Gran Canaria part six - the Roque!

GRAN CANARIA

PART SIX

THE ROQUE!

Here's Sue in the hot sunshine, walking the path up to Roque Nublo. Behind her is the road we drove up.

 Luckily, there were plenty of other people to take a picture for us. You can see there is very little vegetation up here, but the pine trees are in abundance. We were already blown away by all this, but it just got better and better.

 As we reached a plateau, we saw this - the volcano Mount Teidi on Tenerife, floating in a sea of cloud. I am beginning to run out of superlatives now! We just looked and looked - it was mesmerising to see in real life. Teidi is about 20 miles away, but today it looked as though it was just offshore.

 

This was called 'bishops rock' (can you see why?)

 

This rock, strangely, had a hole in the top of it - a volcanic 'bubble', maybe?

Roque Nublo - ever closer now. 

 

Now we were higher (and closer) we could see the hole really clearly.

We were very close to Nublo now, just this volcanic plateau to cross, and we were there. Nublo, I read somewhere, was where the island was 'born'. This is purported to be the chimney that spewed out the matter that is now Gran Canaria - where it all began. 

 

Sorry for the repetition, but I just can't resist a series of Teidi pictures. We were now standing below Nublo, and from here, it really is an awesome monolith.

 

This is a zoomed shot of the very top of the Nublo rock. I suppose people HAVE climbed this.

Amazingly, there were still plants that were prepared to struggle here, here's a picture of one of the few very scarce blooms we saw. 

 

We sat down in the shadows of the giant (it was REALLY hot in the full glare of the sun) and had lunch with this as our view - breathtaking!

 

We only needed to turn our heads from this lunchtime vantage point to see this. Another famous landmark - Roque Bentaiga.

 Here we are (out of the shadows for a picture).

There was this column of rock that just HAD to be the picture of the day, so of course, we clambered up onto it for these amazing shots. 

 

What an absolutely PERFECT day - we were SO lucky to see this in these conditions.

Of course, in a place like this, you're never alone and there were many people doing the same as us (well, maybe not clambering onto the top of rocks for pictures, but you know what I mean). 

Two other people, at least, were doing 'the rock'. This was a nice shot of them and Teidi through a volcanic 'window'. 

Now it was time to re-trace our steps back down. It had been a really incredible experience coming up here, but the day wasn't over yet. We still had a lot of time, and a CAR, so we set off back to continue the journey. There's the bishop - seeing us off the premises!