Tenerife vs Gran Canaria: which island?

I drove both islands on the same trip, so this is a same-eyes comparison, not two vacations remembered differently.

Tenerife is the big-ticket island. Teide is the single most impressive sight in the archipelago: you drive up through the cloud layer and come out above a white sea with Spain's highest peak ahead. Around it: the Masca valley switchbacks, the green Anaga mountains dropping to black-sand coves, Garachico's lava pools, and proper historic towns in La Laguna and La Orotava. If you are coming once, for the postcard, this is the postcard.

Gran Canaria is the road-trip island. Nothing on it matches Teide, and it does not matter: the density per driving hour is higher. Mirador after mirador on the mountain roads, the highest village on the island at Artenara, cave restaurants in the Guayadeque ravine, the Roque Nublo hike, a slot canyon we had entirely to ourselves, and the Maspalomas dunes at sunset, where you would swear you crossed into a desert. Fewer coaches, more corners.

The type split, honestly: first visit, one island, biggest single sights: Tenerife. Drivers, hikers and mirador collectors who want variety per kilometre and thinner crowds: Gran Canaria. Both keep a south-coast resort belt if beach-and-pool days are part of the plan, so neither loses on that front.

But the real answer is that the question is obsolete. The islands are linked by ferry, and pairing them in one week is barely more logistics than choosing. We did exactly that, and the contrast is the trip.

The tested two-island route, day by day, is in the guide.