La Orotava

La Orotava is the town the Orotava valley is named after, and it sits on the slope above Puerto de la Cruz between the coast and the mountain. It got rich on su…La Orotava is the town the Orotava valley is named after, and it sits on the slope above Puerto de la Cruz between the coast and the mountain. It got rich on sugar and then on wine, and it spent the money on houses, which is what you come to see: tall merchant houses with carved wooden balconies stacked across their frontages and courtyards planted behind them, several of which are open to visitors.

The old town is small and extremely steep. It is laid out around a church with a domed roof visible from most of the valley, and the streets between the plaza and the top of the town are cobbled and hard on the legs, which is worth knowing before you park at the bottom.

The town's best-known event is Corpus Christi in early summer, when carpets of coloured volcanic sand from the Teide crater are laid across the square in front of the town hall and destroyed by the procession that walks over them.

The other reason to come here is the road. The northern approach to Teide National Park climbs from La Orotava through the pine belt to the crater rim, which is the more scenic of the two main routes up, and the town is the last place to buy anything before the mountain.