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| Photo: Mine |
This is a finishing up of our last trip through Tenerife this past February. Heading out from Peurta de La Cruz we started in San Cristobal de La Laguna where my wife wanted to see some tourist places. Interesting looking colonial type town, but extremely narrow streets, often one way direction and an almost impossible maze to try and get out of. So we left this city and made it to the ridgeline highway called TF-12 which rides the ridgeline backbone of the mountains heading through the remote area known for it's lush looking Laurel Forests with almost rainforest vegetation on the left side facing north and drier desert type vegetation on the right which was south facing. The road eventually circled around back to Santa Cruz de Tenerfie, which is the capitol of this island, then back to the hotel in Puerta de La Cruz.
The one striking feature that you can say about the buildings of Tenerife is the various striking bright colours found everywhere. A definite relief from the dull unimaginative of typical modern Scandinavian architecture back where we live.
Many of the areas driving along the north side of Hwy TF-12 seem to have a high tropical mountain temperate look about them as if in some northern South American country like Columbia, but minus all the chaos, crime and poverty so prevalent in those areas of the hispanic world. The south side by contrast has less vegetation, yet different type of vegetation as well, winding all the way down to the sea coast behind Santa Cruz. Notice many of the steep mountainside properties need a large amount of terracing if anything usable is to be done with the land. Finally at the bottom at the southern coastline the variety of colours throughout the town.
From this point we headed back and took some tour of the various neighbourhoods around our hotel to view the Spanish style homes and appartments and the type of landscaping they do to accent those buildings. Many people grow many common fruit trees like Papaya, Mango, Bananas, etc which also have a ornamental value besides the obvious food reasons for incorporating them into the yard.
Well basically this is a further view of what we enjoyed and experienced down there in the Canaries, but more colour to come on my next Bougainvillea trek in Tenerife and Gran Canaria. Bougainvillea is one of those interesting plants that doesn't necessarily need any company as it tends to make bold statements all by itself.
Just got back from Helsinki Finland today after being gone for a week. Weather this spring in Scandinavia has been wet and cold, well 50 F. That's cold for me. I'll be taking more pics of the forests here this summer and sharing some of what is left of any healthy pockets of any old growth and also several takes on the industrial forestry which is pretty much the failed Socialistic standard fare for custodialship of nature here and will compare the two. However, it's nice to escape the failing E.U. once in a while.
Enjoy!
