Tenerife Walking with Children

Ever since I first pulled on a pair of walking boots and set off down a country lane, I've realised that  walking and hiking isn't, as I once thought, the exclusive domain of anoraks and middle aged dog owners. For us, the fun factor has always been top of the agenda which means that dull, route marches are given a wide body swerve and every outing should end with a beer or two in a local hostelry.

It was while answering a query last week from a customer about walking with youngsters that I realised how many of our Island Walks are actually excellent for families. It's one of the great things about walking on Tenerife that you can still find so much ' undeveloped space filled with surprises that make it the perfect environment for family outings.
Here are some of our favourites [read the full post]

Rural Hotel Señorio Del Valle, Santiago del Teide.

The Santiago Valley nestles high above the south west coast of Tenerife, flanked by fragrant, emerald pine forests and backed by the site of Tenerife’s last volcanic eruption.
Opened in March 2010, the beautiful Rural Hotel Señorio Del Valle in Santiago del Teide is the ideal place to base yourself for one or two nights to explore the valley’s excellent walking trails... [read the full report on our new Walking Tenerife website]

Update on The Barranco del Infierno in Adeje

The news about one of Tenerife's most popular walks isn't good. The Barranco de Infierno in Adeje closed last August for a bit of TLC for a month...and has never re-opened.
The Barranco was almost ready to be opened to the public in February this year and then disaster hit in the shape of torrential rains which caused serious damage.
Since then news about the re-opening has been sketchy...until now READ MORE

Walk Tenerife from El Palmar to Teno Alto

This is the stunning El Palmar Valley; a secret paradise in Tenerife's north east corner. It's through this valley that the wonderful El Palmar to Teno Alto walk climbs.

You can read about the walk on our new website [...]

Discover Great Hiking in the South West of Tenerife

For many, the south west of Tenerife represents the perfect holiday destination, enjoying as it does some of the longest sunshine hours on the island.
Less frenetic than Playa de Las Américas, better value for money than Costa Adeje and more rural than Los Cristianos, the coast which stretches from Los Gigantes in the west to Playa Paraíso in the south encompasses a diverse selection of resorts.
Backed by colossal cliffs, Los Gigantes is a family resort in a spectacular location where whale and dolphin watching cruises operate from its picturesque marina.
Moving south along the coast, Puerto de Santiago has great fish restaurants around its unpretentious harbour while neighbouring Playa de la Arena gets the blue ribbon award for its clean and sheltered beach.
Little Alcalá brings a Canarian/South American character to the coast and Playa de San Juan provides [read the full blog at our new site]

Enjoy a Tenerife Holiday Walk

You don't have to be a committed hiker or a keep fit fanatic to enjoy a holiday walk in Tenerife.

Regardless of where you're staying on the island, you'll find a nice holiday walk close by which will stretch your legs and allow you to see something other than the beach or your hotel pool during your visit.

With Island Walks, we have a whole series of suggested routes to suit everyone from the keenest of hikers to those just looking for a nice holiday walk. Island Walks cover a wide geographical spread of Tenerife so that wherever you're staying; whether you're dependant on public transport or intend to hire a car, there's a walk or two to suit... [read more]

Walking on Tenerife – Exploring the Secret North Coast

We'd been more or less shackled to the computers over the last week and a half., so yesterday decided a bit of great outdoors time was long overdue.

Walking in an area we hadn't really explored before appealed and with yesterday being our wedding anniversary, and a long leisurely meal was due to be the reward for a morning's walking, we didn't want to travel too far.

A hasty bit of research turned up the usual. The official website for Los Realejos waxed lyrical about their wonderful countryside, but didn't actually provided details of walks. In the end we settled on La Matanza, scene of a great Guanche victory over the conquistadors [...] Click her to read more

Walking on Tenerife – That’s The First Time I’ve Ever Seen!

Normally it’s the scenery that astounds us when we’re out exploring Tenerife’s network of trails and forest paths, emerging from dense pines, or turning a corner in a barranco to be faced with an unexpected ‘WOW’ vista. However, the other day the weather performed a neat little trick which I’ve certainly never witnessed before[...] Click Here To Read More

Walking Directions on Tenerife – The Chinyero Volcano – Almost Perfect Signage…Almost

This week we thought we were going to have to eat our words about the lack of consistency regarding official walking signage on Tenerife when we ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ at the lovely brand new signs leading us to the Chinyero Volcano in the west of the island.

