Peñas del Chache is the highest altitude of the island of

Lanzarote Lanzarote (, , ) is a Spanish island, the easternmost of the Canary Islands, off the north coast of Africa and from the Iberian Peninsula. Covering , Lanzarote is the fourth-largest of the islands in the archipelago. With 163,230 inhabi ...

Canary Islands The Canary Islands (; ) or Canaries are an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean and the southernmost Autonomous communities of Spain, Autonomous Community of Spain. They are located in the northwest of Africa, with the closest point to the cont ...

, Spain, with a height of 672 meters above sea level. It is located in the north of the island, in the municipality of Haría.

Toponymy

The term Chache is of probably of

Guanche Guanche may refer to: *Guanches, the indigenous people of the Canary Islands *Guanche language, an extinct language, spoken by the Guanches until the 16th or 17th century *''Conus guanche ''Conus guanche'' is a species of sea snail, a marine ga ...

origin. As for its possible meaning, the philologist Maximiano Trapero has proposed its translation as 'the height'.

Characteristics

Peñas del Chache is a rocky mountain located in the

Famara Famara is the main mountainous massif in the north of the island of Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. It is the eastern slope of a volcano erupting in the Miocene. The cliffs of Famara (''Risco de Famara'') are the remains of a caldera of about te ...

massif. The top is occupied by an installation of the Air Surveillance Squadron.

Geology

Peñas del Chache is a basaltic intrusive formation dating from the

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first epoch (geology), geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and mea ...

period, and is part of the Famara volcanic edifice, one of the oldest massifs on the island.

Vegetation

The surroundings of the Peñas del Chache were characterized by thickets of the Canarian thermophilic forest in the past. However, historical human activity has caused its near disappearance, finding itself dominated by substitution thickets such as bitter tabaibal in modern times, dominated by the wild spurge

Euphorbia regis-jubae ''Euphorbia regis-jubae'' is a species of flowering plant in the family Euphorbiaceae, native to the eastern Canary Islands, western Morocco, north-western Western Sahara. The specific epithet honours the contributions of King Juba II to natural ...

, and the tojio thickets

Asteriscus intermedius ''Asteriscus'' may refer to: * ''Asteriscus'' (plant), a genus of flowering plants * Asteriscus, a component of the otolith An otolith (, ' ear + , ', a stone), also called otoconium, statolith, or statoconium, is a calcium carbonate structur ...

and

Lavandula dentata ''Lavandula dentata'', the fringed lavender or French lavender, is a species of flowering plant in the family Lamiaceae, native to the Mediterranean basin, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Yemen, and the Arabian Peninsula. Growing to tall, it has gray-green, ...

Archeological sites

Nearby, archaeological remains of the ancient inhabitants of Lanzarote, the majos, have been found.

References

External links

{{Commonscat Mountains of the Canary Islands Geography of the Province of Las Palmas Lanzarote