Geography Trip to Tenerife

by Alisha Renwick

Our last day, at Mount Teide National Park

Sixteen enthusiastic Geographers, including myself, from year 9 to year 12, along with Miss Burton and Miss Stewart travelled to Tenerife in the first week of the Easter holidays to study the human and physical geographical features of the island.

Our first destination was the Banana Plantation which is situated on the South West of the island. Our guide, Ana, gave us a tour of the whole site. She imparted lots of information about the plantation. Due to the island being formed just over three millions ago from the Mount Teide volcano, the soil is extremely fertile. This means that farmers across the whole of the island are able to create their own produce, due to the high nutritious value of the soils. The country makes approximately 150,000 tons of the fruit each year, with 90% of it being exported into the international market, enabling the country to rely on the sales of the produce to improve the economy of the island. Other significant crops that grow in the country are tomatoes, grapes and potatoes. Ana explained the importance of precipitation for the bananas; each plant needs at least 25 litres of clean water each day for it to thrive. Due to the island having irregular and minimal rainfall, most banana plantations across the country rely heavily on externally sourced water. This comes at a huge cost to businesses and the country as a whole, due to the sourced water needing treatment before it can be given to the banana plants. Furthermore, the managers of the plantation wouldn’t cut down the dead mother’s trees that have stopped producing bananas. Instead, they would leave it to biodegrade naturally in its original place. This significantly helps the nutrient cycle within the plantation as it would mean that the nutrients from the mother tree can be recycled into the soil, for the daughter tree to absorb and gain support for new growth. This cycle would repeat as the next banana plant is born.

The Banana Plantation on the first day

On the second day of the trip, we went on a cruise along the coast of Los Gigantes, which is on the west coast of the island. The town has a large port due to its location on the coast and this attracts tourists to the town for the recreational activities that they can participate in such as cruises, which is the main attraction. The rocky cliffs, reaching up to 800m, on the coast have clear layers of tephra, which is loose material of ash and rock fragments that gets erupted into the atmosphere after a volcanic eruption. This can illustrate different eruptions which cut through the layers as vertical “dykes”. A dyke is where magma flows into cracks, and then solidifies as a sheet intrusion. The cruise was 3 hours long, which felt like a lifetime for the people who got sea sick, including myself! However, it proved to be highly appealing for the people interested in geology from the cliffs along with those who enjoyed observing the animals that we saw on the cruise including dolphins, more specifically; the Delfín mular, and the Calderon Tropical Whale.

The picture of dolphins was taken at Los Gigantes on the second day of the trip when we went on the cruise. 

After the cruise, we visited the capital of the Island, Santa Cruz, which has experienced lots of rebranding recently. This has included street art, which improves the aesthetics of the city and makes it more appealing for tourists to visit the city. This would also improve the local economy due to people visiting the area, and so are more likely to purchase something, for example a coffee, and so a multiplier effect will occur. These little purchases from visitors all accumulate to one large sum, which over time will boost the economy. Throughout the island, there are lots of people who fluently speak English, in particular the popular tourist areas like Santa Cruz. In areas where there is a high proportion of people who fluently speak English, there is a high number of people visiting because they feel more comfortable as they can recognise the speech and writing that surround the place.

On our final full day of visiting popular attractions, we went to see the local black sanded beach and explore the lava tunnels, along with stopping at multiple places in the Mount Teide National Park. Due to the igneous rock, basalt, across the island, the sand on most of the beaches were black. This is due to the erosion of lava (basalt) and so differs from the beaches we get here in England because we get the breakdown of sedimentary rock rather than igneous. Then we went to explore the lava tunnels. After we had our safety briefing and put on hard hats and head torches we ventured into the dark tunnels. The tunnels are formed by 2500℃ lava flows which are not hot enough to melt the surrounding rock, causing areas of rock which the lava travels down to be shaped into tunnels. Runny lava forms a crust at the top of the surface, but keeps running underneath and solidifies to form the roof of the tunnel, whilst there is more flow of lava on top of it. The guide for the lava tunnels explained how climate change has been having a significant effect on the island. Every December, the country has been experiencing warmer weather with less precipitation and has been getting worse for a long period of time. This has come at a high expense for the country. Due to the decrease in precipitation, the country has had to rely more on importing clean drinking water due to most of the water across the island being unsafe to drink. He also explained how the lava tunnels contain at least 156 known living creatures. This fact shocked me as I expected there to only be a few, if not no living organisms that constantly live in the tunnels due to the harsh conditions for the creatures to live in; constant darkness, relatively humid air and a damp environment. The creatures living within the tunnels are either blind or don’t have eyes due to the lack of need for them. He made it clear that these were different and must not be confused with each other. The caves contained invertebrates, creatures exclusive to the caves and underground only creatures. Due to the lack of species living in the cave, the food chain is very small and so the creatures have adapted to have a very slow metabolism so that they can survive for weeks, if not months without eating. When we visited the cave, we only saw three different species of spider. The guide also explained how most of the lava tunnel was restricted to members of the public, and we only had access to just under 1km of the tunnel. The rest of the tunnel is either unaccessible or it can only be accessed for scientists and experts to visit for investigations and research purposes.

Our final trip for the day was to visit Mount Teide National Park. The park takes up just under 10% of the whole area of the country and the peak of the volcano is over 3,700m tall. As mentioned previously, there is high nutrient and mineral rich soil across the island which supports a number of diverse species, especially within the park due to the volcanic eruptions.  Vascular Flora consists of 168 plant species, 33 of which are endemic to Tenerife. Additionally, the volcano creates a rain shadow in the south of the island due to the wind travelling in a southerly direction. This has meant that the climate in the southern part of the island is a lot drier and less humid compared to the north of the island. The volcano last erupted in 1909, and so is currently dormant. The park itself averages a height of 2,000m above sea level and during the winter can be covered with snow. When we visited, the weather was dry, cold and very windy due to the lack of friction for the wind to be slowed down by, it also had snow on the peak of the volcano! Some of the plants in the national park had been adapted to the high wind speeds that the area encountered. There were lots of green bushes around the park, especially near the road, and these changed to become round plants over time, so that they were more aerodynamic. Unfortunately, we were not able to get to the very peak of the volcano due to the cold temperatures freezing the cable car and making it unsafe to use. This was the only method of transport that tourists are able to get to the very top. However, we were able to get reasonably far up with the coach despite this.

A person that I must not forget to mention was our guide, Patricia. Although slightly offput by Patricia’s abundance of energy and talkative nature, we soon got to know her and this impression changed quickly on the first day due to her outstanding knowledge of the whole country. She expressed how she loved learning more and more about the country and attends as many courses of the country as she can. Her speciality was plants and she knew so much about the flora of Tenerife. She was committed to educate us all about the country and she went above and beyond her expected forecasted hours to teach us more about this fascinating country.

Tenerife is an amazing country to visit and it has so many interesting features to it. I would highly recommend visiting Tenerife if you ever get the chance, and thanks to Miss Burton for organising the trip and to Miss Stewart on coming along with us.