Drinking water- check. Thick sole shoes - check. Several chocolate bars -check.
One last stop to a gas station (Disa in Spanish) to fill up the tank of my cute road warrior and i am sitting comfortably behind the wheel of a smart car. Yes, it is a Smart. Why? I don't know honestly. I was always amused by that small vehicle and i have decided to rent one to try, out of curiosity and i probably thought it's going to be smart to drive it on those narrow mountain roads of Tenerife.
You will find it surprising how much space it has inside. You feel like in a regular sedan until you hit a road bump, you can feel them all, but apart from that it handles nicely. Also you feel somewhat surprised each time you get out of it, and realize how small it is. Each time it puts a slight smile on your face. Which is good 🙂
Always use a wide angle lens for a selfie, like this one 16-50 mm by Sony. It will make your head big, nose even larger and you will look funny. Which is also good 🙂
I left from Los Gigantes and my gps said it's about 50 kilometers and 1 hour drive. It is understandable as the road elevates to the mountains and is very curvy. Needless to say the scenery itself is amazing, so do not rush, let it be one hour and a half drive, but enjoy and stop frequently in dedicated places and snap some pictures.
The climb is very scenic and tropical setting of palm trees and cactus plants are gradually changing to a more familiar picture of pine trees.
Which in turn is being switched to a rocky lava fields little by little with still quite plentiful vegetation. Stops near the road are still quite frequent here and you can take a minute to stop and enjoy the views and vistas that open from the top.
After a short while you find yourself entering the gates to the lunar part of the National Park. Most of vegetation is gone with the exception of some kind of bushes. Sharp rocks are bracing the road and feeling itself is hard to explain. You have to be there to experience it. It is something you will not see in the pictures.
You can't get lost, there is only one road and eventually you will arrive to Ground Zero. Teide Peak(wikipedia). You can't miss it. Literally. It is the third highest volcano in the world. And this is where things start to get really weird, with that totally rocky - lunar like lanscape, with some occasional sand vertexes. Probably the brain has to adjust...
My plan was to take a lift up to the volcano and do some tracking and photography there. To enter the crater itself even higher you need a special permit that you have to arrange in advance, which i did not. But to my biggest dismay the lifts were not working due to very high winds that day... and that was a failure. I should have checked the website prior to going there which i did not... Nobody to blame just a funny guy with a big nose.
After which the only and the most touristic thing ever i could do was to go into a souvenir shop and snatch one of those fridge magnets, and pretend that i have been on top of Teide Mount which will be the biggest lie to the end of my days. I do not know if i will return to go up the mount, as there are still so many amazing places to see in Tenerife and there is so little time for everything. But who knows. Maybe some day i will.
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And even though i did not get to the top, the trip was worth every minute spent to get there. It is a special place, with a special atmosphere, and it is worth to go there even without getting up. Just pick some warm clothes,
it is really chilly even without getting to the top. And take a pair of sunglasses too, the sun is extremely bright.
With not much else to do and still quite early in the day i have decide to go to Puerto de la Cruz on the north side of an island and visit Loro Park. But that will be covered in a separate post.
I hope you have enjoyed this trip to Teide Peak with me. Thank you for your upvotes as it supports my photography and in fact made these images possible since the gear was acquired with the help of Steemit rewards which would not have been possible otherwise.
Gear used: Sony A7R II Sony 55mm f1.8 Zeiss Sonnar T* and Sony a6300 with 16-50.