Admittedly getting to the actual walk had involved ignoring a signpost which suggested that the road to the start of the walk may or may not have been shut – it wasn’t – and then knowing where the actual walk began as the signposts didn’t start till we were on the walk. This sort of flawed thinking runs through a lot of Canarian thinking. You have to know that something exists, and where it exists to find out more info about it. It means that if you’re a visitor, there are a lot of things going on that you never get to hear about. Walking routes don’t just start at the first signpost.

But being already armed with this info, this potential stumbling block at the start didn’t pose a problem. To be honest, I didn’t even think about it until I started writing this. It’s something we have to remind ourselves of on a regular basis – to try to look at walks through the eyes of someone who isn’t overly familiar with Tenerife or its quirky little ways.

Anyway we set off along a new and very clear path and at every crossroads there were signs complete with distances. Okay, the angle of a couple might not have been perfect, but that’s being overly picky.

It was one of, if not the clearest marked walking route that we’ve experienced on Tenerife and was getting the thumbs up from us as the perfect walking route. This was looking like a shining example of what the future of Tenerife as a top walking destination could look like.

But this is Tenerife; where the illogical is almost compulsory. As we reached a point in the walk which was less than a couple of hundred yards from the Boca Tauce road and therefore a perfect spot for walkers to access the route from the south and south west, the path completely ignored this and continued parallel with the road before heading inland again.

Not only were there no signs from the path to the road, or vice versa, there were yellow and white crosses advising that it was definitely not part of the route.

Basically this was a walk which was perfectly laid out for people starting from the northern side of the island, but people on the southern side might not be aware it existed even though they were only metres from it. It was bizarre and I can’t quite figure out, considering the care and attention that went into signposting the rest of the walk, why there was such a serious omission at that point.

But there you go; ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and…discover.

Walking on Tenerife – all that glistens is not gold.

 

We often get asked about walking routes in the west by people who are planning to holiday in and around Los Gigantes. So over the past couple of weeks we’ve been concentrating on that area and trying out some walks.

We knew that there was an old trading path running from somewhere around Guía de Isora up into the hills so last week we set off to find it. We were working off information supplied by the Ayuntamiento (Town Hall) which, as usual, was reprinted on a regular basis without anyone checking if it was still current.
Consequently, the start of the route had long since disappeared, replaced by new roads and walls.

After a precipitous false start and some hesitant exploration, we finally found the route and once we were on our way, were pleasantly surprised to find that it was in fact well signed and easy to navigate. At multiple path junctions, signposts gave good directions and distances, routes were way-marked with painted stripes and there were even information boards at various points, showcasing other routes.

Having enjoyed and chronicled a lovely, rural, circular route we emerged back into Guía alongside someone’s house, at the bottom of a dead end, accessed via a series of climbs, twists and turns through housing estates, with not a single signpost to mark it. Had we been looking to start the walk from that side, we would probably still be wandering around Guía now.

That same afternoon we drove further up into the hills to do a short(ish) route at the start of which a brand new, fancy sign had been erected by the Cabildo (Island Government).
Within metres of setting off from the sign, we were unsure of which way to go, our indecision hampered by two small dogs growling and snapping at our heels. Once we’d found an overgrown semblance of a path, it split off in different directions constantly with no marker signs for guidance. Although we were alongside a steep barranco (ravine) and so our direction was pretty obvious, finding the way through was proving to be impossible.

After aborted attempts to drop down dodgy trails on the side of the barranco, we finally found our path completely blocked by two parked vans alongside a house. Re-tracing steps; trying different trails and even asking a couple of locals all amounted to nothing. We finally gave up, tired and frustrated with feet embedded with sharp seed heads from wading through the tangled mass of undergrowth.
The Medio Ambiente (Environmental Department) had clearly decided to re-open the path and had begun by putting up the fancy sign. When, or if, they’ll get round to re-claiming the path from man and nature and giving it clear markings is anybody’s guess.

The moral of this tale is that, on Tenerife, you can’t tell a walk from its signpost.

