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FrançaisTenerife splits cleanly in two, and the 23 things below are grouped that way: 12 in the green, rainy, less-visited north and 11 in the dry, built-up south. You can drive from one end of the island to the other in a little over an hour, so you do not have to choose, but you do have to plan around three new rules. Teide’s summit trails, the Masca gorge and the road to Punta de Teno all now need a booking, a fee or a bus, and none of them did a few years ago. Those changes are covered where they apply.
Tenerife is the largest of the Canary Islands and gets sun all year, which is why most people come. It is also a volcanic island with laurel forest, black-sand beaches and Spain’s highest mountain on it, and the north and the south may as well be different countries.
What has changed in Tenerife, and what you now have to book
Three of the island’s most-walked routes moved to managed access, so check these before you build a day around them.
- Teide’s summit trails carry a fee from 1 January 2026. Trail 7, Montaña Blanca to La Rambleta, and trail 10, Telesforo Bravo to the crater rim, both charge non-residents up to €25 (about $29, £21) on top of the permit. Tenerife residents are exempt and other Canary Islands residents pay a reduced rate of around €6. The fee is paid when you book the permit on the Tenerife ON platform.
- The Masca gorge is ticketed, capped and helmet-only. Access is by advance booking at caminobarrancodemasca.com, numbers are limited to a few hundred people a day in timed slots, and a helmet is issued at the start and handed back at the end.
- You cannot drive to Punta de Teno. Private vehicles are barred from the TF-445 every day of the week, and you reach the headland on the TITSA 369 bus from Buenavista del Norte.
12 things to do in the north of Tenerife
The north of Tenerife gets the cloud, the rain and almost none of the package tourism, and that is why it is worth the drive. Rain is what makes the north green: laurel forest, terraced hillsides, ravines, and black-sand beaches with nothing built on them.
1. Hike in the Anaga Rural Park
Anaga is the oldest and most walkable landscape on Tenerife, and it sits just outside Santa Cruz at the island’s northeastern tip. It is a rural park and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, not a national park, which is worth knowing because the signage and the maps use Parque Rural de Anaga. The laurel forest here is a relic: this is roughly what the Mediterranean basin looked like before the Ice Ages, and almost nowhere else in Europe still has it.
Trails run from the ridge down to the sea through forest, ravines and terraced villages. Two routes cover most people’s needs: an accessible loop from the village of Taganana, and a harder, emptier walk out at Chamorga on the far point.
Playa de Benijo is the stop to build a day around. Two walks start near it, one that takes most of a day and the Benijo to El Draguillo route, which is about 5 km (3.1 mi) but steep and rough underfoot. What you get at the end is Atlantic swimming off black sand and one of the better sunsets on the island.
2. Walk the historic towns
Tenerife’s old towns are the answer to anyone who thinks the island is all resorts, and three of them are in the north. Traditional Canarian building is its own thing: brightly painted houses with deep carved pinewood balconies, shutters and doors, built around courtyards.
- San Cristóbal de La Laguna is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the island’s former capital, and home to the oldest university in the Canaries. The student population gives it the liveliest nightlife and the strongest food scene in the north.
- La Orotava has the Casa de los Balcones, the most photographed balconied house on the island, and the Museo de Artesanía Iberoamericana, which holds craft brought back from Latin America.
- Garachico was the island’s main port until a 1706 eruption from Montaña Negra buried the harbour under lava. The town was rebuilt around the lava, and the rock pools you swim in there today are what the flow left behind. The island’s most recent eruption was Chinyero in 1909, elsewhere on the island; older guides sometimes merge the two events.
Icod de los Vinos is worth pairing with the dragon tree below, and Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the capital, has a little over 200,000 people and enough to fill a day: the Museum of Nature and Man for the island’s Guanche history, the modern art museum TEA, and the Auditorio de Tenerife, where the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra plays. The Santa Cruz carnival every February is one of the largest in Europe.
