Tenerife Tidbits

After a month long break in blogging, I figured I should update y'all once again!  For the last few weeks we've been in Tenerife while the ship continues with annual maintenance and I continue on in HR.  I thought I'd share a few fun facts about Tenerife as it's a beautiful place and we've all had a great time. 

Fact # 1: Tenerife has the same longitude as Florida, making it an ideal place to enjoy outside activities. Although the hospital is dormant while in Tenerife, HR has been quite busy since we are preparing all the files for those that are volunteering this year in Togo.  Despite the constant pace of HR, in my off time I've had some good adventures exploring the island on the weekends.

Fact #2:  With the volcanic activity of the island, much of the Tenerife sand is black.  However, when Haley, Leah and I biked 14 miles to the beach and back, we found that they import the sand from the Sahara Desert to give the beach a more "tropical" look.   Above is this oh-so-tropical import.  Below are Leah, me and Haley biking back from the beach with one of the many hillside cities in the background.

Fact #3: Much of the northern part of the island is quite rocky and without sand along the shoreline, so the Canarians have made a recreation of swimming in the "natural rock pools."  My HR counterpart Marianne and I went to Garachico one day to see these little pools and just walk around.  You can see the natural pools just over Marianne's shoulder on the right.

Fact# 4: Los Gigantes (the cliffs of the giants) were once very sacred and thought to be the end of the earth.  They rise out of the sea from a height up to 2600 feet. 

  

Last weekend a few of us took a bus up to Masca - a small village of about 150 inhabitants set up in the hills far away from the conveniences of modern life. The villagers grow their own wheat, veggies and fruits along the very rocky and uneven hillsides.  Masca looks like this:  

Here you can see how uneven the roads are. Literally you take a few steps the wrong way and down you fall into the abyss!  Along the north and western ends of the island are many gorges formed by erosion.  We hiked down a massive gorge starting in Masca, scaling large rocks and going through small streams. 

It's hard to describe the enormity of the landscape around us.  Here is Clare at the top before we'd started our four hour descent, but you can still see how vast the surrounding hillsides are. 

Here we are almost all the way down and still happy despite our tired thighs 

Some of the girls coming down

Then we emerged from the rocks to this:

and to this:

Pure beauty where we relaxed after a good hike amidst Los Gigantes.  We jumped into the warm green waters in our hiking clothes to cool down before taking a boat back to the city (at which point we rode past multitudes of dolphins!)  An amazing day and a great way to end our time in Tenerife. 

While it has been a nice break to be out of the sauna-like heat of Africa and see new parts of the world, it's good to be heading back to Africa for Part II.  Once we get to Togo I'll transition to working in the ward as an RD.  We are currently almost done sailing down the western coast with plans to be in Togo tomorrow.  More to come soon!