We’ve had a great a week, bathed in warm sunshine. It’s been perfectly balanced between relaxation and physical activity. First thing every other day we’ve played an hour and a half of tennis. The courts are situated on a cliff edge, which makes it difficult to concentrate, as the view out across the ocean is pretty special. We went for a interesting coastal walk that begun in Las Aguas, with a path that took us to the beautiful little hamlet of San Juan de la Rambla, which offered some incredible views out over the Atlantic. We’ve getting used to knowing that after reaching the crescendo of a tough walk the prize is an amazing vista. Mid week we had decided that the pull of Mt Teide had become to strong, so we embarked on a 90-minute journey of tiny roads winding through mountain villages up through the clouds, stopping to take in the various miradors as we ascended. Mt Teide last erupted around 1910, but the lava fields that dominate the landscape as you near the base station could have been created yesterday, as could the carved magma channels that run down the mountain range. We arrived at the base station of Teide (circa 2350M), and met the cable that takes you the additional 1000M up, the other 200 meters, you walk yourself. The temperature at the base station was 24 degrees, but amazingly as we got out at the top there were patches of snow and the temperature had plunged to a chilly 4, or 5 degrees. Once up at the top the views were as I’m sure you can imagine incredible and you could see 4 of the other 7 Canary Islands, as well as the Pico Viejo volcano (3150 M – 2nd highest peek in Tenerife) It has an huge crater measuring 720M in diameter and one could only imagine what it would have looked like with the “roof” on. The only things missing for me was a bit more snow and a set of skis! New Years Eve was the day that we’d booked our whale watching trip, it meant an hours drive down south to Costa Adeje, where we boarded the “MonteCristo” a comfortable 20M catamaran, along with a group of 12 other people. We set sail at 10am for what was to be a 3hr excursion. After about an hour out and a couple of miles away from the shore, the captain had sighted the first of what was to be 4, or 5 pods of pilot whales. I loaded my phone into the gimbal, to make sure that I wouldn’t miss anything and what I’d capture would be of reasonable quality, so I spent the next the 15 minutes enthralled as the whales. Then as quickly as appeared, they were gone. They can stay below the surface for 90 minutes before needing to resurface for air. After returning to the dock we decided to head back to the apartment for lunch and to review what I was certain would be some great footage. Well I’m certain that had I checked to see that I was actually recording, it probably would have been!
Dream Chasers 