But it does not seem so exotic any more. Volcanoes of Tenerife make this place look so special!
Have you ever heard about Mount Teide?
This place has hardly been touched by the modern civilization. There are 600 volcanoes on the island of Tenerife and Mount Teide is the highest and most impressive one.
It is like a mysterious unknown world. The volcano is sleeping (last eruption in 1909), and the access to danger is what attracts most.

The Teide Parque Nacional is a small paradise for those who love nature, hiking or trekking. Nothing can stop you from enjoying the beauty of the virgin place.
Even the air smells different.

If you want, you can spend the night walking above, being right there on the top of Pico del Teide, when the sun rises..

This would be an experience, you’ll never will forget.

Stunning landscape, light clouds …

You realize that is one of the challenging places you have ever been to.

The Teno-range in the west of Tenerife and the Anaga-mountains are a famous destination for active holiday makers and those who like hiking and exploring.

The visitor finds many small original villages, which escaped from the mass tourism because of their location far away from the popular beaches and the big cities. One learns about the roots of civilization of Tenerife and can enjoy the intact landscape and meet the autochthonous people living there.

We explored the moste interesting and charming places of the island to give you some usefull tips.
One of the most beautiful beaches, called Playa de las Teresitas, is situated in the north-east of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the capital of the island. Playa de las Teresitas has been created artificially with sand from the Sahara desert, you can enjoy a safe bathing pleasure as well adequate for children.

In the south of the island of Tenerife you can find different natural sandy beaches at El Medano and artificially created ones in the tourist resorts like Las Americas and Los Cristianos.

La Tarta:

The most important place of this beautiful village is the small plaza at the church. The whole hamlet is devided into parts and distributed to several mountain sides.

Masca is well-known for its tasty onions, potatoes and garlic but also the yame-fruit, plam juice, citrus fruits and goat chees are delicacies.

Furthermore especially the type of construction of the houses is very conspicuous because of the way they are built into the mountain side.

One of the most famous hiking-tours begins in the middle of the village and leads trough the barranco, which means canyon, to the sea – it takes about 6 hours bidirectional (descent and ascent)

With approx. 3 Mil. visitors per year the national park of mount Teide is the most-most visited national park of Spain.

“Pico del Teide ” is with 3.718 metres the highest mountain of Spain.
Furthermore mount Teide is third-highest island volcano of the world.

He forms the northern border of the national park. In the south, the west and the east the mount Teide national park is limited by the cañadas, or lava flows which enclose a diameter of approx. 16 kilometres.

The park and the lava flows are called “caldera”, what means kettle and describes a broken in place in the volcano which is formed like a kettle. This landscape has been created when the empty vaults of magma under the earth, which are near the surface, collapsed.

In the late spring or early summer, in the months of May and June is the time of flowers in Tenerife.
In the rest of the year Tenerife, and the national park Teide resemble a moonscape. But in may it’s the time of the anthesis of the flower tajinaste.
The tajinaste, (tajinaste rojo, Echium wildpretii, Tower of Jewel) is a columnar flower with a beautiful and lush red colour.

It is among the category of the tropicals and tender Perennials.

It is 4 to 6 feet high (or 1,2 to 1,8 metres). Birds, bees and butterflies love the tajinaste flower.
It sows it’s seed for itself. The leaves are herbaceous.

Small country hotels, holiday cottages, chalets and fincas offer the adequate accommodation. One can book his holiday through various tour operators or without any problems directly by the Internet.

Tenerife is not one of the cheapest holiday destinations, but with a bit of luck you can find a good bargain.

Journeys to the isle of Tenerife are particularly popular at Easter, Whitsun, Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

However, unfortunately, this boom has a very strong influence on the prices.

The island of Tenerife offers extensive possibilities to everyone who wants to practice physical activities and does not only want to lie on the beach in the sun.

Hiking, climbing, trekking, diving, windsurfing, surfing, mountainbiking and not at least golf are examples for a variety of holiday activities.

Flora and fauna have to offer a huge diversity to the visitor. The whales can be watched during a boat trip between the two islands Tenerife and La Gomera. Dolphins attract many animal enthusiasts, and can be watched as well on special organized boat trips in their natural surroundings.

The vegetation over all in the north of the island is very interessting and influences on the charming abmience.

The splendid gala to nominate the annual carnival-queen is among the most impressive moments fullo of rhythm, colours and fun without limit.

Thousands of joyfully celebrating dressed ups are dancing on the streets and enjoy themselves till the early morning hours.

The carnival of Tenerife is a great spectacle, which you should’nt miss in any case, surely you will be impressed.

The colour palette of the isle is dominated by the black lava sand, some ocher coloured sand beaches and a deep green of the varied vegetation.

