TENERIFE

We enjoyed a trip up to Mount Teide during our stay in Tenerife. It really is amazing how you can go from a dry arid volcanic landscape up through a dense pine forest and out onto the surface of the moon. The weather was kind to us at the top, so we had stunning views and cold crisp air.

The shopping was good in Santa Cruz so we have been able to re-stock our provisions as I believe from here on the supplies will be getting harder to get hold of. Good job I stocked the freezer to the top before leaving Falmouth. Gosh, that feels like a lifetime away already!!

We left Tenerife on the 5^th of October at 4am to ensure a daylight arrival time in La Gomera. The approach into the harbour is through a small buoyed channel, which is simple in daylight but a real mission in the dark, which we found out on our departure!

San Sebastian de la Gomera is a lovely small town. There are a couple of beaches here and some nice restaurants. We went on a tour of the island which showed just how remote and inaccessible parts of the island still are even with some of the new roads that have been put in place. The Island people have developed a ‘whistling’ language to be able to communicate across the ravines and between villages. We were lucky to witness it in use, and it is amazing. It is still taught in the schools today so hopefully it will not die out with the competition from the mobile phone.

As you climb up the volcanos to cloud level, there is a very unexpected rain forest. Everything is dripping with rain drops which are drawn from the cloud cover, they call it ‘horizontal rain’.

After our brief stop in San Sebastian we are off to the island of La Palma.