The Cañadas del Teide

avatar

Read this post on TravelFeed.io for the best experience


We emerged from the forest of las Lagunetas into the vast caldera known as las Cañadas, and our automotive tour went from “gorgeous” to “stunning”. This was a landscape unlike any we’d seen before, and we took our time making our way through it.

Paragliders and el Teide

The word “caldera” means “cauldron” in Spanish, but it’s been adopted into English to describe massive depressed craters formed by the collapse of an exhausted magma chamber. Why have we adopted a Spanish word for this geological phenomenon? Simple. It was first used in this way back in 1815 by geologist Leopold von Buch, during his visit to Tenerife.

But why is it called the caldera of Las Cañadas, and not of the Teide? Well, although it’s currently the most prominent, the Teide is not Tenerife’s original volcano. Millions of years before it sprouted from the ground, there were other similar-sized volcanoes in the center of the island, known as Las Cañadas I, II and III. Each one eventually collapsed, forming the caldera we see today. The Teide grew in the crater of its departed brethren… and one day will be joining them (the volcano is occasionally referred to as Las Cañadas IV).

So, the landscape here is old. Well, partially old, and partially new. The are rock formations that date back to the Miocene era, while other landscapes are formed by relatively recent eruptions. (Let’s not forget that the Teide is an active volcano! The latest explosion was in 1909, on the Santiago ridge.) One of the coolest among the many viewpoints we’d stop at today was opposite a sloping rock face, where the ages are laid bare. You can see in colorful detail which layers were formed by which volcanic eruptions.

There are so many viewpoints in this park! We paused at Mirador de el Valle, and La Tarta, and Montaña Limón… all before even reaching the welcome center of the park, at El Portillo. We couldn’t resist spending time here, as well, to learn about the area’s formation, and watch a short video that described the geological processes with informative animations.

If in a hurry, you could get from the welcome center to the Parador de Cañadas in twenty minutes, easy. But it took us a couple hours… every time we rounded some curve, there’d be an amazing new landscape to take in. Crazy rock formations, pitch black sand, and views stretching out toward the other Canary Islands. I’ll stop writing now, and let our images explain the weird beauty of this place. It’s an area we’d be returning to repeatedly, during our 91 days on Tenerife.

From our Tenerife Travel Blog

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_UqQQmlO-a/

Image galleries are not supported by your current frontend. View this post on TravelFeed.io for the full experience.


View this post on TravelFeed for the best experience.



0
0
0.000
3 comments
avatar

Congratulations, your post has been added to Pinmapple! 🎉🥳🍍

Did you know every user has their own profile map?
And so does every post as well!

Want to have your post on the map too?

  • Go to Pinmapple
  • Click the get code button
  • Click on the map where your post should be (zoom in if needed)
  • Copy and paste the generated code in your post (Hive only)
  • Congrats, your post is now on the map!

0
0
0.000
avatar

Hiya, @choogirl here, just swinging by to let you know that this post made it into our Top 3 in Daily Travel Digest #828.

Your post has been manually curated by the @pinmapple team. If you like what we're doing, please drop by to check out all the rest of today's great posts and consider supporting other authors like yourself and us so we can keep the project going!

Become part of our travel community:

0
0
0.000
avatar

Congratulations @for91days! You received the biggest smile and some love from TravelFeed! Keep up the amazing blog. 😍 Your post was also chosen as top pick of the day and is now featured on the TravelFeed.io front page.

Thanks for using TravelFeed!
@worldcapture (TravelFeed team)

PS: TravelFeed is in social media to reach out more people, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

0
0
0.000