The Anaga Mountains on Tenerife will make you feel like being in the middle of the forest from Grimm’s Little Red Riding Hood. Thanks to the ancient Laurel Forest, UNESCO included the Anaga Area as a World Network of Biosphere Reserve. A volcanic eruption formed this area 7-9 million years ago. On some mountain slopes, you’ll find the best Teide viewpoints – views of a volcano which is asleep.
Have you noticed this white mass hiding at the volcano’s base? This is not fog – those are clouds. The forests in the Anaga mountains are known as ‘cloud forests’. We always thought that to experience this rare phenomenon in the mountains, we would have to travel to more exotic countries than Spain.
As Nico wrote yesterday, when we arrived at the “Mirador Cruz del Carmen” viewpoint on Teide, clouds completely covered it and you couldn’t see the volcano. But as we went on our hike in the Anaga Mountains it started to clear up.
So it was with relief that we saw the sun as we ascended back to the Mirador Cruz del Carmen. Just moments later, we saw this view of the Teide volcano. Nico stood probably for a minute with an open mouth and took in the scene. The timing for the photo was perfect: The sun was illuminating the palisade of the Teide viewpoint in the exact right spot, creating symmetrical shadows that harmonized with the landscape.
He was working with a tripod as well as a tilt-shift lens. Only this way, he was able to capture the shot a) without people and b) with perfectly straight lines. It took him probably half an hour to capture it truly as he wanted it to be. I think this was time well spent.