Walking routes for the south west coming soon…

Walking on Tenerife: The Abandoned Village of Las Fuentes

For me the best walks on Tenerife, or anywhere, involve routes which offer lots of interesting curios, OMG scenery moments and also have something that little bit different which sets them apart form other walks.

The route we followed yesterday fitted this criteria perfectly. As we navigated our way along a partially overgrown merchants' trail, we detoured to an old tile oven and a communal water tank which in the past was used to refresh the animals and clean the clothes – imagine cleaning your laundry next to a slavering great beast of burden.

The path also skirted the occasional abandoned house, one of which occupied an enviable spot with vistas from Alcalá all the way to the edge of Costa Adeje. We spent a few minutes exploring and imagining how wonderful it would look when fully renovated. Oddly enough the place was littered with the soles of old shoes making us wonder if a zapatero (shoemaker) had lived here.
All around was evidence of a thriving agricultural past that had been long since abandoned, possibly because of the lure of a far more lucrative income offered by the pleasure palaces on the coast below. There were rows of neat empty terraces, more eras (threshing circles) than I've ever seen in one area and old disused fountains where the green slimy puddles showed that the water of life still trickled.

We followed a cobbled trail lined by tabaiba, cactus groves and wild lavender, stopping where paths merged to make educated guesses (hopefully) at the right direction. The path undulated along gentle ravines before a completely hidden path ascended steeply to a ridge, then descended to the base of an oasis of a ravine where it disappeared into wild vines and long whispering grass.

Tracing the faintest outline we pushed the foliage apart and made or way up through a narrow ravine until we reached a point in the path where a pumice dry-stone wall bordered one side and an agricultural enclosure the other. The contents of the enclosure were covered so I couldn't see what was being grown, but it was clear that it had been tended recently; up ahead the faint sound of human voices broke the silence.
I've got to admit to my imagination running away a wee bit here and suddenly visions of Leo DiCaprio in The Beach entered my head. This was supposed to be an abandoned valley, yet it clearly wasn't. Suppose it was now a marijuana factory or something?

However rationality knocked these fanciful thoughts from my head. I've never walked anywhere that feels safer than Tenerife; the chances of being machine-gunned were remote to say the least.

We carried on toward the voices and pushed a curtain of grass aside...and there it was; Las Fuentes, an immaculate little agricultural valley hidden away in the hills.

I love those moments when you reach the highlight of a walk when suddenly one step opens up a whole new world. The Montaña Guajara walk is a bit like that. But this was a place I'd never even seen a photograph of, so it felt extra special.

A couple of old guys tending a row of vines were the only signs of life in the place. They told us that they sold their wine in Guia further down the hill and pointed out where the path continued. We spent some time exploring the hamlet before scrabbling up to an ermita high above the village where we ate lunch, drank spring water from a fountain in the village and generally just enjoyed the hot sunshine atop what must be the best viewpoint along the south west coast.

This sort of experience is what walking on Tenerife is all about.

A detailed guide of the route will be added to Tenerife Island Walks soon, that's a definite.

Walking Above the Clouds on Tenerife

One of our computers has been in hospital for the last three weeks  where it was being lovingly brought back to life by the guys at SITEL in Puerto de la Cruz (if you need work on your computer, these are the guys to go to).

The reason I mention this is that when we were putting the finishing touches to our new 'Hiking Highs – Walking Routes in Teide National Park' I realised that I couldn't find the most up to date photos from the last time we walked up to the summit of Montaña Guajara.

Adding the finishing touches to our Island Walks routes really means slotting the photos into place – it's one of those lovely little jobs which basically involves going through my library of photos to see which ones fit best.

One of the ones I wanted to use was a shot of Andy standing above the clouds. Looking down from above the clouds is one of Tenerife's true 'WOW' experiences. If anyone out there hasn't enjoyed the privilege, emerging above a sea of clouds is like being on a plane when it breaks through a thick bank of clouds to emerge in an intense blue, cloudless sky above a cotton wool landscape.

It's one of those moments that remind you that Tenerife is a very special place with a seemingly endless stock of magical experiences that, ironically, the vast majority of its millions of visitors never, ever witness.

Anyway I searched and searched for the image, but couldn't find it. Although I regularly back up my photos, there was one set that I had missed and which I realised lay, possibly gone forever, in the computer that was ill. This situation was a right bugger. There are some shots where it doesn't matter (towns etc), where I can just go out and get them again, but the summit of Guajara isn't one of those places where you can just nip out to to replace lost photos.

