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WONDERS OF NATURE
Canary Islands. Nature miracle
To the west of the coast of Morocco in the Atlantic Ocean stretched for four hundred and fifty kilometers from west to east, a ridge of seven volcanic islands. This archipelago, friendly, picturesque and diverse, has been called the Canary Islands since ancient times. Such a not very pleasant name (canis in Latin - "dog") was given to the islands by the famous Roman scientist Pliny the Elder, who claimed that huge dogs supposedly live on them. Later it turned out that the great naturalist was wrong, but the name has already taken root. And although the fertile islands off the coast of Africa were given at different times many other, more romantic names: "Islands of Eternal Spring", "Enchanted Islands", "Islands of the Blessed", "Champs Elysees" and even "Gardens of the Hesperides", nevertheless, on the maps these islands to this day remain under the first "dog" name.
Inhabited and developed by people five thousand years ago, the archipelago became known to the Phoenicians in the XNUMXth century BC. A thousand years later, the Romans landed here, and in the XNUMXth century, Spanish caravels appeared off the coast of the islands. A hundred years later, having broken the resistance of the local Guanches, Spain finally took possession of the archipelago, and to this day they belong to her. It is clear that over the five hundred years of economic development of the Canary Islands by the Spaniards, the nature of the archipelago has changed in many ways. Fortunately, many islands, due to the mountainous terrain, turned out to be inconvenient for creating plantations, and their flora and fauna did not suffer so much. The most famous, largest and most visible (in the truest sense of the word) island in the Canary Islands is Tenerife. Its main attraction - the Teide volcano, towering three thousand seven hundred meters above sea level - is visible from sailing ships almost two hundred kilometers away. The vague outlines of a huge mountain, now appearing, now disappearing in the translucent haze of the morning mist, acted on the imagination of navigators from ancient times. Peak Teide was admired by Columbus and Cook, Bellingshausen and Humboldt. And in January 1832, the English ship "Beagle" approached the shores of the archipelago, on which the young naturalist and future creator of the theory of evolution, Charles Darwin, set off on his famous trip around the world. Here is what he wrote in his diary: “On the sixth of January we reached Tenerife ... The next morning we saw how the sun, emerging from behind the bizarre rocks of the island of Gran Canaria, suddenly illuminated the Tenerife peak, while the low parts of the island were still hidden behind curly clouds. That was the first of those wonderful days that I will never forget." The first known eruption of Mount Teide occurred in 1492, just the year Columbus visited Tenerife. The volcano then showed its activity more than once: it erupted in 1706 and 1909. The funicular today allows the traveler to easily climb to the edge of the crater and look into the black and gloomy volcanic basin, on the edge of which rises a young cone that grew in 1909. The basin, which bears the expressive name of Caldera de las Cañadas ("caldera of the abysses"), amazes with bizarre shapes of solidified lava flows and minerals of various colors, among which tahinastes flowers rise here and there, similar to huge candles. Although most of the island has long been converted by the Spaniards into banana plantations and orange groves, in the northeast of Tenerife, near its capital, Santa Cruz, a large forest area has been preserved that occupies the mountain slopes off the coast. In the dry and hot climate of the Canaries, this dense, gloomy and cool forest, in which Canarian pines, laurels and northern birches grow side by side, seems like a green oasis next to the hot beaches and the dry rocky slopes of the Teide. At the edge of the forest, a serpentine mountain road leads to an open area, to a high coastal cliff - Pico de Inglés. From its kilometer height, the traveler has a view of the endless ocean expanses and golden beaches, high cliffs and green groves of the coast. If Tenerife, with its mild and warm climate, is called the "island of eternal spring", then the easternmost of the Canary Islands, Lanzarote, will rightly be called the "island of fire-breathing mountains". On this small island, sixty kilometers long and fifteen kilometers wide, nature has brought together as many as three hundred volcanoes! The last time the island erupted was in 1824. Then, along the fault line crossing the island, one after another, three volcanoes arose and began to throw out ash and lava at once: Tao, Tinguaton and Negro. But this formidable picture was no match for the firestorm that had raged on Lanzarote a hundred years earlier. In the autumn of 1730, thirty craters simultaneously began to spew hot ash and rivers of liquid lava, sowing death and devastation in the surrounding area. The monstrous eruption lasted for six whole years and covered a third of the island's territory with a gray lifeless cover of basalts. The local priest then kept detailed records of what was happening. Here is an excerpt from this peculiar "chronicle of fiery years": "Near Timenfaya, the earth split and a huge fire-breathing mountain grew. The terrible spectacle lasted three weeks. A few days later, other craters opened up and splashed out lava that buried the villages of Timenfaya, Rodeo and Mancha Blanca. On September XNUMX, a high rock, deflecting the lava flow, changed it direction from north to northwest. This led to the death of the villages of Maretes and Santa Catalina. On September XNUMX, new fiery chasms opened. Liquid lava flooded the city of Maso, and six days later reached the coast and roared into the sea, scattering terrifyingly beautiful cascades sparks..." After such a long rampage of the fiery element, the appearance of the island has completely changed. Fields and vineyards, the richest villages were destroyed. In the center of the island grew a gloomy ridge of volcanic cones, reminiscent of lunar mountains. Nowadays, the entire central and western part of Lanzarote is referred to by the inhabitants as Mal Pais (“Bad Country”). Dark colors dominate here, you won’t hear birdsong here, here the formidable volcanic ridge of Montaña del Fuego (“Fire Mountains”) rises above the lifeless valley. The landscape of these places makes a strong impression: destroyed volcanic cones, blue-black ash fields, rust-red walls of craters oxidized by volcanic heat and mountains of gray slag... Huge vents gape, but not a single crater smokes, breathes fire. Not a single cloud of steam or smoke rises over Montaña del Fuego. But quite shallow under the outer layer of