I’ve not heard anything about venting into kitchens, but would be interested in trying to chase it up if you can give me any more info to go on.

Los Gigantes is quite interesting, because it’s right at the edge of the Teno basaltic shield, while to its South it has the more modern volcanic series, and its East lies the Santiago del Teide rift. So it depends what you want to show them really – I could probably take undergrads out for about a week without ever going more than a few miles from the town.

Probably one of the most spectacular sights though is visible from Los Gigantes town. If you can see the cliffs to the North (http://www.info-spain.co.uk/canary.islands/los.gigantes.beach.jpg) and have some binoculars there are some amazing things to be seen. that entire sequence is made of thousands of individual basaltic lava flows. Cutting vertically through those in places you can see narrow dykes – these are the feeder systems that provide the lava to the surface. If you follow some of those vertical dykes up the cliff you will see some of them end in a conical shape (they usually look a bit more red or orangey than the surrounding basalt layers). These are the erupting scoria cones formed as the basalt was brought to the surface, then eventually buried by later flows. This close-up shows the features really well http://travel.ogate.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Los-Gigantes-Cliffs.jpg

The newer stuff to the South is all pyroclastic flow material produced from Las Canadas – the much bigger volcano that Mt Teide now sites inside the caldera of.

The material to the East is the most recent. That area is covered in scoria cones (like this one) http://www.aboltonswebsite.co.uk/images/20080315_005.JPG. These were erupted in one single eruption, and will not become active again. Many of them have cuts made into them as the loose scoria material makes a convenient hardcore for roads and buildings.

Let me know if you’d like more detail on any particular parts.