Tenerife Parks & nature

Four distinct environments stack up on this island as you climb, and you can drive through all of them in a morning. The coast is dry and volcanic. Between roughly 600 and 1,500 metres on the north side the trade winds hold a permanent belt of cloud, and inside it grows the laurel forest of Anaga, a survivor of the forest that covered the Mediterranean basin before the ice ages and now a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.

Above the cloud comes Canary pine, then the crater floor of Teide National Park at 2,000 metres and up. The Rural de Teno park in the far west is the quietest of them and the hardest to reach.