Seeing stars

The day started again with an hour's power walk along the sea front and this time I carried just my water bottle - strangely enough I wasn't quite the last one this time, although I still ended up an energised blob by the end of it. Aqua aerobics followed and to be honest it was a perfect way to ease off the muscles while enjoying fun time in the pool with the sun on your back. While I was on the walk I asked the guide about the rock structure at the base of the black volcanic mass in my shot from Monday 2nd and she explained that the underlying rock had in fact started out as black volcanic lava but had been smoothed off by years of pummelling by the sea.

The remaining day was spent relaxing by the delightful pool and then my son-in-law, C, and I went off on an adventure to see Mt Teide at night. It is Spain's highest mountain and I think it stands about 12,oooft high. We started off with a super meal on the way up and then, as the sun went down, the coach continued upwards and upwards along a circuitous but well made road into the main mountain area. All around us were hills of different sizes, but mostly conical, all being the result of eruptions over the years. I had always thought of Tenerife as being the result of one enormous volcanic eruption, but in fact the island terrain is made up of numerous volcanic mounds. Until the darkness obliterated the view we could see that the land around us was becoming more and more lunar like with just patchy vegetation, mostly in the form of cacti. Then we were into a pine forest, potato plantations and vineyards which was all a surprise to me as we were very high by this time. Then we were out of the forest and back into pumice rocks and then huge volcanic boulders. I would really love to come up here in daylight another time.

Once at our destination we disembarked our coach and as our eyes began to adjust to the darkness we became aware of the most wondrous sparkly canopy above us. No flash cameras or lights from other gizmos were permitted so that we could take it all in as our guide explained with great knowledge and enthusiasm about the stars, satellites, planets and constellations. He used a laser beam to point out the points of interest as he spoke and with his help we were able to identify most of the zodiac in the elliptical plane below the astonishing Milky Way. The photos simply cannot do the scene justice but I did want to share some of the magic with you. You can see the Milky Way quite clearly and the single line is from a passing satellite, the straight line being the result of the time exposure. I can now understand why Tenerife is noted for being one of the best places to see the night sky and also why there is a strict "no fly zone" over the area at night. We spent a truly magical hour and a bit on Mt Teide, during which time it appeared that the whole sky moved - except it was really the earth of course - and Venus vanished below the horizon, with the very distinctive Plough starting to lose the two end stars, while the Milky Way edged further across the sky above us. During our time in the darkness we also saw three shooting stars and another which blinked spasmodically - our guide explained that this was "space junk", in other words debris from rockets et al. The blinking arises because as the junk hurtles through space it is periodically lit up by the sun. It was a truly magical night.