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One of my chief delights when on foreign holidays is to get away from the tourist areas and explore the natural scenery on offer in less well visited locations.
Which is why my wife Liz and I racked up the miles in our little hire car during our week long winter break on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, exploring the coasts, forests and volcanic landscapes on this beautiful (and warm!) island.
Naturally our travels took us to the centre of Tenerife and the volcanic wonderland of the Teide National Park, encompassing the huge ancient caldera of the Las Canadas volcano, with the more recently formed volcanic cone of Mount Teide itself, rising up from its centre.
Emerging from the clouds into the Teide National Park you could be forgiven for thinking you'd landed on Mars, with fields of seemingly barren reddish lava interspersed with incredibly shaped and eroded rock formations everywhere you look.
The weather can change very quickly at this altitude of 6,500 feet above sea level, with banks of fog and mist forming and dissolving as moist air from the Altantic ocean is pushed up the side of the mountain.
Which is why I stopped to take this photo, showing a combination of the natural landscape, cut through by the two roads leading up into the National Park, and a rapidly changing fogbank funneling through a cleft in the wall of the caldera.
Filename - tenerife teide road 05
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 73mm
Exposure - 1/60 sec @ f/8, ISO100
Filters - Polarising filter used to enhance colours.
Location - Teide National Park, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain
Image enhancements - Adobe Lightroom
Comments - Image underexposed slightly to preserve highlights in the mist.
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