Tenerife— One dreamy week in January! 🦎🌴☀️
Hello there! Here follows a list of highlights from a somewhat spontaneous, somewhat spectacular one-week winter sunshine trip to Tenerife.
Before we begin, let’s just agree that sharing travel tips are tricky. You know, the cafe where you finally find something to eat when Hanger has all but drained the meaning from life might not be a ‘must-do’ to someone else. With that in mind, here are the highlights from our first time on the island. We had a SPLENDID time!
3 Hikes
1. Benijo — Mirador Cabeza del Tejo — Benijo
Where: North: Parque Rural de Anaga
Time: 3.5 hours in total with short breaks and lunch at the top
Distance: 4 miles / 6.5km
Route: We kind of adapted a few hikes we found. Here is the route we actually hiked.
Difficulty: ‘Moderate for Tenerife’ I’d say, so watch your step on loose ground and be prepared for some steep climbs. Avoid in or after rain. Watch out coming back down to Benijo, pretty slidy.
Why: Dreamy views up the coast with surfers bobbing in the waves, amazing lush and mysterious wildlife(we loved the lettuce-like succulents springing from the walls, lizards shimmering underfoot and cheeky birds at the top trying to steal our lunch!) and then an insane almost-panorama view at the mirador.
Food: We had a lovely (second) lunch on the terrace at El Frontón restaurant afterwards with some more ‘Canarian’ style food: fried octopus, papas arrugadas and rojo mojo / mojo verde and they had some excellent looking white fish too. There are quite a few restaurants with excellent views nearby .
Notes: We parked near the Trailhead and got one of the last spots around 10am. Parking seemed pretty crazy around Benijo, esp on the surfer beaches so arriving early seems to be a good idea!
2. Taimamo — El Bujero — Taimamo
Where: East coast, near Los Gigantes
Time: 2.5–3 hours
Distance: 3.4km
Route: We followed this route starting and ending in Taimamo. It’s pretty straight forward. Or straight up, at least haha! The only thing is we got confused about how to actually find ‘the eye’ — turned out we were actually having lunch on top of it! Through some trial and error (and YouTube) we figured out you need to approach it from underneath it to the right. It is an actual path that goes there so if you feel like you’re going off the side of a cliff…don’t! And don’t freestyle on the way back…we ended up on a path only good for goats!
Difficulty: ‘Moderate for Tenerife’, so watch your step on loose ground and be prepared for some steep climbs especially the first and last 40 mins. Avoid in or after rain. Quite windy on the sea-side!
Why: Very, very cool views through the ‘eye’ up the coast even though it was quite hazy with dust when we went and generally magical landscape.
Food: Hmm, no. But we combined this with a refreshing dip down in Los Gigantes (15 min drive away) natural pool and got some good (if not scenic) vegan-friendly tapas at a place called Alfonso’s before heading home.
3. Roque de Taborno
Where: North: Parque Rural de Anaga
Time: 2 hours 10 mins with a stop for lunch at the view point under the roque
Distance: 5km
Route: We attempted this route but could not complete the loop around the roque because the path has fallen down the mountain on the Eastern side of the rock. In general the ground is quite loose and there are quite a few chances to fall down the mountain. A ranger advised us not to go, that it is not an official path and told us it was only fit for goats. Proceed with caution!
You can also just take in the view from the mirador in the little village. The ranger recommended another route instead, starting at Casa Carlos, coming down through the trees and going as far as the Mirador de Roque de Taborno which sounds very decent too. Heard good things about hiking around Pico Ingles too! If you only have one day for Anaga I would do the Benijo loop instead out of these two.
Difficulty: Easy but with dangerous bits
Why: Amazing views.
Food: There is a cafe type place in the tiny village called Historias para no dormir that we did not stop at but looked cosy!
Merendero Casa Carlos is also nearby and it should ordinarily have had an amazing view. In the end we had the best coffee of the trip there and met a troop of fluffy mountain cats so it wasn’t all bad. They had some cool more ‘Canarian’ looking stuff on the menu like goat, also some white fish and lentil situation that sounded good but we didn’t have time for.
