We did a sort of circular route providing some nice views on the way up and down.
We started at essentially sea level and wound our way up some secondary roads through the villages of Arona and Vilaflor. Lots of switchbacks but these roads were almost two lanes wide so the driving wasn't as scary at two days ago. At around the elevation of Vilaflor, the landscape changed to green coniferous forest with a few nice views at some scenic lookouts aka "Miradors"
As we entered the National Park (which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site), the landscape suddenly changed to sometimes barren and sometimes rugged lava fields dominated by the peak in the background.
Continuing on upward we drove to an area called the Roques de Garcia intending to do some hiking. We were able to walk about 2 km around the rocks. Some very interesting rock and landscape.
The longer hiking trail, and all of the others in the Park, were closed today as they were hunting mouflon throughout the park to try to control their numbers.
That limited our touring to just driving and stopping at some of the numerous Miradors. They actually have some good interpretive signs at each location explaining the type of volcanic landscape you are looking at.
Here is a pumice deposit area that looks like a sand dune.
The highest elevation for the road is about 8000 ft. We drove to the northeast park entrance at El Portillo and stopped to tour the botanical gardens, essentially desert type plants we are accustomed to seeing in Joshua Tree NP.
We noticed that a cloud layer had formed below us at around 5000 ft giving an eerie view.
The visitor centre there had a very good interpretive display and we watched a movie (with English headphones) that explained the formation of the islands and the continued volcanic activity.
From here we reversed direction and headed home taking a little different route that traversed an immense lava field from where we could see the vents from the last eruption in 1909.
Down through the clouds and we were home by 4:00.
We spent some time getting organized to leave tomorrow then headed out for supper.
