The Parador hotel is located inside the Teide Caldera, at altitude around 2300m, on a sort of "shelf" between caldera walls and bottom. Surrounding are rocks and hilly plains covered with rough lava from past flows.

To the north, the Teide Volcano towers for another 1,5km, reaching 3,718m (and counting, as volcano is only partially dormant, with most recent major lava flows at the beginning of XX century). Fortunately, it does not obscure Polaris, although is quite close!

To the east and south, the walls of caldera dominate over horizon and somehow restrict view, fortunately Milky Way center, Omega Centauri, Centaurus A and other southern objects are within reach of imaging.

To the west, there are some rocks and a step cliff of ca 200m, and below lays the bottom of the main caldera.

The Parador hotel is a part of the Teide tourist station, with a small restaurant, souvenir shop and medical aid station, so is quite busy during the day. As the evening approaches, the one-day visitors slowly retreat back to the sea cost, leaving the remaining few hotel residents in a calm and scenic environment.

Our telescopes were set in the hotel backyard. We left the mounts, cables, power supplies etc outside and only brought scopes, cameras and laptops inside - mainly to protect them from dust and heating by sun.

No counterweights were taken with us to reduce weight - you can see creative solution we used to counterweight telescopes ;-) Now it is clear why we needed to buy bottled water right upon arrival!