Yesterday we went on a 5 hour hike up to the summit of volcano Caldera Blanca. You can park not far away, just outside Mancha Blanca and walk through the Timanfaya National Park. The ascent is quite steep and long but not too strenuous.
The autumn's rain and recent greenification of the island had not escaped here. Nowhere was it more pronounced than in the crater itself, which was newly alive and stunningly green. A small pond was nestling in the centre.
The hike around the crater itself and to the highest point was an adventure. You have to clamber over rocks and ledges, with a precipice on either side, either into the crater or down onto the cone with the malpais beneath.
During the hike we got hit by a few brief but heavy rain showers. We could watch them rolling in towards us from across the Atlantic Ocean - like John Carpenter's 'The Fog'.
The combination of bright sun, clear skies and showers were the perfect conditions for rainbows. Rainbows always fill me with awe and we saw many of them.
A rainbow is formed as light traveling through the atmosphere interacts with water droplets where refraction, dispersion, and reflection of the light from the droplets leads to the formation of a spectrum of colours in the atmosphere. In theory, rainbows appear as full-circles but are usually seen as an arc.
The spectrum not only includes the ROYGBIV colours, but also infrared and ultra-violet.
I learnt that there are numerous types of rainbows which undergo different processes in their formation:
Fog bow
Rainbow under moonlight
Higher order rainbow
Reflection rainbow
Monochrome rainbow
Supernumerary rainbow
Full circle rainbow
Multiple rainbow
Twinned rainbow
The autumn's rain and recent greenification of the island had not escaped here. Nowhere was it more pronounced than in the crater itself, which was newly alive and stunningly green. A small pond was nestling in the centre.
The hike around the crater itself and to the highest point was an adventure. You have to clamber over rocks and ledges, with a precipice on either side, either into the crater or down onto the cone with the malpais beneath.
During the hike we got hit by a few brief but heavy rain showers. We could watch them rolling in towards us from across the Atlantic Ocean - like John Carpenter's 'The Fog'.
The combination of bright sun, clear skies and showers were the perfect conditions for rainbows. Rainbows always fill me with awe and we saw many of them.
A rainbow is formed as light traveling through the atmosphere interacts with water droplets where refraction, dispersion, and reflection of the light from the droplets leads to the formation of a spectrum of colours in the atmosphere. In theory, rainbows appear as full-circles but are usually seen as an arc.
The spectrum not only includes the ROYGBIV colours, but also infrared and ultra-violet.
I learnt that there are numerous types of rainbows which undergo different processes in their formation:
Fog bow
Rainbow under moonlight
Higher order rainbow
Reflection rainbow
Monochrome rainbow
Supernumerary rainbow
Full circle rainbow
Multiple rainbow
Twinned rainbow
The Spanish name for rainbow is 'arco iris'. What a brilliant name!
Here is my rainbow haiku:
periwinkle sky
bleeds perfect arco iris -
bright in fleeting awe
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