Holiday in November 2007 and geology field trip in March 2008.

This webpage shows some of the best tourist sites in Tenerife, visited during my holiday in November 2007 and my geology trip of March 2008. (see geology field trips).

Some miscellaneous facts about Tenerife:

• Mount Teide is the highest point in the Atlantic Ocean, and the highest point in Spain, reaching 12,200 feet above sea level. . It is the third highest oceanic volcano in the world, after those of Hawaii, in terms of height above the surrounding ocean floor.
• A cable car carries visitors to within a few hundred feet of Mount Teide's summit. A permit is required to climb to the summit.
• Below any caldera is a solidified magma chamber of impervious basalt. As a result, many calderas around the world contain a lake. Although the Tenerife calderas do not have lakes, moisture cannot drain readily from above the magma chamber, and therefore Tenerife has no significant water shortage problem and tap water is safe to drink.
• The mountain village of Masca is mindful in many ways, if not in scale, of Machu Picchu in Peru. It can be reached by public bus service from Puerto de Santiago, and return to that coastal town can be made by walking from Masca to the nearby shoreline (downhill all the way!), from which a boat service operates back to Puerto de Santiago.
• Tenerife is the only place on Earth where you can drive from sea level to 10,000 feet in about an hour and a half (that's nearly 2 feet per second!).