Teide

Izaña is the high eastern shoulder of the park, a long open ridge where the mountain road runs close to the top of the weather. Air this high and this dry tends to hold still, and still air is what a clear sky is made of — it is the plain difference between stars that shiver and stars that hold a steady point. From here the eastern half of the sky opens wide, and the glow of the coastal towns stays low and far behind the ridge, leaving the dark mostly whole. There is little up here but rock, road, and sky, which is exactly what the night asks for. The ground is exposed and the wind can be hard, so this is a place to arrive while there is still light: find your footing, pick a spot, and settle in. Then let the ridge fall quiet as the first stars come out over the sea below, and bring more warmth than the drive up suggests you will need.

Corral del Niño is a pullout high on the same eastern ridge, a shallow hollow rimmed by dark volcanic ground with the sky wide open above it. The bowl is the point: low rock on almost every side blocks stray light and gives you a clean rim to sit against while the whole dome of the sky turns overhead. It sits well above the clouds that often pool over the island, so on many nights you look up into clear air and down onto a floor of grey. This is a place that rewards patience over motion — there is nothing to walk to, only a sky to let arrive. Reach it before dark, when the road is easy and the last light shows you the ground. Then stay past dusk, when the enclosed dark makes the faint stars easiest to find and the cold gives you every reason to keep still and keep looking up.

This viewpoint faces west across the high country, set where the ground falls away toward the far rim of the basin and an open horizon. It is named for the obvious reason, but the sunset is only the opening act. Stay put after the color fades and you get the quieter show — the sky over the peak deepening from blue to grey to black, and the stars filling in from the top down, faint ones crowding between the bright ones you already know. Because you are standing above most of the island’s moist low air, that filling-in goes further here than it does at the coast: stars keep arriving long after you would expect the sky to be full. There is no rush and no wrong moment to look. Come with time to spare and something warm, take in the last of the light, and then simply do not leave when the sun does.

Pico Viejo gives a long, open view across the western volcanic country toward the mountain’s broad flank. By day it is a place to read the shape of the land; by night it becomes a wide, dark window on the sky, with the bulk of the peak standing black against the stars to the east. It sits high enough that the clouds coming off the Atlantic often break against the slopes below the overlook, leaving the air above you clear. That is the whole trick of this mountain restated in a single view — the weather gathers down there, and the sky stays open up here. The horizon is low and the surroundings empty, so little competes with the stars once the sun is gone. Arrive in daylight to take in the distance, then let that same distance go dark and fill with stars, and keep your layers close as the temperature drops with the light.

Llano de Ucanca overlooks the broad, flat floor of the high basin — an open plain of pale ground ringed by distant walls. For the night sky, flat and open is exactly what you want: the horizon sits low all the way around, from one rim clear across to the other, opening most of the sky to view. The basin floor is far from any town, and the surrounding walls hold back what little glow reaches this high, so the dark settles in deep and even. Stand at the overlook as the light goes and the plain below turns to shadow while the sky above grows enormous. It is a wide, plain sky, and an easy place to take in the whole turning dome at once. Give your eyes time in the dark, and give yourself time to simply stand under it.

Boca Tauce sits at the western gateway of the high basin, where the road bends and the country opens toward the lower slopes. The ground here is dark old lava, and the western horizon drops away, giving a long, clean line for the last of the daylight and, later, for stars setting toward the sea of cloud that often lies that way. It is a good place to watch the sky change hands — the sun leaving in the west while, behind you, the dark is already climbing over the peak. Because the horizon is so open on this side, low stars and planets show here that a walled-in overlook would hide. Come for the end of the day and stay into the dark; the road out is easy once your eyes have the stars to steer by, and the cold is a fair price for a horizon this clean.

Roque Cinchado is a lone pillar of old rock standing apart on the basin floor, weathered into a narrow, top-heavy shape that the years have picked out of the softer ground around it. By day it stands out on the basin floor; by night it becomes something better — a dark, definite shape to set against the stars. A sky full of faint points can be hard to hold onto with nothing in the frame; a strong silhouette gives the eye an anchor and the whole scene a sense of scale. It is a short walk from the road, and the ground is easy underfoot. Come at dusk while the pillar still catches the last light on its weathered flanks, then wait for it to go black against a sky that keeps getting deeper behind it, until the rock is a shadow and the stars are the only bright thing left.

El Teide is the peak itself, the high point the whole park is built around, and from this viewpoint it stands over you as a single great dark mass. For the night sky it plays one clear role: scale. When the summit goes black against the stars, the eye finally grasps how much mountain you have climbed — and therefore how much of the sky’s dimming air now lies below you rather than above. The peak also blocks stray light from beyond it, deepening the dark on its far side. Come while there is light to see the mountain plainly, then let it become a shadow and watch the stars gather close around its rim. Stay put as the cold comes on; the show only improves as the sky blackens behind the peak and the last faint stars find the edge of the rock.