Tenerife with a Geologist, Four Seats in an SUV, Photos After

The guide is an official tour guide and a geologist, which on Tenerife is more useful than it sounds. Almost everything you look at on this island was made by the same processes, and someone who reads rock for a living can tell you which. The car is an SUV with four seats and no more. It is not a minivan, and the day is not a schedule. Pick-up is at the port or the north airport, or anywhere in the metropolitan area if that suits better, and the route gets decided once everyone is in the car. The stops below are a suggestion. Many of them or few, with the guide advising either way. Chipeque comes early: the Orotava valley, Teide behind it, the Izaña Observatory on the ridge, the sea of clouds below. Teide National Park takes several hours. The Teide-Pico Viejo stratovolcano reaches 3,718 m, the highest point in Spain, and 7,500 m measured from the ocean floor, which puts it third among volcanic structures in the world. After that, Minas de San José, the Roques de García standing out of the Ucanca plain with the Las Cañadas caldera around them, the Orotava valley that an enormous landslide left behind, and La Laguna, UNESCO listed as the first colonial city laid out to a plan. The guide photographs as an amateur and sends the pictures on after the trip. Child seats are available if you need them.