Santa Cruz also has a white-sand beach, which no other part of the north does. Playa de las Teresitas runs 1.3 km (0.8 mi) just outside the city, and it is entirely artificial: it was built in the 1960s with sand shipped in from the Sahara.
3. Mountain bike in the laurel forest
The Corona Forestal at the foot of Teide is the north’s mountain biking ground, and you can hire a bike in Puerto de la Cruz and ride up into it. Tenerife’s forests are ancient, so the riding runs from laurel woodland at the bottom to Canary pine higher up, and the gradient does the work for you on the way down.
If two wheels is your reason for coming at all, the island has road routes at every level, and professional teams use Tenerife for altitude training because you can climb from sea level to over 2,000 m (6,560 ft) on tarmac. Riding inside Teide National Park is the one everybody wants.
4. See the Masca valley, and book the gorge properly
Masca is a tiny village on a ridge above a gorge, and the village and the gorge are two different visits with two different rules. The village is free: a handful of houses on a spur with cafés looking down the valley, reached by a road of hairpins from Santiago del Teide. Sitting on a terrace there with a drink is a perfectly good way to spend an hour and costs nothing.
The gorge below it is a managed, ticketed walk. The Barranco de Masca was closed for three years after a run of accidents and reopened on 27 March 2021 under a new system. You book in advance at caminobarrancodemasca.com; the daily number of walkers is capped and released in timed slots; the fee for a non-resident adult currently runs to roughly €40 (about $46, £34) and covers the shuttle bus from Santiago del Teide, a protective helmet, insurance and access to the trail. Canary Islands residents pay far less. Hiking boots and the helmet are both required.
Historically most people walked down the gorge and left by water taxi to Los Gigantes, which costs around €25 (about $29, £21) extra and is booked separately. From May 2026 the jetty at Masca beach has been out of use, which turns the walk into an out-and-back rather than a one-way descent. Check what is running when you book, because it changes the length of your day considerably.
5. Swim in the charcos
Charcos are natural seawater pools formed in old lava flows, and the north coast is full of them. A charco fills and empties with the tide, so whether you can swim in one depends on the sea state and the day rather than the season. The three most visited are Charco de las Mujeres, the pools at Garachico and Charco de la Laja.
Go at low tide, on a calm day, and do not get in if the Atlantic is breaking over the rim. These are open coast, not lidos.
6. Go on a yoga retreat
Year-round warmth and the combination of mountains and sea make Tenerife an easy place to run a wellness week, and the number of retreats on the island keeps growing. If you would rather walk than sit still, hiking-and-yoga retreats combine the two: Wanderlust Yoga Retreats in Puerto de la Cruz runs from a historic Canarian house with gardens and banana trees, with daily practice built around walking days.
7. Reach Punta de Teno by bus
Punta de Teno is the westernmost point of Tenerife, and you can no longer drive there. The headland is marked by the Teno lighthouse, backed by the cliffs of the Teno massif, with secluded beaches and hiking trails above. On a clear day you can see La Gomera and La Palma from it.
The road out, the TF-445, runs under an unstable cliff, and private vehicles are banned every day of the week to manage rockfall and crowding. Access is by the TITSA 369 bus from Buenavista del Norte, which takes about 20 minutes and costs €1 (about $1.15, £0.85) each way, payable in cash or by card. It runs 10.00 to 19.00 from 1 October to 20 June, and 8.00 to 20.00 from 21 June to 30 September.
One caution: roadworks that began in January 2026 have at times closed the road to walkers and cyclists as well as cars. Check the current status with TITSA or the Buenavista del Norte tourist office before you set out, rather than driving an hour to a barrier.
Older guides say you can drive in before 9am and after 7pm. That has not been the rule for some time.
8. Go paragliding
Paragliding in the north launches high on the volcano and lands at sea level, which is what makes it different from a coastal flight. Most operators drive you up towards Teide National Park, launch from the slopes, and take you down over Canary pine forest and the roofs of La Orotava to a landing on the beach at Puerto de la Cruz. The descent is long because the start is so high.
