Visit Tenerife - the best all-year-round holiday island in Europe
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There's a lot more than sun, sand and sea on the UK's most popular winter sun island.
I used to consider myself an expert on Tenerife. I’d been there, you see, a few years back… for one day.
In fact it had probably only taken me about half an hour to see everything I needed and to decide that it was simply the 'Costa Canaries' with a big mountain in the middle.
Then a national newspaper sent me back to this best-known Canary Island – to stay for a whole week. I reluctantly packed my bags, expecting to spend a boring week in a crumbling concrete tower block hotel half a mile from a grey lava ash beach, surrounded by tattooed boozers and forced to eat greasy fry-ups served on paper plates with plastic knives and forks.
Well forget eating fry-ups, a few days later I was eating my words. My only plea of mitigation is that I am surely not the only one who has misjudged Tenerife. One friend told me: “I had the worst holiday of my life there once. I’ll never go back.” Its reputation is of a string of grotty beach resorts that are cheap, crowded and hot all year. Hence the nickname: Tennergrief.
Well, at least we’re all right about the hot bit. Temperatures reached 32° while I was there in the winter and, apart from up in the mountains, were never cool enough to warrant a jumper or jacket – even at night. Most locals don’t even own a coat.
Like the rest of the Canaries, Tenerife belongs to Spain but is a long way south - just off West Africa. That semi-tropical climate makes it the UK's number-one winter-sun destination – it’s the closest totally reliable sunshine.
The island is about 50 miles across and shaped like a traffic cone. That’s because there’s one of the world’s largest volcanoes in the middle. El Teide is the biggest mountain in Spain, three times bigger than Ben Nevis. It’s a fantastic geographic feature considering it’s only a short drive from the sea.
So El Teide is Tenerife’s first must-see attraction – a genuine natural wonder of the world. Justifiably, the island’s most popular excursion is to this dramatic volcanic landscape.
This massive mountainous windbreak divides the island in two – north of the lump is less touristy, the weather is wetter and cooler, the vegetation lusher. The south is drier, more arid and hotter. This is where the main package resorts were built and where, years ago, I had my first taste of Tenerife.
Back then, the “pile ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap” resorts were tatty and depressing. They only had the sunshine and beaches to recommend them. But when I drove south this time I found money has been poured in to modernise these resorts. There are brand new glitzy five-star resort hotels, upmarket shops, gardens and promenades. Even the roads and pavements are now smooth, clean and decorated with trees and traditional mosaics and tiles. I could hardly believe my eyes when the first thing I saw as I cruised into the previously shabby Las Americas was a smart row of shops selling Armani and Cartier.
The old style cheap fun is still there – it’s a holiday playground after all - but there were far more signs offering “real Canarian food” than the old ones boasting, “no Spanish food served here.”
Years ago most tourists went little further than the restaurant next to the beach. Everyone enjoyed the sun and sand but, like me on my first visit, hardly anyone bothered to explore the rest of the island. In 1995 only four per cent of visitors hired a car.
Since then, however, a vast array of attractions have sprung up all over Tenerife, prompted by the rising expectations of modern tourists. Half the British visitors to Tenerife now hire a car and most of the rest take coach excursions at least once.
They are increasingly leaving the beaches to visit sights in the north of the island like Loro Parque, a dreadfully crowded but internationally renowned zoo and aquarium, or the mysterious collection of pyramids at Guimar claimed to have been built by an ancient civilisation. Everywhere there are offers of whale watching boat trips, balloon rides, and trips to a host of spectacular local fiestas, carnivals and markets. There seems as much to do on this small island now as in some whole countries.
A great example of the new Tenerife is Santa Cruz. Previously the little-visited industrial capital city in the north west of the island, it’s now like a mini-Barcelona with sophisticated nightlife, pavement restaurants, chic shops and a stylish waterfront. I stayed in a luxury hotel on Santa Cruz’s own Ramblas and went swimming at the biggest, best and most golden beach in the north, Playa de las Teresitas.
Tenerife has other towns worth a leisurely day’s stroll too. La Laguna has been designated a World Heritage Centre for its historic town centre, while La Orotava has a maze of old cobbled streets on the hill around Iglesia de la Conception, a church that has been declared a Spanish National Monument. And I loved exploring the craggy west and eastern extremities of the island. The most scenic village is Masca, perched on a rocky ridge at the end of a wiggly mountain road that would test the steering joints on any car.
Puerto de la Cruz, the only resort on north coast, has been given a real sprucing up too. It used to be characterised by its traffic-jammed seafront. Now cars have been banned it’s a broad pedestrian promenade.
My favourite spot was the pretty coastal town of Garachico which was swamped by lava 300 years ago. It has since risen from the ashes, literally, and enterprising townsfolk have created little seawater swimming pools in the lava that filled up their harbour.
The first time I went to Tenerife I decided that a day was too long to spend there. The second time I went I was convinced a week wasn’t long enough to see everything.
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