Natural / rock pools
Lots of these all over the island! You can’t enter some if the water is too high or the wind is too violent but they are at least great to look at. We enjoyed heading to these after a long sweaty hike.
This first one is — we stopped off here after the Bujero hike on our way home to Las Galetas. One of the more cultivated natural pools. There is a gate that seems to sometimes close off access, presumably in rough weather. Los Gigantes rocks are pretty awesome to look at and the resort itself seems to be on the fancier side of things.
The most amazing pool we visited was definitely Charco de la Laja on the North coast — with sparkling turquoise water, little fish darting about and crabs festooning the wet black rocks ready to sidle off with each crashing wave. You’re not allowed in when the water is too high because you will get flushed out to sea!
Food
Honestly we didn’t get a lot of the local cuisine. There is a lot of home from home stuff like roasts and full english and in more resort type areas where menus are usually a mixture of English, German, Dutch and French. But we did try a few things that were excellent!
Papas arrugladas with mojo rojo and mojo verde — salty wrinkled potatoes with spicy vinegary red pepper salsa, green salsa with herbs, garlic and oil and often some kind of aoili situation too. Fried squid and fresh fish!
Cool stuff that is not a ‘must do’
El Drago Milenario / Dragon Tree — actually very cool (however old it is) and we had the whole place to ourselves, just felt a bit silly paying 5 euros to see a tree in an enclosure.
Forest of Senses — a nice walk to be sure! I think a view would have helped but not worth going out of your way for. There is also this sunken kind of road around this area called Camino viejo al Pico del Inglés. Again, cool but personally don’t think it’s worth going just for that. It’s right by the Anaga visitor centre though were we stopped off to chat to a ranger about the weather conditions. Respect the mountain!
Rambla del Castro
We agreed that it says more about the insane landscapes and views we had seen on hikes in Anaga in the previous days than anything else that we found this walk a bit ‘meh’. It is definitely a nice easy walk on a proper manicured path with fab views up the coast and the parts where you walk through conservation areas and botanical gardens are gorgeous — just lacking the high octane factor of our other hikes. Some lovely picnic spots! Fine with rain!
The best part was probably the restaurant we started from: Restaurante-Cafeteria Mirador San Pedro — with views looking up the coast and out over the deep green banana plantations. We just had some delicious ice cold Fanta since we were on our way to a rock pool but the food looked pretty good and it was a super popular spot. Parking is limited so arriving early is a good idea.
Garachicho
Cute little town on the north coast that used to be the island’s busiest port with some swimming opportunities nearby and lots of restaurants.
Tips from friends / things we didn’t have time for
Hiking in Teno looks amazing in Aimee’s guide!
Going up el Teide
Masca is supposed to be stunning thought the mountain roads sound perilous. Amazing hiking some of which needs permits.
Stay at a banana plantation (Hotel Rural Casamarilla)
Beaches!
Icod de los Vinos / all the wine stuff
Map of things
General observations
- We stayed on the South coast for max sun and warmth and near to the ring road so we could easily drive everywhere we wanted. Most of the things we did were orientated around being based there.
- We did everything by car (€400/week total from Europcar with fuel) but heard that the buses are good.
- If you go in Winter or at a time with mixed weather, we found it useful to have a bunch of places we wanted to visit and then used Accuweather / the Windy app on the day to choose where to go since the weather can be very localised.
- If you are driving then you can park anywhere on the island if it is between white lines (as far as we could tell).
- Driving in the mountains we found generally decent roads except Calle Parroco Antonio Alvarez Martel (marked on the map) on the way back from Charco los Chocos where we thought we were going to die. You might want to avoid that. Thank god for cool-headed Finns!
- For hiking take boots with good soles and ankle support — that volcanic terrain is WILD!
- Some hiking areas require permits and some are closed to the public, just something to be aware of!
- The SE coast is the warmest and thus the most touristy (Costa Adeja, Los Americas etc) with roast dinners, water parks and full english breakfasts if you want/to avoid /that
- It was warm! 14 in the night and up to 22 in the day.
- You have to buy water, can’t drink from the tap on the island!
