Cueva del Viento
Cueva del Viento—“Wind Cave”—is the largest lava tube system in Europe and the sixth largest in the world, with its complexity linked to a stack of passages rather than one simple tunnel. The tube was formed by lava flows from Pico Viejo, beside Mount Teide, and it stretches for more than 17 kilometres, carving three different levels of underground corridors. Those levels create a distinctive volcanic landscape: lava pits and terraces recur through the system, where shifting pressures and ancient flow shapes left their marks. The cave also matters for what it preserved. Its sediments contain fossils from the Canarian megafauna, including bones of *Gallotia goliath* and *Canariomys bravoi*—an extinct giant lizard and an extinct giant rat. Archaeological remains belonging to the Guanches, the islands’ early Berber-descended inhabitants, have been found in several entries to the tube system. …
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