Tenerife Attractions

None of the other islands has scenery of such overwhelming grandeur - the bizarre stony desert of the Caldera de las Cañadas, the great expanses of pine forest, the fertile valleys in which bougainvilleas, poinsettias and hibiscus flourish. Its disadvantage is that it has no long sandy beaches. Only in the south of the island are there a few small coves; elsewhere bathers and sunbathers are dependent on beautifully laid out artificial lidos.TopographyTenerife, the largest of the Canaries, is shaped like an isosceles triangle pointing northeast, with the Pico de Teide in its center. Encircling the peak is the Caldera de las Cañadas, a gigantic collapsed crater. To the northeast extends the Cumbre Dorsal, which slopes gradually down from 2,200m/7,200ft to 1,700m/5,600ft and then falls sharply to the plateau of La Laguna (550-600m/1,800-2,000ft). The northeastern tip of the island is occupied by the rugged Montañas de Anaga. These ranges of hills divide the island into two totally different landscape zones. While the hill slopes in the north are covered with a luxuriant growth of vegetation the country to the south is desert like in character. The hills are broken up by barrancos (gorges), which with one exception (the Barranco del Infierno) are no longer traversed by watercourses. In spite of this the lower reaches frequently offer favorable conditions for agriculture. On the flanks of the hills extend a number of wide and fertile valleys like the Valle de la Orotava in the north and the Valle de Güimar in the south.