Tenerife with a twist – cloud forests, lunar-like terrain and starry, starry skies

This Canary Island around the size of Co Offaly punches well above its weight in protected natural habitats

Sunrise at Anaga in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. Photo: Getty

Brendan Daly

‘For me, the treasures of this island are the landscape, the sky, and the sea,” Bego my tour guide tells me this as we walk along a mountain ridge and take in the verdant terraced fields near the top of huge valleys that sweep towards the peacock blue Atlantic Ocean.

We’re in a place created by the ­magma flows of past volcanic eruptions, its gorges sculpted by millions of years of erosion and from where we can see the islands of La Palma and La Gomera.