Canary Islands

These pictures were taken from the boat the morning we docked at Santa Cruz on the Canary Island of Tenerife after 6 straight days at sea. I didn't take my camera on the island so these are all the pictures I have until my brother gets back. We took a bus tour that morning nearly to the top of Mt. Teide, which is the main volcano on the island. We actually drove through the clouds on the way up. I think we reached about 8000 feet. The ground looked like the surface of Mars up there. There was a cable car near our stop that took passengers to about 500 feet short of the summit. We didn't have a chance to ride it but neither Matt or myself are big on cable cars. The air was definitely a little thinner up there. The real excitement came on the bus ride down the mountain. Our driver was some old dude who apparently wanted to get home. We were flying around curves with a cliff just a feet or two off the road. I'm sure the 2 foot rail would have kept our tour bus from plummeting a hundred feet. There was a lady who was afraid to get back on the bus for the ride down because she thought the ride up was so scary (and it was). Luckily we survived to tell about it.

In the afternoon we walked around the city. It was abandoned because we were there on a Sunday but the giant city pool was open so we got to check out some attractive topless sunbathers. Most of the buildings were pretty old and the city was really that nice overall. Based on the architecture, it looked like a hot tourist destination in the 50s. There were a couple of modern twin 40-story towers that were pretty cool. On the bus we did drive past the site of the world's worst airplane crash which involved a runaway collision of two commercial jets. Not a bad location but there are better spots.