Here we have an Escher-esque view of puddles among the rocks reflecting the oranging clouds.  

Action sunset! 

This is the last set of photos from our trip to the Canary Islands.  This is the third in the series.  If you'd like to see more, click here to see these photos from all around the volcano, Mount Teide.  Click here to see a second set about a coastal hike on the far side of the island.

Coastal hike on Tenerife (One of the Canary Islands)

We spent one of the days of our trip to Tenerife on this hike along the mountainous coast of Tenerife.  As I mentioned in my earlier post, Tenerife is highly populated, so even in this remote area, there were houses and people almost everywhere.  This put a damper on the hiking, since you'd see a mix of sad-looking houses, roads, and power lines, almost everywhere except the best part of the hike.  On the other hand, the best part of the hike was really beautiful!

The hike starts from a well-maintained parking lot for about thirty cars along an extremely steep and windy road.  Despite driving an hour on long, winding, and steep roads, there were a moderate number of people there to hike.  There was a couple at the parking lot when we started, and there were people all along the trail as we hike.  There were only a few times when we couldn't hear or see anyone.

The trail quickly descends from the parking lot, along a grassy valley with a tiny, trickling stream with grassy banks, until it hits the ocean, about 45 minutes later.  The beach where it hits the ocean is black sand covered in large, smooth rocks of white, rust, grey and black colors.  The view down the coast from the black sand beach.  The breeze was nice.

Waves come rolling in with beautiful clear green highlights under their white crests. They keep the big rocks on the beach wet, shiny, and colorful.  Just next to the beach are steep cliffs the waves slam into, creating high plumes of spray.

After the beach, the trail climbs steeply up for a great view from the trail above.  In this view, you can see there is a town of small white houses just at the base of the devils-horn-looking conical hill rising up on the shore in the distance.  Also, there are more jutting cones of stone out in the water.  And notice the yucca plants lining the trail.  That's Jennifer, my wife, just in front of me on the trail.  This view made the whole hike worth it!

There were some hefty lizards here and there along the trail.  Not too terribly afraid of us. This was near where we stopped to have our lunch. 

The clouds moving in from offshore created a nicely layered tableau of stacked colors that almost look out of focus, until you notice the rocky outcrop at lower right.  This was taken just as we were approaching the small town.  

The trail passed through the outskirts, actually onto a couple of two-lane roads passing a few homes, before turning steeply uphill and heading into the trees and toward the pass going back to the start.  

This was the view back down to the town only twenty minutes after we started back uphill.  That was the last impressive view on the trail.  

After that, we were in trees, passing under a big power line and beside small, white, cement houses.

I'll throw this one in just for fun.  Taken a couple of nights later.  There are always good sunsets from the western side of the island, if you're near enough to the coast.  First thing to notice is that there's another island some miles away out there.  Quite a large island, with its own mountains.  The line of clouds forming a sort of crown of the island are created when the wet ocean air slides up the mountains of the island, and cools down and condenses at a higher altitude.  The same thing happens on Tenerife.  The clouds can sometimes seem to just stick to the top of the island, when they're really just regenerating themselves constantly.

This is the second post from Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands.  You can see the first, all about Mount Teide, the huge volcano on the island, by clicking on this line.

Mt. Teide Volcano National Park on Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands,

On our last big-ish trip while living in Paris, we went to Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands.  Tenerife is part of Spain, and lies a couple of hundred miles off the coast of northwest Africa, in the Atlantic Ocean.  We went there in part to escape the long, gray, rainy Paris winter.

This island has a huge volcano on it, though the volcano hasn't been active since 1909.  Mt. Teide is 12,198 feet tall, and is the highest point in Spain and of all Atlantic islands.  We spent one night in the lodge inside the national park surrounding the volcano.  We would have spent more nights, but it was fully booked months in advance.  The drive up to the park passes through cloudy forests covered in moss, but eventually opens out into barren lava fields with nothing but waves of jagged, black and ochre lava.  In some places a few hardy shrubs are starting to pop up, and sparse pine trees. mostly quite small, dot the area.