9. Climb Mount Teide, Spain’s highest peak
Teide is Spain’s highest mountain at 3,715 m (12,188 ft), and Teide National Park is the most visited national park in the country. The landscape inside the crater is why: a caldera floor of lava fields, pumice and rock towers with the cone rising out of it.
The rules for the summit changed and matter more than the walk. The final stretch to the crater rim, trail 10 “Telesforo Bravo”, is the only legal route to the top and it needs a permit booked in advance through the Tenerife ON platform. The permit is required during cable car operating hours, 9.00 to 17.00. Get onto that trail before 9.00 and no permit is needed, which is why the night climb and sunrise from the summit is the route serious walkers use.
Since 1 January 2026 a fee also applies to trails 7 and 10, up to €25 (about $29, £21) for non-residents, reduced for Canary Islands residents and free for Tenerife residents, paid when you book.
The Altavista refuge reopened on 20 July 2026 after five years closed, renovated, with 49 beds. Booking is online only through the refuge’s own site, one night per stay, with the overnight running 7pm to 8am. An overnight booking includes authorisation for the Telesforo Bravo trail between 6 and 9am the next morning, so the refuge reservation is the permit and no separate Tenerife ON application is needed. That is the single cleanest way to stand on the summit at sunrise.
The cable car takes you to La Rambleta at 3,555 m (11,663 ft), which is not the summit. You still need the permit to go the last stretch up. Book the cable car well ahead, and expect it to be suspended when the wind is up, which happens often.
Teide is also one of the great places on earth to look at the night sky, because of the altitude, the dry air and the lack of light below.
10. See the Drago Milenario
El Drago Milenario at Icod de los Vinos is the largest and oldest surviving Canary Island dragon tree, standing about 21 m (69 ft) high. Its age is genuinely disputed: estimates run from a few hundred years to a thousand, and because the species lays down no annual rings it cannot be settled by counting. Treat any confident number you read, including older versions of this page, as a guess.
Walk the Parque del Drago around it to see the tree from every side, with the volcano behind it. Icod de los Vinos itself is worth the extra hour: cobbled streets, old houses and a butterfly house.
11. Taste Tenerife wine
Tenerife’s vineyards grow on volcanic soil from vines that were never destroyed by phylloxera, which is what makes the wine unusual rather than merely local. The phylloxera that wiped out most of Europe’s vineyards in the 19th century was an aphid, not a fungus, and it never reached the Canaries, so some Tenerife vines are on their own original rootstock rather than grafted American stock. Very little European wine can say that.
Bodega Monje in El Sauzal is the accessible one, with terraces looking at both the ocean and the volcano, and it takes bookings. Several wineries run vineyard tours and a few have small museums attached.
12. Eat at a guachinche
A guachinche is a Canarian farm kitchen that opens seasonally to sell the family’s own wine with food to go alongside it, and it is the most local thing you can eat on Tenerife. Guachinches sit in the rural north, often up a track, and the menu is short: ropa vieja, papas arrugadas with red and green mojo, grilled goat’s cheese, garbanzo stew.
The wine is young, rough and very cheap, and drinking it is the price of admission rather than the point. Go for the food, the setting and the fact that you are eating in somebody’s converted garage on a hillside.
11 things to do in the south of Tenerife
The south of Tenerife has a reputation for package resorts and golf, and it earns some of it. It is also where the reliable sun, the water sports and the whales are, so it does more than sunbathing.
1. Tour a working banana plantation
Bananas are the Canary Islands’ biggest agricultural export, and a plantation tour is the easiest way to understand the terraced landscape you have been driving past. The guided tour at Finca Las Margaritas walks you through how the plant grows, what the flower looks like and why Canary bananas are small. Tastings usually include banana wine and gofio, the toasted grain flour that the Guanches ate and Canarians still do.
