The highest point in the Atlantic Ocean
In which we stretch our legs one last time before another month at sea
This post was inspired by my college friend Michael, who writes Passing Time. I encourage you to check it out if you like adventure / environment writing, or if any of his topics pique your interest! Here’s to early starts.
The alarm rings at half-past midnight; I almost go back to sleep. My body screams in protest at the blatant violation to my circadian rhythm. Sleep is hard-won on a sailing trip, and my head is still pounding from one-too-many landfall beers when we hit The Canary Islands 36 hours ago.
But I can already hear footfalls on the dock, soft whispers outside my cabin. The crew is getting ready for an adventure, and moments on solid ground are few and far between these days. The moon is full, and the stars are bright. It’s time to head up a mountain.
We pile into someone’s stick-shift car. I’m relegated to the middle, as always: an undesirable side effect of my short stature. A winding road takes us away from Santa Cruz de Tenerife and towards the island’s deserted center. I close my eyes in a fruitless attempt to catch a few more Zzzs, but the precarious curves of the climb keep me awake.
We don’t pass a single other vehicle on the way, thinking we’re alone, but when we hit the six-car trailhead parking at 2:34am, it’s full. I wonder to myself, who are these other industrious Monday-morning hikers, and what circumstances have brought them here?
I stumble out of the car wearing Caribbean-ready pajamas, but quickly bundle up in merinos and my thick pink parka. Above me looms a deep, shadowy crater. Other than that, I can’t make out a thing about the landscape: no matter, as I’ll have plenty of time to see it on the way down. We have five hours and ten kilometers until sunrise. Pico del Teide awaits.
If you’re a statistics nerd: Mount Teide is the highest point in Spain, and the highest point above sea level in the entire Atlantic. If measured from the ocean floor, its height of 7,500 meters makes it the third-highest volcano in the world, after Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. The island of Tenerife is the tenth-highest in the world.
I’m not an altitude-chasing peakbagger by any means, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least a bit motivated by the bucket list. Will I ever be back in Tenerife, this tropical paradise off the coast of West Africa that’s more than 300 times smaller than my home state of Texas? Probably not.
Will I ever see Filou and Laure, the French Gen-X’ers from a neighboring boat who have joined our nighttime adventure, again after today? It’s hard to say; in a life led by wind and waves, chance encounters are determined by the current that carries you.
Even after a month spent traversing the Mediterranean & Atlantic, I’m still not sure if I really like sailing.
Pros include: Dolphins and whales, eating freshly-caught fish, my incredible crew-mates, (blessedly) realizing I don’t get seasick. Sunrise and sunset. The Milky Way. Stopovers on remote islands we’d never visit otherwise. Landfall beers. Sunbathing. No internet.
Cons: Night watches, showers. The way the catamaran slams in a headwind, breaking dishes and gifting you a half-dozen unexplained bruises. No personal space, no running back to the grocery when you forget something, no cardio. No internet.
But hiking? I know and love it. So here I am, despite total sleep deprivation, because one thing I can’t say for certain, is the next time we’ll be on land.
The trail starts simply enough, a meandering slope through the darkness. We chatter softly in French, and I give a quick thanks for the past Megan who spent enough hours playing Duolingo to maintain hiking conversation, which ranges from dirty jokes to deep life discussions. The path is smooth and sandy, trod by countless other hikers. I walk with Oli, Polo’s Belgian crew-mate, and we chat about his birthday, his recent separation from his girlfriend, his hopes and expectations for his next leg of the journey. After a few pleasant moments, I fall behind him, relishing a moment of dark silence where I don’t need to scan for the lights of distant boats.
Then I fall in step with Laure, the second-in-command on a French-crewed catamaran that’s docked with us here in Tenerife. She’s gray-haired, but her laughter and energy is more youthful than my own in the moment. She’s lived an improbable, incredible life. Three decades ago, she and Filou bought a cheap, weathered boat in Bora-Bora. It took them nine years to sail it back to France. Their three sons were born along the way, the eldest in Thailand.
One thing about travel: I’m forever in awe of the people I meet on the road, the quantity of people who have sheerly decided to live, who have dabbled between the conventional and the extraordinary in an individual quest to make their own meaning of the world. For every headline about the world’s best hitchhiker or the fastest time to scale the Seven Summits, there’s a dozen hidden people who have made the decision to just be, to hit the road, no newspaper articles or blog posts or travelgrams required. Filou and Laure’s sons are back in France studying engineering, architecture while they work delivering boats to the Caribbean. It’s a unique example of the parents leaving home, before the children.