The colour green of the vegetation is dominating on the three smaller Canary Islands of La Palma, La Gomera and El Hierro.
Instead on Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura and Lanzarote the landscape is formed by drough rocks and desert regions similar to the Sahara.
A lot of creativity from the native canarys has been necessary to make agriculture and cultivation possible.

The attraction of Tenerife is its versatility. There are lively colonial towns and romantic mountains which are crowned by a volcano, the Pico del Teide. The volcano is 3718 meters high and is Spains highest mountain.

You can get to know Tenerife on extensive walks through hidden mountain pathes. In the range of Anaga and on an exciting discoverer tours in the Teide national park or in the mountains of Teno you can discover the soul of the vulcanic island.
Where can you see such a bizarre volcanic landscape full of craters, solidified magma rivers like on Tenerife?

The so called queen of the Canary Islands guarantees temperatures of over 20 °C in winter as in summer with many sunny days to take a sunbath. Over all the south of the island is well known for nearly any cloudy or rainy day. Most beaches are situated near the holiday centres like Los Christianos or Playa de Las Americas.

The holiday-maker has a lot of hotels and a perfect tourist infrastructure with appropriate restaurants, amusement parks and much more on his disposal.

It is a quite special experience for every tourist to visit Santa Cruz during the carnival time the months of January and February. Thousands of people dressed up with colourful costumes dancing and celebrating on the streets of the capital of Tenerife.
The carnival is accompanied by Salsa, Merengue and Samba rhythms. The carnival of Santa Cruz is after the one in Rio de Janeiro the most popular worldwide.

So, you see, you have many possibilities to escape from the cold winter months in Germany.

Party time is in full swing in the northern Tenerife resort of Puerto de la Cruz, which is in the middle of its annual July fiestas.

The main festivities pay tribute to the Gran Poder and the Virgen del Carmen, the patron saints of the town.

A wide range of typical activities are organised in the course of the month, but the undoubted highlight comes on the second Tuesday of the month – this year July 17 – when the Virgen del Carmen (pictured above) is paraded through the narrow cobbled streets before being loaded on to a boat and taken out to sea.

The day draws huge crowds, as witnessed in the picture below, with families camping out overnight around the little harbour to ensure they get the best places.

It’s a typical Canarian family day, with all generations joining in the fun.

Similar celebrations are held all over Tenerife at around the same time but few are as spectacular or as moving as the processions in Puerto.

In addition to her many duties, the Virgen del Carmen is the patron saint of fishermen and the local fisherfolk consider it a great honour to be chosen to carry the enormous statute down to the harbour for her annual outing.

As they stagger and sway through the streets under the weight of the figure, the fishermen are hemmed in by hordes of onlookers desparate not only to see the spectacle but also to try to touch Carmen for luck.

As Carmen arrives at the harbour to be carried down to the water’s edge, the temperature of the occasion rises sharply as her progress is marked by the singing of Ave Maria.

It’s a moment charged with high emotion for the by now tens of thousands of people packed around the harbour, clinging to the sea wall or watching from the crowded balconies of the surrounding high buildings.

The statue is eventually lashed to a simple fishing vessel that looks as though it will sink under the combined weight of Carmen and her enormous entourage (see below) and the party edges its way through scores of tiny boats packed into the harbour as tightly as proverbial sardines.

A new farmers market created in the heart of the traditional agricultural area on the island of Tenerife is proving to be a shrewd development.

In the heart of the Orotava Valley in the town of La Orotava, the unofficial agricultural capital of the island for centuries, the new purpose-built market opened last month and has already established a popular following with locals and visitors alike.

Nearly €300,000 was invested in a 1,500 square metre site to provide a covered market area big enough to house 40 stalls, together with a children’s playground, cafe/bar and parking for over 100 cars.

The market, which runs on Saturdays and Sundays from 8.30am to 3pm, sells a good range of local produce and crafts, including fruit and vegetables, cheeses, honey, bread, cakes, eggs, wine, plants and flowers.

Late spring and early summer is Tajinaste time up on Mount Teide, a time when the wild and rugged mountain landscape is briefly tamed by the blooms of a number of brightly coloured plants, most of which are endemic to the island of Tenerife.

Tajinaste rojo, or Echium wildpretii to give it its correct name, is the most spectacular, a species of bugloss which can grow to over 10ft tall.

Echium is a genus of around 60 species of flowering plant which flourish across Africa, Europe, Madeira and the Canary Islands. Some species are also found in east Asia and Australia.

The sub-alpine zones of the ravines around Mount Teide are the native habitat of the Tajinaste variant, which thrives under the hot sun and the arid and dry conditions there. It can also tolerate temperatures as low as -5C.

A herbaceous biennial, the Tajinaste’s two-year cycle sees it form a dense cluster of leaves in its first growing season, followed by tall and thick stems of bright red flowers in its second year.

