Teide National Park & El Sauzal Winery: Private Teide and North Tenerife Food and Wine Tour

You step out of the electric Mercedes into a thin, cold light. The road that threaded up from the palm-lined north coast has already left the banana plantations behind; granite gives way to dark volcanic pavement and Teide stands above the clouds, huge and blunt, as if someone had set a foreign mountain onto the island and let it cool. The guide checks jackets and offers a thermos of water before you walk a short way across pumice and ancient lava flows toward a viewpoint that makes altitude visible: terraces of rock, a sea of white cloud and, beyond, the bright blue of the Atlantic.