Not much wind at all today. So little, in fact, that when I called the centre this morning they were happy to declare it as unlikely to be windy. So we went off to see the slightly dormant volcano, Mount Tiede. Which proved to be extremely interesting…
A huge ring of sharp-edged old rocks - were they the edge of a crater or something else? The blurb on the various explanatory noticeboards had a different story - apparently, 170000 years ago, the whole side of a much larger mountain slipped into the sea in a seismic event, leaving the sharp-edged old rocks. Meanwhile, the volcanic activity cranked up and built the current mountain in the middle of the resulting plain. The tall isolated stacks are actually the lava tubes, which, having cooled and congealed in the surrounding rock, are exposed when the softer rock is worn away, leaving them standing alone. Amazing. You can also see the other lava ducts, which are like sideways ridges, and there's one still going up the side of an exposed cliff. The lava is like concrete with softer material holding chunks of harder rock - it's incredible to think that the huge temperature and pressure didn't actually melt these chunks, leaving them held in a kind of concrete.
Generally good to get to know all this. We also had tea and ice-cream in the caff, before heading down to the local supermarket and getting some supplies in for the week. The evening passed with barbecued dorado and rather large caipirinhas all round, twice. Hic. Roll on tomorrow.
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