12/11/2023 0 Comments Islas canariesTourists consume about five times the amount of water than the inhabitants of the island. It is either shipped by tanker from the other Canarian Islands or produced by a saltwater conversion plant in the north of the island. Thanks to the lack of elevation Lanzarote gets only very few drops of rain which makes water one of the most looked after commodity of the island. Most of the tourist beaches are located there too. The island has an international airport near Arricife, its capital, on the eastern coast. Lanzarote can be easily reached by charter jet from any European airport. Park rangers like to demonstrate this by pouring water down a metal tube which evaporates explosively. Even today the area within the parks is active – the earth’s crust is just about 2m thick with temperatures of up to 400° C underneath. The center of the eruption was Maciso del Fuego in the center of the parks, a 525m high cinder cone. 8 million cubic meters of cinder and lava were deposited during that eruption. Much of the agricultural areas were covered, forcing the inhabitants to emigrate to others of the Canarian Islands. Between both regions you find Parque Nacional de Timanfaya and the Parque Natural de los Volcanes, two parks which cover the area of the most recent eruptions on Lanzarote.īetween 17, for five years hundreds of craters erupted and covered 147 square kilometres – today’s national parks – with lava, cinder and scree. Lanzarote therefore is the lowest of the Canaries with tow mountainous regions, Famara (671m) in the north and Los Ajaches (608m) in the south. Since then much of the island has eroded again. It is also one of the oldest of the islands being formed 19 miliion years ago by volcanic activity. Lanzarote (850 square km) is the north-easternmost of the Islas Canarias and as such only 140km away from the Moroccan mainland. The area of Montañas del Fuego (Mountains of fire) in the natural park of Timanfaya Still the hotels on the islands are busy all year around. The main season on the Canarias is in winter, when northern and central Europeans flee snow and fog to bake a bit in the sun. The large islands have fallen victim to the usual excesses – large concrete tourist hotels around the beaches while the three smaller western islands of El Hierro, La Gomera and La Palma are relatively untarnished yet. Today the main industry on most of the islands is tourism, together with agriculture (mostly banana monocultures). The islands are considered as leftovers of the continental drift when South America and Africa drifted apart. Moreover the true altitude of the volcanoes gets even more impressive if you count their elevation from the ocean floor. The ocean floor beneath the islands is down to 3500m deep making the straights between the islands some of the deepest on earth. Many of the European governments still used this meridian until the 1990ies. In fact – before Amarica got discovered El Hierro was the westernmost known spot on earth which resulted in the zero meridian being located there, exactly 20° west of Paris. The Islas Canarias are located close to the African mainland but have politically always been considered a part of Europe. Politically, the Spanish government has divided the Canarias along the same lines with the Province of Las Palmas (de Gran Canaria) governing the eastern islands while the province of Santa Cruz (de Fenerife) governs the western ones.Įl Hierro, La Gomera and La Palma as seen from Tenerife The easertn islands of Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and Gran Canaria were formed about 25 – 15 million years ago while the four western islands Tenerife, La Gomera, La Palma and El Hierro were formed much more recently – and are volcanically much more active still. There are seven large islands (and six smaller ones) which can be divided in two groups. The Canarias are home to Spain highest mountain, Pico del Teide, the world’s largest erosion crater, Caldera de Taburiente, impressive volcanic plugs like Roque Bentayga or the desert-like Parque Nacional de Timanfaya on Lanzarote. The last eruption occurred on Volcàn Teneguìa on La Palma in 1971. All islands are of volcanic origin and many volcanoes have been active quite (geologically speaking) recently. While most visitors stay at or near the beaches the Islands have more to offer than sun, sand and sport. The Islas Canarias, Canary Islands, Islands of Everlasting Spring are Europe’s version of the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific – a holiday getaway with guaranteed good weather and a great abundance of beautiful beaches all at a distance of about 4-5 flight hours from any European International airport.
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