The Canary Islands Chapter 1: Santa Cruz de Tenerife

Mt. Teide engulfed in clouds

With two days at sea between Dakar, Senegal and Santa Cruz deTenerife, we had a couple of surprises.  Chuck discovered that when we are in Naples, a sister ship, the Noordam, will also be in port.  Under normal circumstances, we would be happy to have a sister ship in port, but this year, we are really thrilled!!! Our friends Pam and Paul Floyd from New Lenox are on that ship and will be in port with us!  So we did a little research to find out how to get hold of them since they aren’t online while traveling.  We’ve sent some messages back and forth between the ships and have now arranged to get together at least briefly while we are there.  It will be very exciting to see someone from home while in Italy!

The other surprise was a very unpleasant scare for us, but fortunately it was short-lived.  On March 31^st we found a form in the room when we got back after dinner asking us how much luggage we would be shipping home from Rome.   While we are not arriving in Rome until May 10^th, we are continuing on for two more weeks and won’t be disembarking until May 24^th in Amsterdam!  So I took the form to the concierge and asked her about luggage shipment from Amsterdam.  She told me that all luggage would have to be shipped from Rome!  In addition, strict regulations stated that we would only be able to ship clothing items.  Hmm… This posed quite a dilemma!  Could be an interesting two weeks without any clothes to wear!  We were really upset, and when we talked to others in the same situation, they were just as frustrated and upset as we were!  All of us had been told by different people that we could ship from Amsterdam and that we would find out what the rules for sending from Amsterdam on the ship. Fortunately we learned on the following day that Seattle had forgotten to tell the ship that there would be people shipping luggage from Amsterdam!  All of us were breathing a collective sigh of relief! 

Our next three stops after Senegal are all in the Canary Islands.  There are seven inhabited islands in the Canaries, and we are visiting three of them.  Contrary to what many people think, the Canaries are not named for the bird.  Actually, the bird is named for the country.  The Canaries are so named because of the dogs that inhabited the islands when they were first settled. 

The Canaries were taken by Spain in 1496 and became an important via  point for traveling to the New World – so important that the British tried several times to take the Canaries from Spain;  probably the most famous attempted conquest was led by Lord Nelson, who quite literally gave his arm in the attempt.  After the Spanish defeated the British, the Spanish general arranged medical assistance for Nelson and his men, and Nelson’s severely injured arm was amputated. The Spanish leader’s philosophy was that once the battle was over, they were no longer enemies.

Tenerife is the largest of the seven inhabited islands, with an area of a little over 2000 km².  It is also the most populous island with nearly 900,000 inhabitants.  Tourism is a very important industry with about 5 million visitors a year.  Santa Cruz is the capital of the island as well as being the capital of the country, a title shared with Las Palmas on the island of Grand Canary.  Tenerife also boasts the highest mountain in all of Spanish possessions, including Spain itself:  Mount Teide (pronounced taydeh, though we keep wanting to make it tidy for some strange reason) rises 12,270 feet into the air, making it the third highest volcano in the world, measuring from its base. 

Our shore excursion would take us to this famed mountain.  We quickly decided that our guide Isidro was definitely a scientist; a fact later confirmed when he commented that he was a geologist!  His wealth of information was incredible.  Unfortunately, we can’t remember all the specific details (I’m no longer taking notes as we do the excursions so I can actually enjoy the scenery), but his running commentary was fascinating!  Our journey took us up through heavily forested areas into the Cañadas del Teide National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  We made a brief stop for a panoramic view of the valley overlooking the city coupled with the majestic rise of the mountain as a backdrop before continuing on our way to El Portillo Restaurant (no, not my favorite Portillo’s – no delicious hamburgers or hot dogs there) where we had tea and biscuits. By this time, we had left the tree line behind and the landscape looked like what we might expect to find on the moon – with the exception that the moon would not have plant life. As we boarded the bus after our stop, Isidro commented that all the buses coming down the mountain were wet, indicating that we would most likely be encountering rainy weather. 

This proved to be the case as we continued on our way.  We were soon totally engulfed in mist and fog, causing the mystique of the landscape to appear even more foreign!  It looked much like sand with outcrops of rocks and some mossy vegetation.  Actually it wasn’t sand at all, but pumice, ground so fine that it looked like sand.  Isidro explained that the pumice was important to the plant growth.  It is the pumice that holds water, allowing the low-lying plants to get enough moisture to exist.  In addition to the pumice we could see basalt, and many outcrops of dark, shiny obsidian.  That brought back memories of my days at Outdoor Ed when we would have the students study rock samples.  Obsidian was always easy to pick out because it looked like black glass with shell-like fractures in it. 

We had seen beautiful views of Mt. Teide as we set out on our excursion, so even though it was raining and foggy at the top, we could picture the lovely mountain.  We decided not to get out in the rain and fog so turned around and headed back down the mountain. 

The road we traveled was narrow and winding.  We were very grateful to have an extremely skilled driver who was as familiar with her bus as we are with our Hondas!  There were many times when the passengers seemed to inhale sharply as if trying to make the bus narrower while passing other behemoths that appeared to be taking up far more than their share of the road.  At times I’d look over the side and hope that we wouldn’t be one of those statistics tumbling down the mountain in a charter bus!   Yikes!  But she maneuvered those narrow roads as easily as I would drive down Route 30 at home! 

Our guide gave us a running commentary all the way back. One story that fascinated me was his tale about a skill that people of Lago Island (I hope I have that correct) have.  Apparently the people of that island have learned to whistle in such a way that they can actually talk through whistling.  Each person’s whistle is distinct so that if he were on the island and heard someone whistle his name, he would know before seeing the person who it was (much like recognizing a person’s voice on the phone).  The whistles are so loud and distinct that in one case a man called a friend and whistled his message quietly into the phone rather than trying to whistle out to the person and disturb everyone else around him. For awhile, this skill was no longer taught, and there was concern that it might die out completely.  However, older people are now teaching the skill to younger children so the art continues.  It would be fascinating to hear!

Tenerife is a beautiful island.  We would have enjoyed more time here, but it was time to move on to our next port of call, Las Palmas, on the Grand Canary Island. 

BT