volcanic rocks, the bowels of volcanoes are still glowing with heat, and a traveler who has landed on Lanzarote can easily be convinced of this. On the crest of one of the craters, an enterprising Canarian has set up a restaurant where the floor slabs are hot to the touch, and the cook fries the scrambled eggs, placing the pan directly on a pile of volcanic sand. For fun, the owner of the establishment throws an armful of brushwood with a pitchfork into a two-meter hole. Not even a minute passes before a fire flares up there. And nearby you can admire the man-made geyser. It is enough to pour a bucket of water into a pipe dug into the ground, as almost immediately steam escapes from it, and then a stream of boiling water, flying up to a height of four meters. Traveling around Lanzarote is not difficult to make by bus, but it is more interesting to do it on a camel. The road, laid through the National Park created here, leads along the frozen lava lake to a long chain of craters, bordered by heaps of slag and frozen lava fountains, which are called "hornitos" here. But still, the main attraction of the volcanic island is the Cueva de los Verdes cave. This largest lava cave in the world stretches for six kilometers. Some of its halls reach fifteen meters in height and twenty-four in width. One of them even has a concert hall. The cave is located in the north of the island, under the lava fields of the Corona volcano. The river of molten basalt continued to flow under the cooled and hardened outer layer of lava from the side crater of the Crown down the slope directly into the sea, forming a natural tunnel with bizarre wall and roof shapes. From the plateau of Mal Pais, a narrow path leads the traveler into a gloomy deep abyss. Beyond the high, dark entrance, it first runs along a tunnel heading towards the sea, then turns west into a narrower passage and reaches the deepest part of the cave, forty meters below the surface. All the way the tourist is accompanied by soft electronic music, reminiscent of the sound of glass drops. Spotlights illuminate the passages and halls, highlight the arches painted with oxides and hanging lava pillars - a kind of volcanic stalactites that cast intricate shadows. The cave has two tiers, the upper one being wider and more spacious. After several ascents and descents, the traveler finally enters the concert hall. The impression of underground music exceeds all expectations: after all, the porous walls of the lava cave create perfect acoustics. On the way back, the tourist will meet a small lake near the path, filled with sea water seeping through cracks. Small crabs live in an underground reservoir, which have become absolutely white in the cave darkness. And in a wide funnel at the exit from the mysterious cavity, where the rays of the sun fall from above, you can sit in a cozy cafe, thinking about the terrible cataclysms that created this unusual underground volcanic world. Other large islands of the Canary archipelago - Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura and Palma - have retained little of their pristine nature. The first of them is the realm of hotels and beaches, the second, due to the efforts of people, has become almost treeless, and its landscape does not please the traveler's eye. As for the island of Palma, it was badly damaged by the eruption that happened quite recently, in 1971. But the small mountainous island of Gomera, located south of Tenerife, has hardly changed since the time of the Spanish conquest. There is not even an airport here, and most tourists come here only on excursions. The mighty Garahoney mountain range rises for a kilometer and a half above the island. Six deep gorges radiate from it to the coast. Two-thirds of the entire territory of the island of Gomera is covered with virgin forests of laurel, waxwort and tree heather. Of particular value are the laurel forests growing on the northern slopes. Covered with luxuriant fringes of mosses and lichens, the huge trees look "fluffy", and a continuous carpet of ferns complements the primeval appearance of these ancient forests that covered vast areas of the Mediterranean and North Africa millions of years ago. Rare and cautious Canarian pigeons live in the laurel forests, giving themselves away only by gentle cooing, as well as the most famous feathered inhabitants of the islands - canaries, whose singing is heard from all sides. Once upon a time, Guanches lived on Homer - the indigenous inhabitants of the archipelago, who appeared here thousands of years before our era. The island's rugged, rugged terrain forced them to develop a unique way of communicating. Being on opposite sides of the gorge, the Guanches could communicate in a special whistling language - silbo. This unique language made it possible to transmit messages over a distance of up to a kilometer. Such an unusual language was found on our planet in only one other place - in one of the mountain villages of Turkey. Silbo has survived to this day, and on Homer you can still hear two shepherds whistling across the canyon, arranging a meeting or passing on news. Another point of pride for the Homers no longer refers to botany or linguistics, but to history. The great Columbus visited here more often than on other islands of the archipelago. From 1492 to 1502, he visited the island of Gomera as many as four times, the reason for which, as they say, was his romantic passion for the local beauty, the Marquise of Monya. The house where the navigator stayed has now become the Columbus Museum. The future conqueror of the Aztec empire, conquistador Hernan Cortes, also visited the island on his way to America. It is interesting to explore the island of Homer not only on foot or on horseback, but also from the sea. From the boat you can see the main miracle of the Homeric coast - the rock of Los Organos. It is a steep wall made up of thousands of hexagonal basalt columns rising from the waves of the sea like the pipes of a gigantic organ. The abundance of sun and heat in the Canary Islands is not that boring, but it requires a change of scenery from time to time. And in search of diversity, up to half a million tourists annually pass along the shady forest roads of the island of Gomera. Nevertheless, many untouched corners have been preserved on it, and this quietest and greenest island remains a true oasis of the unaltered nature of the Canary archipelago. A traveler who has visited the Canary Islands will certainly tell his friends about climbing Mount Teide and the stunning views from there to the expanses of the Atlantic, about the tunnels of Cueva de los Verdes scorched by underground fire, about the formidable craters of Montagnadel Fuego and about the mysterious island with a beautiful in the name of Homer... Author: B.Wagner
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