Santa Cruz de Tenerife

Santa Cruz de Tenerife faces the Atlantic at the foot of a 3,715-metre volcano, the highest summit in Spain. Teide National Park fills the whole middle of the island: a desert of red and black lava under air so clear that observatories were built up there, and the Teide Cable Car climbs almost to the crater. The coast could not be more different. In the north, the ridges of Anaga Rural Park carry a laurel forest left over from another age, shaggy with moss and twisted trunks. In the south, El Médano Beach is the windsurfers' shore, under a small red mountain. The city has its own pale beach, Las Teresitas, whose sand was shipped in from the Sahara. Plates come with papas arrugadas, small potatoes boiled in coarse salt, and green or red mojo sauce. Its carnival is one of the largest anywhere in the world.