However, the computer was returned last week, pulled back from death's door Lazarus-like by the miracle workers at SITEL and lo and behold my Guajara photos were saved.

In the end I used an image from a previous walk, which I probably like better, but this is the one I was going to use.


Isn't that an incredible vista?

Tenerife Walking Guides - Teide National Park.

I seem to have some kind of timing mechanism in my head which, if it doesn’t get away from a screen and into the mountains or valleys of Tenerife on a regular basis, starts to emit a dull whining sound which blocks all creative thought.
Of course, that’s just an elaborate way of saying that I can only survive so long before going on a walk – it’s food for the soul.

We’ve been trying to put the finishing touches to our latest Tenerife walking guide – Hiking Highs;Teide National Park – but we’ve been incredibly busy for months now (yay!!) and haven’t had time to map out the final route…until last Monday when we broke free and headed up into the crater.

We’d timed it perfectly as the high cloud that’s been hanging around for a couple of days finally lifted and Teide National Park lay below her customary intensely blue sky. The last vestiges of snow on the peak are diminishing daily as the sun climbs higher and now the spring flowers have burst into bloom. This is a wonderful time of year to go walking in the National Park.

Setting off from the El Portillo Visitor centre, the large white flowers of Teide broom and the elegant indigo stems of Tajinaste Azul accompanied us as we climbed gently above the crater, the twin peaks of La Palma emerging above the sea of clouds on our horizon.

It’s an incredible feeling to be in such a surreal landscape with the sun on your back and only the lizards and canaries for company. Mount Teide was her usual, stunning best and from our vantage point we could clearly see the path that leads over Montaña Blanca before climbing steeply to the summit. Skirting the edge of a spectacular gorge of wind-eroded rocks, we arrived at the top of the Arenas Negras volcanic cone. Then we regressed to giggling childhood as half running, half surfing, we descended its black cinder face, covering a distance in 15 minutes that had taken us 40 minutes to ascend.

Teide National Park is so many things; an alien landscape; a geological masterpiece; home to a mysterious creature known as the mouflon; a hiker’s paradise and a giant playground where you can take a cable car white knuckle ride to see an archipelago in satellite mode and surf volcanoes. Where else on this planet can boast as much?

The ‘Hiking Highs;Teide National Park’ walking guide is now available to buy and have delivered directly  to your email within 24 hours.

The Barranco del Infierno – Getting into Hell is Easier

Last August (2009) we told you that the Barranco del Infierno was closed for a month for a wee bit of TLC. We also warned that a Tenerife month isn’t the same as a month in other places. Unfortunately time has proved that comment was somewhat of an understatement.

The bad news is that it’s now March 2010 and guess what? Hell’s Ravine is still shut.

Prompted by a comment on another blog I called the medio-ambiente people in Adeje to find out what was happening. Not only is the Barranco del Infierno still shut, details of when it is likely to re-open are as clear as a February day at Los Rodeos (i.e. not).

The medio ambiente person on the other end of the line mumbled something about verano (summer), but when I pressed he did a sort of soft shoe shuffle as he backed off adding ‘tal vez, tal vez’ (perhaps, perhaps).

In short, we don’t seem to be any further along since the last time I called them a few months ago.

To be fair, the torrential rains which affected some parts of the island in February, including Adeje, sent raging rivers rampaging through the island’s ravines. A lot of the work to improve the Barranco would have been destroyed, so in this case nature has to shoulder some of the blame rather than a lackadaisical approach to completing jobs on schedule (although, work was already months behind schedule before the storms hit, so they don’t get off scot-free).

Clearly this is bad news for walkers, but the good news is that although the Barranco del Infierno is a pleasant enough walk, it has become quite manicured and a bit like a hiking version of the TF1 motorway. If you’re someone who prefers their countryside a bit wilder and less populated, there are plenty of other great walks around the south of Tenerife which aren’t ‘closed for business’.

Walking on Tenerife – Instead of a Fly Drive Holiday, Try a Walk Drive One

When we wrote Real Tenerife Island Drives and Island Walks we wrote them independently of each other. The idea for a series of driving routes came about because we were constantly passing visitors to Tenerife who had hired a car, parked in lay-bys with a map spread over the dashboard, or worse – arguing furiously. Having travelled all over Tenerife on a regular basis for research purposes, we knew only too well that a map had limited value, and if driving through towns, was virtually useless.

