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Why Tenerife is an ideal Canary Islands holiday destination

Updated on January 5, 2015

Tenerife is ideal for holidays

Tenerife is a very popular holiday destination for many very good reasons. Tenerife is situated in the Canary Islands off the coast of North Africa and offers excellent weather and plenty of sunshine throughout the year.

Tenerife also has lots of sandy beaches, both artificially created yellow and white sand beaches and natural black ones of volcanic sand. The southernmost part of the island gets the best weather and highest temperatures and this is where the main holiday resorts are located.

Playa de las Américas and Los Cristianos are the biggest resorts but Los Gigantes, further up the coast, is another very popular place for tourists and visitors to the island to stay.

Tenerife offers everything that holidaymakers could want. It has the beaches, the good weather, marvellous countryside, plenty of bars and restaurants, hotels, shopping centres, theme parks, sports facilities, excursions and all sorts of activities that people enjoy.

The island has two airports but the Reina Sofía airport in the south is the main one for flights to and from the island that holidaymakers use. Regular flights from the UK operate and only take around four hours to get to and from Tenerife.

Tenerife photos

Las Teresitas beach
Las Teresitas beach
Tenerife holidays
Tenerife holidays
Sunset over the water at Playa de San Marcos
Sunset over the water at Playa de San Marcos
Sunset and palms on Tenerife
Sunset and palms on Tenerife

Tenerife North and South

Tenerife North and Tenerife South are almost like two islands in one because they are so different. The south is hot and dry and has semi-desert coastal plains, while the north is cooler and greener and covered in forests and farmland. The south tends to be where there are lots of English speakers and the north is where the people mainly talk in their native Spanish.

The south of Tenerife is where the main tourist resorts are and the north offers far more of historic interest, the arts and Spanish culture. There are great museums and art galleries, for example, in Santa Cruz, which is the capital of Tenerife and is up in the north.

This difference between the north and south gives visitors to the island the choice of what they want to do and where they would like to be. Those whose idea of a happy holiday is sunbathing on a hot sandy beach and being with mostly English-speakers prefer the south and those who enjoy the beauty of the countryside and are able to speak Spanish may chose the north. Many people like to mix the two sides of the island.

Tenerife has micro-climates within the north and south of the island too, and the weather changes drastically within a short distance, so you can cool off up on the forest-covered mountains or enjoy the heat of a resort on the coast.

It doesn't take long by car or bus to get from one part of Tenerife to another and it is easy to go right around the whole island in a day, whilst stopping off for breaks on your journey.

Places on interest include the Pyramids of Güímar in the south of Tenerife and Icod de los Vinos in the north of the island, which is famous for its thousand-year-old Dragon Tree, which is known as the Drago Milenario.

The resorts of Tenerife, such as the popular Los Gigantes in the south of the island, have marinas where it is possible to hire a boat or book a cruise.

And if you are interested in caves, the island is full of them. Cueva del Viento (the Cave of the Wind), near Icod de los Vinos, is the largest volcanic cave system in the world. It is possible to book a guided tour of parts of it from the visitor's centre there.

All around Tenerife there are helpful Tourist Information Centres that provide info in Spanish, English and German.

The excellent bus sevices run by the TITSA company can take you all around the island too, and if you get a special Bonobus (Bono) reusable ticket, available from some shops, bus stations and kiosks for 12€ or 30€, you get up to 50% deductions on fares too. The green TITSA buses, called guaguas (pronounced "wahwahs") by the locals, are one of the best ways of seeing the island of Tenerife.

More Tenerife photos

Masca
Masca
Los Gigantes marina
Los Gigantes marina
Mt Teide's peak covered in snow
Mt Teide's peak covered in snow

Specially for the tourists

There are many businesses set up specifically to cater for the needs of tourists. There are package holidays, holiday rentals and hotels and apartment complexes where visitors to Tenerife can stay.

Then there are all the excursions, both over land and by sea. You can visit Mt Teide or the tiny mountain village of Masca with one of these excursion companies, or you can take a cruise around the coast of the island and go whale and dolphin watching.

If you are interested in diving there are many excellent locations and plenty of dive centres around the island.

There are zoos and theme parks too, ranging from Loro Parque (Parrot Park) in Puerto de la Cruz in the north of Tenerife to the popular water kingdom of Siam Park in the Playa de las Américas area of the Costa Adeje in Tenerife's south.

And if you fancy visiting the other Canary Islands there are ferries from Los Cristianos that will take you over to La Gomera and El Hierro. Regular flights also go to the other islands, as do ferries from Santa Cruz.

With so many things to do and places to see, and with the fabulous weather Tenerife gets, it is not surprising that the island is so popular with holiday-makers. Many people are so impressed that they come back time and time again, and others may even choose to come and live on the island.

© 2010 Steve Andrews

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