Then we make a sharp turn towards a steep climb. I feel the meters gained burning in my calves and lungs almost immediately. I usually pride myself on good stamina, but a month at sea has destroyed my fitness, despite the bubbly “Core Wednesdays” and “Full-Body Fridays” I’ve been leading. I chug one liter of water, then another, and then I’m down to half a bottle. It’s another sign I’m out of practice; I’ve forgotten how to pack adequate trail provisions. I snack on store-brand Chips Ahoy and a smushed Mars Bar. I guess that counts as breakfast.
We’re still 200 meters away from the summit when the sun starts to peek out from the horizon. My head is pounding, my lips are parched. We won’t be relaxing at the top of the Atlantic for sunrise, but if we hustle we can still make it. Polo turns to me with more than a little regret in his eyes about our speed. Mourning the missed opportunity for a killer timelapse, no doubt. He scampers ahead. With a concerted effort, I do my best to match him.
And then, with a last concerted push, we make it. Sulfuric smoke rises around me. From the top of the volcano, I have a 360-degree view of the Atlantic Ocean. I can see the endless stretch of deep blue we’ve already battled — and the far vaster expanse that still awaits us.
It’s weird; though I know my 40-foot catamaran is but a tiny thing against the backdrop of the high seas, I haven’t felt so small, with the boys’ flotilla always in sight, with walkie-talkie crew chats always accessible. But here, looking out at the ocean from above, my heart lurches a bit to think on what’s ahead. No matter; each brand of Type 2 fun in its time.
We watch the sun climb higher in the sky. Filou and Laure join us at the summit, profferring a chocolate bar with chunks of salty caramel that’s quickly devoured. We take pictures, fly the drone, and take off a layer. We smile, high five, cheers imaginary summit beers. We take one last look at the scenery, then begin the trek down.
The descent is somewhat brutal; the pre-dawn chill gives way to an unrelenting sunshine, and the volcanic scree is slippery when taken downhill. But the company remains splendid and the scenery otherworldly.
The colors are phenomenal: coal blacks, mud browns, sandy desert reds. More than once, I look out at the landscape feeling transported back to the National Parks in Utah and Colorado. It was unexpected, perhaps, to find this strange type of scenery that first awakened my environmental ethic thousands of miles away from home. But perhaps it shouldn’t have been; it’s all the same Earth, forged from the same core materials, the same heat, the same pressure, the same movement of tectonic plates.
After a few more hours of walking, we reach the trailhead, collapse back into the car, and drive down. We skip a tourist cafe near the bottom of the volcano, but swerve into the first hillside town we pass after exiting the protected area. Oli pulls out his phone and scrolls for the nearest guachinche — a typical Canary Island establishment, known for its locally produced wine and hearty food.
We skip the boozing, but order everything else on the menu. A blowout banquete unfolds in front of us: slow-cooked chickpeas in tomato sauce, hot croquetas dripping with fat. Thick, salty slices of aguacate con tomate and small boiled potatoes with chili pepper garlic sauce. We fall quiet, ravenous, engrossed in the meal.
There’s not much to say for the rest of the day. We’ll head back to the marina and chug more water. We’ll go to bed before the sun sets, sleeping straight through dinner. We’ll wake the next morning and do a massive grocery shop for the month ahead, double-counting rolls of toilet paper and triple-checking that we haven’t forgotten butter. We’ll haul eggs and milk and bread and flour back to the marina, stuffing every available nook and cranny in the fridge with provisions. The task is made more difficult by sore calves.
We’ll wait for a favorable wind to blow. It’s six days’ sailing to Cabo Verde, and from there a few weeks of crossing to the Caribbean. There are many more sunrises and sunsets ahead, to be watched from the cockpit, with the open ocean around us.
Long-term travel isn’t always easy; I’m still plagued by insecurity about the length of this ‘career break’, homesickness, the feeling of watching savings dwindle even on a meager budget. I struggle constantly with the question of whether this low-carbon lifestyle, this scrappy exploration of climate hotspots, is actually making a difference. Would I be doing more net-good in the world by returning to a life of selling growth strategies to solar developers, if meant adding more clean gigawatts to the grid?
A long journey lies ahead, but in the peaceful, quiet moments after our hike, I’m grateful for the friends we’ve made on the road, and the many more who are still coming our way. I can’t wait to climb the next mountain.
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Some fantastic photos and prose. Thanks for the shoutout -- happy to have another entry in the Alpine Starts series!
Speaking as a a solar developer: there are plenty of people selling growth strategies to us. Not many people doing what you're doing. I think you're making good marginal impact with this project and you'll be able to return without much hassle ;)
Thanks for sharing these beautiful moments 'behind the scene'!