2. Learn to surf at Playa de las Américas
Playa de las Américas has waves almost every day of the year, which makes it the island’s most reliable place to learn. The break in front of the main beach is beginner-friendly and there are bigger waves to the right for people who already surf.
Take a lesson for your first session even if you have surfed elsewhere. It is a reef break, so getting in and out of the water over rock is the part that catches people out, not the waves.
3. See the Los Gigantes cliffs
The Acantilados de los Gigantes are a wall of sea cliff on the west coast, rising to around 600 m (1,970 ft) and dropping about 30 m (98 ft) below the waterline. You can see them three ways: from a boat or kayak out of Los Gigantes town, from the walking trails above them, or from the viewpoints on the roads around Santiago del Teide and Masca.
At the base there are natural saltwater pools, which are a quieter way to spend the day than a boat trip.
4. Take a boat trip
A boat is the only way to see much of the south coast, because most of it has no road behind it. Boat trips out of the south’s marinas stop at beaches you cannot reach on foot and at snorkelling spots over the rocks, and dolphins and turtles turn up often enough to be worth watching for. If you hold a licence you can hire a boat and skipper it yourself.
5. Kitesurf at El Médano
El Médano is the island’s wind sports centre and looks nothing like the resorts a few miles west. The town sits below Montaña Roja on the windiest stretch of coast, so kitesurfing, windsurfing and wing foiling all happen there daily, and schools teach all three. If you are not going in the water it is still the most relaxed beach town in the south, with cafés along the front and a long sandy bay.
6. Go horse riding
Several ranches in the hills run treks and lessons for visitors, and the trails through the mid-altitude farmland and pine forest are the interesting ones. Most cater for complete beginners as well as experienced riders.
7. Spend a day at Siam Park
Siam Park in Costa Adeje is the island’s Thai-themed water park and it is built to a standard the price reflects. There are more than 20 slides, each with a different idea behind it, and the one everybody talks about is the Tower of Power, a vertical drop that ends in a clear tube through a shark tank.
The park also has its own artificial beach and a large wave pool, so it works for a group that is not all thrill-seekers.
8. Watch whales and dolphins
Pilot whales and bottlenose dolphins live in the strait between Tenerife and La Gomera all year, which is why sightings here are so reliable. Tours mostly leave from Puerto Colón in Costa Adeje and take a couple of hours.
Set your expectations correctly. Pilot whales are large dolphins rather than the whales most people picture, and you will not see orcas or blue whales. Go for the resident animals, at close range, in their own water, and it is one of the better wildlife experiences in Europe.
9. Try scuba diving
Diving around Tenerife is about volcanic topography and fish rather than coral, and there is more to see than that description suggests: rays, turtles, moray eels, and several wrecks for qualified divers. Radazul and Los Cristianos are the established dive centres, both with schools and equipment hire, and both run try-dives for people with no certification.
10. See the Guanche kings at Candelaria
Candelaria holds the shrine of the Virgin of Candelaria, patron of the Canary Islands, and nine bronze statues of Guanche kings along the seafront. The building on the square is the Basilica of Candelaria, not a cathedral; Tenerife’s cathedral is in La Laguna. The square in front of it is a pilgrimage site, busiest around 15 August.
The nine figures represent the menceyes, the chiefs who ruled the island’s nine kingdoms before the Castilian conquest, which ran from 1494 and was completed in 1496.
11. Take a ferry to another Canary island
La Gomera and La Palma are both close enough for a day trip from the south. Ferries to La Gomera leave from Los Cristianos and take a little over an hour, which makes a day on the island genuinely workable; La Palma is further and better as an overnight. Gran Canaria takes around two hours and sails from Santa Cruz, on the other side of Tenerife.
A note for anyone working from an older guide: the Cumbre Vieja eruption on La Palma ended in December 2021. The lava fields it left are now a sight in their own right, and there is nothing erupting to see from Tenerife.
