financial excesses

Sun, scenic variety and two superlatives: not only can
Tenerife boast Spain’s highest mountain, the 3,718metre
Pico del Teide peak, the waters of the biggest
Canary Island are also home to stable families of resident
pilot whales – an almost unique phenomenon
worldwide. For the island of eternal spring MICE business
is now becoming increasingly important.
Tenerife is occasionally also
described as the most
beautiful of the Canary Islands.
Whether that is correct
is a matter of personal preference
– at any rate the scenic
variety on Tenerife is huge.
The bizarre stony deserts in
the Caldera de las Cañadas
stand in exciting contrast to
The Magma Arte y Congresos.
Tenerife
The island of the
fire coyote
fertile valleys where hibiscus,
poinsettias and bougainvilleas
thrive all year round. The 3,718
metre-high Pico del Teide
draws visitors in their droves.
Echeyde, Hell, was the name
given by the aboriginal
Guanches to the volcano,
which rose massively and forbiddingly
in the midst of their
island empire in the Atlantic. A
perfectly shaped cone that
created life only to devour it
again. 500,000 years before
the first Guanche settlement
powerful explosions and eruptions
closed the gap between
several small islands and began
forming the land mass
that we now know as Tenerife.
Even in modern times the
volcano repeatedly erupted,
engulfing villages and cultivated
terrace fields. No Guanche
would ever have dared venture
up to the crater peak, for it
was there that Guayota, the
Fire Coyote, lived, an evil monster
that devoured anyone
who approached it.
Meanwhile, visitors from all
parts of the island can reach
the cable car station at the foot
of the volcano along four good
roads. One of the most scenic
routes to Mount Teide begins
in Tenerife’s second largest
town, La Laguna in the northeast.
The Carretera Borsal
(Forest Road) runs through
the Bosque de la Esperanza
(Forest of Hope). All along the
route across the roughly 2,000
metre-high mountain ridge observation
decks offer beautiful
views of the scenery sloping
down gently to the coast,
the fertile Orotava Valley,
Puerto de la Cruz and finally
To a height of
3,500 metres
TENERIFE
the boundless, blue Atlantic.
Two gondolas run from the
cable car station every ten
minutes between 9 am and 4
pm, transporting visitors to a
height of 3,500 metres just
below the summit of the crater
into a landscape of lava,
tuff and basalt. The lava
there shimmers silveryblack
or reddish-brown
above the blanket of cloud,
the tuff red, yellow and
white and the basalt grey or
golden. And the odd plant
even manages to survive.
For the final 200-metre as-
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