Day 8, Monday April 23, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Smart Casual

I rose early but found the outer decks were closed due to wind. Around
6 I went out on deck 12, and finding the stairs to 14 open, figured it
couldn't be that bad. A little windier then yesterday but ok for my
brief 2-mile walk. From the deck the lights of Tenerife were shining as
we passed the north side of the Island and backtracked perhaps 10 miles
along the south shore to Santa Cruz.

We docked behind the Liberty of the Seas about 9AM. Tenerife is one of
the Canary Islands, a possession of Spain 700 miles Southwest of Lisbon
and 200 miles off the coast of Morocco. It is the largest of the Canary
Islands at 790 square miles and a population of 700,000. It is becoming
a tourist destination but agriculture on the terraced hillsides is
probably still the chief source of income. There is a wide variety of
plant life but no large native animals on the island.

My tour today was called "Pyramids of Guimar". We left the ship about
11 and spent the first couple of hours in scenic touring, climbing to a
height of 1900 meters in Las Canadas National Park. There was a pretty
solid cloud cover but at this point we were looking down on the clouds
and stopped at a vantage point where we could see a massive volcano
rising up from the nearby island of La Palma (I think) and a sea of
clouds below us. We stopped at one other overlook which was scenic but
not as spectacular as the first and continued our more or less circular
tour of the Island to the village of Guimar, where we visited a group of
6 small step pyramids. They averaged probably 25 feet tall and the
sides ranged from perhaps 30 feet to 350 feet. The smallest is above a
small cave (there are many natural caves on the volcanic island, many
providing shelter to local farm animals.

I'm not sure if he really discovered them but Thor Hyerdal brought them
to popular attention in one of his voyages. He believed they are
ancient and were part of temple to the sun gods. An exhibit in the
museum details a wide variety of pyramids worldwide which Hyerdal
believed was a universal form of human expression. The pyramids all
have steps to the top along the West wall which align with the setting
sun on the winter solstice. Another vantage point aligns with the sun
setting on the summer solstice and a mountain creates a double sunset
where the sun setting on an angle goes behind a mountain and briefly
reappears in a "notch" at the base before it finally sets. The local
university thinks they date from the 19th century as agricultural
structures. Nobody knows, but it seems at least reasonable to me that
they are ancient but were adapted later to an agricultural use. We
toured the museum with a guide and then had about a half hour to walk
among the pyramids.

We returned to the ship about 3:45 with all aboard at 5:45. We were at
the far end of a dock nearly a mile long and I walked into town hoping
to find wifi but came up unsuccessful, and did not spend a lot of time
looking.

We actually sailed away at about 5:55, and I enjoyed the "always
available" New York steak in Blu.

The evenings entertainment was singer Nik Page.

As today's parting shot, modern archeology is wonderful and we have
solved most of the mysteries of ancient civilization. Just when we
think we have all the answers we come up with a Stonehenge or a Pyramid
of Guimar.

Roy