La Orotava is a town of balconies. The old streets of this hillside town on the north side of Tenerife are lined with seventeenth- and eighteenth-century houses, their wooden balconies carved from the dark local pine and often draped in flowers, and the best known, the Casa de los Balcones, shows a courtyard full of carved timber and plants. The cobbled streets are steep, so wear shoes you can walk in, and the church of La Concepción, with its twin baroque towers, dominates the skyline. Every June, for Corpus Christi, the streets are covered with intricate carpets made of coloured sand and flower petals, and the whole town turns out to see them.
The valley below is the Orotava Valley, a wide green amphitheatre sloping to the sea, planted with bananas, vines and gardens. When Alexander von Humboldt visited in 1799, on his way to South America, he called it one of the most beautiful views in the world, and a viewpoint is named after him. Behind the town, the mountain rises in a long, steady curve to Teide, a volcano of 3,715 metres, the highest peak in Spain, which stands white-capped in winter above the clouds. Puerto de la Cruz, a lively resort town, is just a few kilometres down the hill.
The ride up the TF-21 into Teide National Park starts here, and it is a climb in three acts. First comes the banana plantation and the villages, then a belt of cloud forest and Canary pine, in which the air is damp, the light is green and the road snakes in tight bends, then a sudden exit above the clouds into a bare volcanic desert of orange and black rock. The change from lush to lunar is dramatic. The park is a UNESCO site, and the road across the Las Cañadas crater is beautiful and often windy.
The temperature drops steadily as you climb, and it can be near freezing at the top even when La Orotava is warm, so carry a jacket and gloves. Snow and ice can close the road in winter. There is fuel in La Orotava and Puerto de la Cruz, and none in the park, so fill the tank before you leave. In the morning the clouds often lie at about a thousand metres, and riding above them is like being on an island in a white sea. Come early, because the tour buses arrive by mid-morning.