Tenerife’s Teide volcano continues to lure Team Sky, Astana and other pro teams, but the island’s ocean-gazing balcony roads, lunar landscapes and surreal rock formations add a sprinkle of magic to any two-wheeled adventure
In the wilds of Tenerife a cyclist’s senses can become disjointed from reality. As I pedal through a volcanic world of red cinder cones, golden pumice fields and shiny black obsidian rocks, I can see the Teide volcano looming high above me, which makes me suspect, with a wince, that I must be much lower down the day’s big climb than I had hoped.
Yet when I glance in the other direction, I realise that – thanks to a confusing cloud inversion – I am already high above the clouds, which float, absurdly, below the pine forest I’ve just cycled through. Craning my neck at the sight of clouds hovering beneath trees, I feel like I’m staring at a landscape painting that has been hung upside down.
Strangeness surrounds me. I can feel the sunshine toasting my back and taste the salty sweat dripping down my cheeks, but I can also sense the metallic chill emanating from the slabs of snow piled up by the sides of the road. I can smell pine trees – an aroma I normally associate with mountains – but also the thick scent of hot, sun-blasted sand dunes.
And although my brain knows I am miles from the ocean, when I curl around a bend in the road I appear to be floating on a giant wave of water. This hairpin bend slices through the smooth, flowing contours of a 10-metre-high solidified lava flow – known locally as La Tarta (‘the cake’) for its colourful layers of white pumice and black and red basalt – that appears to rise and fall like a wave about to crash against the shore.
Am I low or high? Hot or cold? Cycling or surfing? In this hallucinogenic landscape I’m not sure whether to take a photograph or call a doctor.
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