It wasn’t cold now – far from it. The back of her neck was hot and damp, and she fished around in her rucksack for a band to put her hair up with. As she carried on walking, she looked back at the house, seeing it from a different angle. It looked equally as lovely from here, and she envied the people who were lucky enough to live in it.
Continuing her stroll, she rounded a small headland where a handful of surfers were playing in the waves just offshore, and she saw another small bay in front of her. The path led around it, past the farmhouse she’d seen earlier, and on towards the cluster of two or three villas – it was hard to tell the exact number from where she was. She wondered how much further she had to walk until she reached the next village. Although she’d worked her socks off for the past couple of years, looking after her mum and keeping their home running, she hadn’t walked this far in ages and her legs were beginning to ache.
When she finally clambered up the rocky path which led around the villas – they were in a great location, but she didn’t think they were as nice as the one she’d passed earlier – she saw the start of a lovely promenade with several small black-sand beaches and a seawater pool, and she knew the effort had been worth it.
Sophie was dying to dip her toes in the water, followed by a sprawl on the beach, but she needed a cold drink and something to eat first, so she made her way towards an open-air café, picked a table and sank down thankfully onto a chair.
Tapas, she decided after reading the menu, and as she tucked into a selection of delicious dishes, a rare and unexpected feeling of contentment stole over her. All too soon she knew she’d have to return to reality, but for now she was determined to live in the moment and enjoy every second of this wonderful place.
Chapter 4
If there was one trip she was determined to make, it was a visit to Tenerife’s heart – Mount Teide. How could she travel all this way and not see such a spectacular sight? She guessed there must be hundreds, probably thousands, of tourists who never set foot outside their hotels, but she felt it would be a shame not to pay the volcano a visit. The glimpses she’d seen of it had intrigued her, so she’d decided to pop into one of the places advertising excursions, to ask how much it would cost. Although she’d winced a little at the price, she was relieved to be told that lunch was included, as was the ticket for the cable car to the summit, so she’d booked it.
The day of the trip, wearing trainers and carrying a fleece (it could be quite fresh and chilly at the summit, apparently), she settled back in the front seat of the coach to watch the scenery unfold.
As soon as the bus had left the coast, it began to climb up steep, winding roads, where the earth dropped away at an alarming rate and the rugged mountains grew closer and higher. Before long they were a thousand or so feet above sea level, and if she craned her neck and looked behind her, she could see the Los Gigantes cliffs and the harbour below. More twists and turns took them through villages and a small town or two, before they left civilisation behind and were driving up through tall pine trees on either side of the road. For a volcano, and from the pictures and postcards she’d seen, she had been expecting the area to be far more desolate than it was and not so green.
Then abruptly the trees thinned, becoming small, twisted growths, and the coach was trundling along a stretch of tarmac with hardened black lava fields on either side. Wow, she thought, it felt like being on the surface of the moon. The road seemed to her like a long, charcoal ribbon which had been placed precariously on top of the jagged bleak landscape, which might be stark but was also strangely beautiful and compelling. There was something alien and otherworldly about it.
The guide, who was sitting across the aisle from her at the front of the bus, giving his passengers a steady stream of facts and figures, had explained how the island had come into being, and that Teide was also a live volcano. Sophie found it quite disturbing as she’d watched a documentary once about Mount Vesuvius and what had happened to the inhabitants of Pompeii. The fact that this enormous lump of rock was capable of spewing out molten lava whenever the mood took it was rather worrying. As was the information that the island was ancient, yet parts of it were surprisingly new. The last eruption on Teide had occurred just over a hundred years ago, resulting in the blackened mass of tortured rocks to their left. And there was plenty more where that came from, she guessed. Nothing grew on it, not even a blade of grass. Her imagination ran riot as she pictured the slow unstoppable creep of the hot lava down the slope, blanketing everything in its path. It must have been a sight to behold, but she sincerely hoped she wouldn’t be around when the next eruption took place.
The road slithered through the relatively flat land of what she learnt was an ancient caldera, with a ring of mountains surrounding the high plateau. The caldera was the remains of an even larger volcano that had blown itself apart at some point in the distant past, the guide informed them, and all that was left was the circle of peaks indicating its circumference. The scale of it was breathtaking.
The major attraction – cone-shaped Teide – was on the left, and as the coach drove towards the cable car, she was amazed to see a hotel in the middle of the plateau. What an impressive and scary place to spend the night, she thought with a shiver. Visiting was one thing, sleeping in such close proximity to this slumbering dragon of a mountain was another thing entirely.
Sophie had never been on a cable car before, and the thought of a glass box swinging on a bit of wire several hundred feet above jagged rocks didn’t fill her with confidence. But she was determined to reach the top of the volcano because she’d read that the views were spectacular.
They really were, she discovered, as she stepped out onto the viewing area, pulling her fleece over her head and stuffing her arms in the sleeves. It was several degrees colder up here than at sea level, which wasn’t surprising since the volcano was over twelve thousand feet high. The air was thinner up here too, and she’d noticed warning signs advising people with heart conditions and pregnant women not to take the cable car.
Wow, you can see for miles, she thought, gazing at the spectacular view and breathing in the fresh, sharp air. Even in October and at this altitude, the weather and the temperature were still better than what she’d left behind in the UK. No wonder so many people loved this island – she was already falling in love with the little bit of it she’d seen, and the thought of returning home filled her with dread. She wasn’t ready to face reality yet, to have to deal with the prospect of finding somewhere else to live, to have to clear out her mum’s things, find a job, build a new life.
Giving herself a mental shake, she pushed the negative thoughts out of her mind – there was no place for them up here, high above the world in the shimmering sunshine, where she could almost imagine being able to touch the sky.
There was no place for melancholy or negativity when they descended either, as the coach crossed to the other edge of the caldera and dropped down through spectacular pine forests towards the north-east of the island. The scenery took her breath away, every turn and bend in the road revealing more beautiful vistas, and she couldn’t wait to show Aunty Anne the numerous photos she’d taken.
The group were on their way to one of the prettiest towns on the island, La Oratava, where they were to stop for lunch. And as the coach pulled into the car park of a restaurant, Sophie felt a tap on her shoulder.