At the cusp of turning the impossible into reality...

“It will be a fantastic vacation! “, – kept saying my friends, - “an ocean coast, sun, black sand, cocktails”. “Yeah…” - I nodded, packing hiking boots, a downy weskit and a headlamp.
In the plane illuminator I look at the masterpiece of the Chinese calligraphy coming alive - conic pagodas in the curling foam of clouds. Canaries, the world of ocean waves, desert winds and black sands. And at the largest of them there is The Mountain – the sleeping volcano Teide, dividing the Tenerife island into two parts – dry and hot South and green and wet North; well-groomed beaches of numerous gradation of grey sand with all imaginable amusements in the South and stirring the imagination, indented coastline with hard-to-get-at bays with black anthracitic sand and marvelous sunsets in the North-East.
That diversity will wait for a couple of days. I want to meet The Mountain, the highest point of Spain and I want to meet the sunrise atop of it. I take a bus and light out from it on the stop Montana Blanca. And I have the way – an elbowed path spangled with bits of black and red lava. And I have the wind – sultry blast creating dust whirls, blowing off my hat and zooming off all thoughts. I continue the climbing among huge black stones calling “the eggs of Teide”, surrounded with the ocean of clouds. The sky is ultra blue; and I can see the red roof of Altavista, a highland refuge where I’ll spend the night listening to the groan of the wind and till the dark enjoying the triangle shadow of Teide lying down the caldera. The velvet deep black sky with myriads of stars is all yours; I’ve never seen so many stars before. I feel like I am at the world’s end and at the same time on the threshold of the new world. In this magic beauty of the night I start my final steps to the crater rounding weird shapes of the rocks; the wind is getting stronger and knocking down. I can see a thin orange strip dividing skies and the earth – the sun is starting its way. I almost run to the top. It’s freezing and windy there but I fasten my hands around the camera and try to do the impossible – catch the gorgeous beauty of the place. Mountains become colorful, the ocean of clouds is burning like steel in a blast-furnace. And there is no person happier than me. No! There are about 15 of us – English, French, German, Pole, Russian, – who want to see the other Tenerife and the miracle of sunrise at the highest point of Spain. Fifteen people, united by the calling for investigation the universe.