In the photo below, you can see that the volcano has some snow on top, despite being around the same latitude as the Sahara desert.  Altitude makes all the difference.  In the foreground of this photo are rock formations that were originally underground lava streams pushing toward the surface.  Over the last hundred years or so, the softer earth around this solid rock lava has eroded, leaving them standing vertical in the open air.  These are about one to two hundred feet high. 

This is the view of the island from the plane window.

After checking into our hotel, we took a short, hot hike through those lava formations.  The next three photos are actually the same photo. The first is the full view, and the next two are enlargements to give a sense of scale.  

See the trail in the valley in the photo above?  There are a couple of hikers looking at their map on that trail. The white arrow in the photo above points out where the hikers are. 

Here's a closer view where (hopefully) you can see the hikers.  Looking at this on a tiny phone screen, I'm not sure you'll be able to see them.  They should be plainly visible on a  computer monitor though. 

Later that night, we drove back to the edge of the national park, where pine forests were starting to establish themselves on the edges of the lava field.  Green trees in black lava gravel were a pleasant sight, especially with the snow-capped volcano in the background.  There were only about 15 cars parked there, and we only saw about 10 people while we hiked a short path around the area.  It was a bit cold because of the altitude and the gusty winds at the tops of the small hills we climbed.  Much more snow was visible at the top of the mountain from this side.  I like how the new trees are following ridge lines.  I assume this has something to do with how the moisture collects or how the wind affects saplings.  It's also cool to see small plants starting to colonize the black lava field just above the center of the right side of the photo.  

This is a view of the volcano from yet another angle.  From this angle, we can see a massive, more recent outflow of lava blackening much of this side of the volcano.  The ligther-colored parts of the volcano have been colonized by various high-altitude plants, but the solid lava of the black area is still too inhospitable for plant life. A large, white stain is also visible, spreading to the left and right of the vent that most of the lava flowed out of.  A mineral in the flow gives it this different color.  I'm guessing it's sulfur. 

If you look carefully along the upper slope of the volcano in the first photo above, you'll see the towers for the cable cars that take visitors almost to the top of the mountain.  We tried going there one day, but the winds were so violent that they had to close the cable car the rest of the day.  We went back early the next morning, and managed to get to the top without too much trouble.  They have two cars operating, so the wait wasn't too long. 

The views from the top were utterly unobstructed.  We were lucky enough to have very few clouds. In this first photo, you can see the curvature of the caldera, where the main eruption occurred, blowing off the top several hundred feet of the island.  Also, in the center of the left side, you can see a beach, far, far below.  The white line is the surf hitting the beach.  

The next photo from the observation area near the top has more snow, a wide view of the caldera, with many colors caused by various minerals forced up from deep in the Earth by the eruption, plus a glimpse of the mountains of another of the Canary Islands among the clouds in the far distance. Sorry, I'm not sure which one it is.  I think maybe Gran Canaria. 

Because Tenerife is so remote, and this volcano is at such a high altitude, the area became a haven for astronomical observatories.  The island enacted laws protecting the park area from light pollution at night.  We tried out some star photography that night.  In this night shot, you can see the freakish upthrusting lava flows at the bottom of the scene. 

The next day, we drove on to a different area.  On the way out, we got this view of Mt. Teide from the other side.  

Hope you enjoyed this, the first of three about our visit to the Canary Islands.  Stay tuned for two more posts on on traveling around Tenerife.  This next one is about a hike that took us along the opposite coast of the island.  That one will be followed by mind boggling views taken from above the clouds while the sun was setting, as seen from one of the national park roads.  

This trip reminded us a lot of our trip to Madeira. If you enjoyed these photos, you may also enjoy this one of a coastal mountain hike we did there. 

Also, since this post isn't too far after July 14th, Bastille Day, or Quatorze Juillet, as they say in France, here's a link to the amazing fireworks at the Eiffel Tower they do every year.