Spain's Tiede, World Class Volcano
UNESCO Names Tenerife Volcano Crater a World Heritage Site
The highest peak in Spain is not in the Pyrenees, but on Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. Tiede National Park was recently named a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The third highest volcano in the world at 12198 feet altitude, Tiede towers above the small island of Tenerife, best known of the Canary Islands. But that’s only part of the volcano’s full height; measured from its base on the ocean floor, it rises 24, 606 feet.
Teide National Park, which includes the entire mountain, covers 46,925 acres, and a trip to its astonishing crater is a highlight of a trip to the Canary Islands. Inside the crater’s rim is a caldera – the crater floor – 12 miles in diameter, and a drive across thee barren moonscape is like driving into the center of the earth.
The winding road from the north shore of Tenerife to the eastern park entrance climbs through a green forest of tall trees before reaching the rim – the thin shell of the volcano’s outer crust. This crater is actually what’s left of a much larger mountain that blew its top about three million years ago, collapsing into itself. In places it left walls 1500 feet tall.
From one side of this crater the present cone of Tiede began to form by repeated volcanic eruptions. You can climb Tiede, but the easier way to get close to the top is by El Teleferico, a cable car that takes only 8 minutes to ascend 1200 feet. To climb the remaining 535 feet, you need to go with a guide. Views from the top cover the entire archipelago and can extend to north Africa – the nearest land mass to the Canaries -- on a clear day.
The Visitors Center is at the eastern entrance to the park, at El Portillo, where you can pick up maps of the crater trails or join a walking tour (previous sign-up is required). Exhibits explain the mountain’s formation.
The rock colors change from place to place within the caldera and along the cliffs formed by its rim. Their convoluted shapes rise in places like giant sculptures, the most dramatic of which is Los Roques, tall eroded lava formations. Nearby are Los Azulejos, a group of green and blue rocks colored by iron hydrate deposits.
Inside the crater is Parador de Canadas del Tiede, part of Spain’s government-owned lodging group. A stay there provides the rare chance to spend the night inside a volcanic crater in comfort, as well as a chance to see the crater’s colors in the evening and at sunrise.
UNESCO listed the park in June of 2007, citing its natural beauty and “its importance in providing evidence of the geological processes that underpin the evolution of oceanic islands.”
