As far as the rock of Gayta, that is, up to the beginning of the great retama plain, the Tenerife peak is covered in beautiful vegetation, with no traces of recent devastations. But hardly have you entered the plain littered with pumice-stone than the countryside changes dramatically; at every step you trip over enormous obsidian blocks thrown down by the volcano. Everything here betrays a deep solitude. A few goats and rabbits are the only signs of life in this high plain. From up here the island becomes an immense heap of burned matter surrounded by a narrow fringe of vegetation.