The Hot and the Cold Climate of Tenerife

You might guess that Tenerife would be a warm place given that it is part of the Canary Island group sitting off the southernmost coast of Morocco in the eastern Atlantic Ocean. And you would be right, but not completely right. Tenerife is approximately the same latitude as Orlando, Florida, but unlike Orlando, the island goes from sea level to 12,198 feet in altitude.

A few years ago I experienced both extremes within a matter of hours on the same day. After barely escaping Brussels in a snowstorm and spending a sub-freezing Christmas eve in Madrid, I arrived in Tenerife North Airport (site of the worst airline disaster in history, the 1977 runway collision between two 747s that killed 583 people). Luckily, no drama for my arrival.

cactus

 

The initial wave of high heat and humidity was a welcome change from the dreary winter I had left behind. There were many cacti, but also a wide variety of subtropical trees and plants. Loro Parque, a combination zoo, aquarium, and botanical garden, was like walking into a jungle and reef all in one. As the name suggests, the parrot collection alone is the largest in the world. The number of orchids was astounding, as I talked about in this earlier post. We even met a gorilla.

gorilla

After building up a good sweat, it was time to head to the highlands. More specifically, it was time to drive up the winding roads to the summit of El Teide in Teide National Park. This snow-capped volcano is the highest point in all of Spain (the Canary Islands are Spanish possessions), not to mention the highest in all the Atlantic Ocean islands and the third largest volcano in the world.

El Teide, Tenerife

The twisting roads for this trip are a topic deserving of their own post, but eventually you get to a spot where you can park and board a cable car up to just below the summit, at 11,663 feet. From there you can hike to the top, though on the day we were there the snow and ice was considered too dangerous and park officials banned hikers for the last section. The views were amazing, as was the cold.

From there we wound our way back down and continued our drive around the island. From heat and humid to cold and ice and now back to the rocky beaches. Definitely a day to remember.

Tenerife

Of course, that was just the beginning. I’ll have more on the science of Tenerife, and even some parasailing, in future installments.

David J. Kent has been a scientist for thirty-five years, is an avid science traveler, and an independent Abraham Lincoln historian. He is the author of Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity (now in its 5th printing) and two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate. His book on Thomas Edison is due in Barnes and Noble stores in spring 2016.

Follow me by subscribing by email on the home page.  And feel free to “Like” my Facebook author’s page and connect on LinkedIn.  Share with your friends using the buttons below.

Tenerife from the Snow

El Teide, TenerifeThe road to Tenerife is paved with four inches of snow. At least, that was the case for this trip. So while the warmth of the largest Canary Island waited off the coast of Morocco, my plane sat in the Brussels airport buried in snowflakes. At first it seemed just a minor delay – only a half hour waiting for the bus to take us to the Airbus A320. Brussels had seen snow before, I reminded myself, and this didn’t seem like that much. The snow coming in on the train was fluffy; beautiful, in fact. Okay, it was cold, even frigid, but a little ice is easy to handle. No matter, we were ready to board the transport.

“Excusez-moi, Mesdames et Messieurs.” “Neem me niet kwalijk, dames en heren.”

This can’t be good, I thought. The announcement repeated over the airport intercom. Somehow the mere introduction, in French and Dutch, was enough to create a wave of incredulous groaning from the passengers impatiently dawdling in the concourse. We all knew what was coming.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, we regret to inform you that the airport is now closed because of the weather. We will keep you posted as to when the status changes. Thank you.”

The next three hours seemed like forever. The din from hundreds of disgruntled travelers calling their bosses, spouses, paramours, and travel agents was deafening. No one was happy, but then in oft-rainy Brussels no one ever seems to be happy. Most of us wandered around, looking to see if anyone else was taking off (they weren’t) or giving up and leaving the airport (they were). I had an overnight stopover in Madrid, so knowing that I had some time to kill anyway, decided to stick it out, keeping myself company watching the television monitor documenting the snowfall accumulations.

Somehow I survived, though whether it was despite not having a cell phone of my own, or because of it, I can’t be sure. All I remember is that eventually we were told to board the bus, which took fifteen minutes to snake around the entire terminal (possibly twice) before letting us off about 50 feet from the plane. The slog through snow drifts at least a foot deep, and the climb up the slippery steps to the fuselage, was a challenge. Then more time waiting our turn at the de-icing station where we spent another ten minutes under a waterfall of what I knew from experience was not the most innocuous of chemicals. I didn’t care; we were off the ground. Tenerife or bust.

I found out later that I was in the last plane to leave Brussels that day. Only six planes took off, the rest were stranded; some as long as two days. Ironically, on my first day in the tropical paradise I would discover that Tenerife also boasted frigid cold and snow. But that’s another story.

Check out this earlier look at The Orchids of Tenerife.

[More on Tenerife and other science travel coming soon. Reposted from Hot White Snow.]

David J. Kent is an avid traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, now available. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (both Fall River Press). He has also written two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

Follow me by subscribing by email on the home page. Share with your friends using the buttons below.

 

The Orchids of Tenerife

As you read this I’m on my way to an island adventure (more on that later), which got me thinking about a past island adventure – Christmas in Tenerife. A quick Google search will show you that Tenerife is the main island in a group called the Canary Islands. Located off the coast of Morocco in northwest Africa, the Canaries actually belong to Spain. So my snowy escape from Brussels got me to frigid Madrid and then on to the nicely toasty Tenerife. [Toasty at sea level anyway; the summit of the volcano in the center of Tenerife was covered in ice and snow.]

Back to the toasty, even downright tropical, climate near the sea. While roaming the island and visiting Loro Parque I fell into a pod of orchids. Now I’m no orchid expert (to say the least), so I’m counting on all of you to let me know what to call the orchids that follow. Enjoy the photos.

Orchid DSC03453 DSC03454 DSC03455 DSC03456 DSC03457 DSC03458 Orchid

Orca

Okay, that last one was an Orca, not an Orchid. My bad.

I also suspect not all the orchids are orchids. Any orchid experts out there?

More on my travels.

David J. Kent is the author of Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) (both Fall River Press). He has also written two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Follow me by subscribing by email on the home page.  And feel free to “Like” my Facebook author’s page and connect on LinkedIn.  Share with your friends using the buttons below.