Where to stay in Tenerife
Pick the side of the island before you pick the hotel, because the drive between them will eat your holiday if you get it wrong. Stay in Puerto de la Cruz or La Laguna for the north, the walking, Teide’s northern approaches and the historic towns. Stay in Costa Adeje, Los Cristianos or El Médano for the south, the water sports, the boats and the reliable sun. Santa Cruz suits a city-first trip and puts Anaga on your doorstep.
Compare rooms and filter by area when you look for a hotel in Spain. If you would rather have a kitchen and a terrace, Vrbo lists apartments and villas across both coasts, which works well on an island where eating out every night in the resorts gets expensive.
Two other approaches work here. Renting a campervan suits the north, where the coastal parking and the weather both cooperate. And a yoga or wellness retreat usually includes accommodation at a finca, which takes the decision away entirely.
You will want a car for most of this list. The island is small, the motorway ring is quick, and almost everything in the north is off a bus route; compare rates on DiscoverCars once your dates are set. Flights into Tenerife South serve the resorts and Tenerife North serves the capital, so check both when you compare fares.
Frequently asked questions
Is the north or south of Tenerife better?
The north is greener, cooler, cloudier and far less developed, with the historic towns, the laurel forest and the black-sand coast. The south is drier, sunnier and built up, with the water sports, the whale watching and the water park. If you want one base for a week of walking, pick the north; if you want guaranteed beach weather, pick the south.
Do you need a permit to climb Mount Teide?
You need a permit for the final trail to the crater rim, trail 10, between 9.00 and 17.00, booked through Tenerife ON. Start that trail before 9.00 and no permit is required. Since January 2026 a fee of up to €25 also applies to trails 7 and 10 for non-residents.
Can you still hike the Masca gorge?
Yes, by advance booking only. The Barranco de Masca reopened in March 2021 with capped daily numbers, timed slots, a compulsory helmet and a fee that covers the shuttle bus and insurance. Book at caminobarrancodemasca.com, and check whether the boat back from Masca beach is running, because the jetty has been out of use since May 2026.
How do you get to Punta de Teno?
On the TITSA 369 bus from Buenavista del Norte, which takes about 20 minutes and costs €1 each way. Private vehicles are banned from the road every day of the week, and roadworks that started in January 2026 have at times closed it to walkers and cyclists too, so check before you travel.
How many days do you need in Tenerife?
A week covers both halves of the island properly, with roughly four days in the north and three in the south. Five days works if you stay on one side and make one long day trip to the other. Anything less and Teide plus one coast is the realistic maximum.
WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips
Five things will make the difference between a good Tenerife week and a frustrating one, and four of them are bookings.
- Book the Teide summit permit before anything else. Trail 10 slots go far in advance, and the one way around the queue is a night at the Altavista refuge, which reopened on 20 July 2026 and whose booking doubles as the permit for 6 to 9am the next morning.
- Check the Masca boat before you book the walk. The jetty at Masca beach has been out of use since May 2026, which turns a one-way descent into a there-and-back and roughly doubles the effort.
- Do not drive to Punta de Teno. Private cars are barred every day, and the 369 bus from Buenavista del Norte costs €1 each way. Roadworks since January 2026 have closed the road to walkers and cyclists at times as well.
- Book the Teide cable car early and have a plan B. It is suspended whenever the wind is strong, which is often, and the queue for tickets on the day is longer than the queue for the car.
- Swim the charcos at low tide only. They are open-coast lava pools, not lidos, and whether one is swimmable depends on the tide and the swell on the day rather than the season.
This guide was written by Sarah Wisbey, a freelance writer, digital nomad and yoga teacher based in Tenerife, who runs Tenerife yoga retreats on the island.
About the author. This guide is written by Sarah Wisbey, who lives on Tenerife, and is maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh. The team covers Spain and the Canary Islands for independent travellers, including the hikes, tours, car hire and places to stay worth booking, and updates this page when permits, fees and access rules change.
