Tenerife Travel Guide - Overview

Tenerife has undergone something of a metamorphosis recently. The tag of crass commercialism is slowly being replaced with a designer label as the island finally gets to grips with its pies, fries, and beer image. Nowadays, the island is quick to reveal a more colourful picture, promoting golf, nature, and wellness programmes as alternative pursuits to daytime sun baking and night-time devilment.

Vibrant nature
The Gods smiled kindly on Tenerife painting it with the most luxuriant greens, the deepest blues and a technicolour palette of exotic foliage. Bursts of purple bougainvillea electrify the hillsides while delicate orange orchids add the finishing touches to meadows and mountain trails.

Volcanic scenery
The Canary Islands are the aftermath of mighty eruptions. Looming over the island, Tenerife's emblematic natural icon, Mount Teide - the world's third largest volcano - sleeps a majestic slumber.

Varied landscape
Nature's less explosive contributions include jungle-esque rainforests in the mountains of Anaga; soft sandy beaches in the surfer's paradise of El Medano; and the vertiginous cliffs leaning over Los Gigantes in the west, while high in the interior tiny hamlets hide beneath a fringe of pine forest.

Though nature laid the foundations, mere mortals take the credit for harnessing the beauty and furnishing it with playtime accoutrements in the southern resorts that continue to draw in visitors by the millions.