Round about now is the perfect time of year to see the Tajinaste in its full glory, along with a host of other colourful and exotic plants endemic to Las Cañadas del Teide, the huge caldera that surrounds the volcanic peak.

The Dragon Tree, or Drago, is one of the iconic symbols of Tenerife.

It is very slow growing, but when it attains maturity it usually has a thick trunk which is crowned by a thick umbrella-shaped canopy of dagger-like leaves.

It gets its popular name from the secretion of a reddish resin, know as dragon’s blood, which appears when either the bark or leaves are cut.

It is thought that the original inhabitants of the island, the Guanches, used the blood-red sap from the tree in medicines and as an embalming fluid.

Because it grows so slowly, generally taking ten years to reach a height of one metre, many of the taller specimens are believed to be hundreds of years old.

The oldest, in the town of Icod de los Vinos (pictured above) in the north of the island, is reputed to be a thousand years old, though it is generally accepted in the scientific community that in reality it is somewhere between 600-800 years old. It is, nevertheless, a popular tourist attraction.

The difficulty with accurately determining the age of a drago is that it does not display annual growing rings, but instead can only be dated from the number of times it has flowered.

It’s a common misconception that cats hate swimming in particular and water in general.

My experience of the domestic moggy is strictly limited, but I’ve watched Prince, one of the star attractions at Loro Parque, Tenerife’s biggest tourist attraction, enjoying a dip in his private pool on several occasions. He loves it.

Indeed, tigers love water, and white tigers particularly adore it. White tigers have the reputation of being good swimmers but poor climbers.

Which is strange really because the white tiger is not a sub-species as such, but rather a genetic misfit.

White tigers are rarely found in the wild. In about 100 years only 12 white tigers have been seen in the wild in India.

They are almost extinct and most of the ones living are in captivity, mostly in zoos, though rarely are they as well catered for as at Loro Parque.

The white tiger is neither an albino nor a separate sub-species of the tiger, but simply has the rogue gene needed for white colouring.

None of which concerns Prince as he takes his daily dip before stretching out regally in the sun as his many admirers pay homage.

‘There is more meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging a glance with a gorilla than any other animal I know.’

An estimated 500 million people worldwide heard Sir David Attenborough whisper those words as he lay next to a 100kg female gorilla in Rwanda nearly 30 years ago.

His encounter with the gorillas in the BBC natural history series Life on Earth is one of television’s most memorable.

At Loro Parque in Tenerife, you can’t get quite as close to the gorillas as David Attenborough did all those years ago.

But, as the pictures above and below show, you do get a pretty good view of the park’s gorilla enclosure, which covers 3,500 square metres and houses six gorillas in conditions very like their native habitat.

The six gorillas are part of an experimental group on loan from various European zoos and form part of a breeding programme for endangered species.

Situated in Puerto de la Cruz in the north of the island, Loro Parque is rightly recognised as one of the finest animal parks anywhere in the world.

The gorillas are fed only the best fruit and vegetables and their living quarters have constant ventilation and under-floor heating to provide perfect conditions for them.

Incidentally, the BBC4 will be broadcasting on Easter Sunday a programme entitled ‘Gorillas Revisited with David Attenborough’, in which he tells the story of how he and his film crew managed to obtain such excellent pictures of the Rwanda gorillas.

The tour will begin in Houston, Texas’s largest city, on June 28, moving on to historic San Antonio – scene of the famous Battle of the Alamo in 1836 – on June 30.

San Antonio, now a city of over a million people, was founded in 1718 by settlers from the Canary Islands.

Further concerts are scheduled for Fort Worth on July 2, Laredo on July 4 and Corpus Christi on July 6.

•The Auditorio de Tenerife, home of the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra.

Over 100 musicians and technicians will make the journey from Tenerife for a programme of music that will be typically Spanish in flavour, featuring zarzuela, or light opera, and works by Granados and Falla.

The orchestra will be conducted by Edmon Colomer, while the soloist will be Tenerife soprano Raquel Lojendio.

The Orquesta Sinfonica de Tenerife (OST) has a long history, dating back to its formation as the Chamber Orchestra of the Canaries in 1935.

The orchestra is no stranger to touring, having appeared in all of the major cities on the Spanish mainland and featured regularly in music festivals across Europe.

The OST is based in the island capital of Santa Cruz, at the city’s recently-opened magnificent concert hall, the Auditorio de Tenerife.

Sunsets over Tenerife can be pretty spectacular, as this shot taken from the mirador at La Paz, Puerto de la Cruz, clearly demonstrates.

The scientific explanation for the vivid colours we see as the sun goes down revolves around the low angle scattering of light off fine particles of dust, soot, smoke and ash.

One of the reasons sunsets over Tenerife can be so special is the island’s relative proximity to the Sahara Desert.

For most of us, their sheer beauty is intoxicating enough not to require further explanation.