Similarly with walking, we started writing walking routes because, as avid walkers, the ones we had tried to use were often more likely to get us lost than get us from A to B and many were simply quite a few years out of date.

However, we never really thought of them being used together until we noticed recently that more and more people were combining buying Island Drives with one or more of the Island Walks routes and we thought, ‘what a damned good idea…why didn’t we think of that?’

I suppose it’s an obvious way of getting the most out of the drive to the walking location. The Anaga Mountains are a perfect example of this. To get the best out of them really requires exploration on foot and by car (or bicycle if you opt for the green option…and are super fit).

The terrain is far too demanding to explore in great depth on foot over the course of a two week holiday. Yet there are places that can only be explored on foot like the fishing hamlet with no roads to it near Tenerife’s most easterly tip (we haven’t written a walking route for that one yet, but it’s in the pipeline) or the merchants’ trails linking tiny hamlets (which we do have routes for).

On the other hand, the road which runs along the Anaga’s spine isn’t ideal for walking along, but it does have spectacular views over both coasts and there are some excellent viewpoints worth stopping at for some breathtaking photos to impress the friends back home.

So to anyone out there who has bought Island Drives and Island Walks, you may just have pioneered a new concept in tourism, The Walk – Drive Holiday; the perfect way to get the most from car hire on Tenerife.

The Anaga Mountains: Real Tenerife's Favourite Place for Walking on Tenerife - But What did The British Guild of Travel Writers Make of them?

The first time we explored the Anaga Mountains we were completely seduced by their astoundingly dramatic beauty.

As we walked along narrow trails through a lush valley, where we passed a few goats then a lone cottage where a smiling old woman in a straw hat tended her flower-filled garden, a thought occurred. If you dropped someone who has never been to Tenerife (or even plenty who have, but have never made it beyond the beach) into this remote wilderness without telling them where they were, you could let them have a hundred guesses and they’d never get it right.

The Anaga’s are by far our favourite place for walking on Tenerife, but because of their location they are still too far off the tourist trail for most visitors, even those who enjoy hoofing it around the countryside on foot.

We’ve been banging about how incredible the Anaga Mountains are for years. Even the walker’s paradise of neighbouring La Gomera can’t compete with what the Anaga Mountains have to offer in my opinion. And you’ve got the added bonus of having the wonderful cities of Santa Cruz and La Laguna within easy distance. These extreme contrasts found in the north east tip of Tenerife represent the best of the real Tenerife.

But we’re biased northerners, so it was with interest that we followed the British Guild of Travel Writer’s tweets on Twitter as they swapped the surreal luxury of the Gran Hotel Bahía del Duque and other 5 Star hotels in Costa Adeje, the newest part of Tenerife, for goat trails and laurisilva forests in the oldest part of Tenerife. Here’s what some of them had to say:

“Changed my mind about Tenerife. Stunning scenery & amazing downhill walk in Anaga Mtns & rainforest. Must go back.”

“Had a fab walk in Anaga's laurisilva forest y'day. Robins and wagtails galore.”

“Magnificent walk in Anaga rain forest.”

“Loved today's walk through the beautiful Anaga laurisilva in NE Tenerife.”

“Hike in Anaga was great yesterday, particularly views of sea and village towards the end. Bit steep for some though.”

“Very impressed with the hiking in Tenerife's remarkable north.”

So there you have it, we’re clearly not alone in our views. The Tenerife Tourist Board pulled a master stroke by taking the British Guild of Travel Writers to a place where life continues much as it has done for centuries.

If you want to show visitors an area of Tenerife which is guaranteed to confound preconceived ideas, you couldn’t choose better than the Anaga Mountains.

Walking on Tenerife - Teide National Park

When your husband has insisted on buying a turkey large enough to feed a family of six and then cooked it to perfection, there’s only one thing to do the next day and that’s climb the highest peak you can reasonably get to and back before darkness falls.

So it was, with a bellyful of turkey and mince pies, that we drove to the Teide Parador last Saturday and headed off to climb Guajara, the highest section of the remaining crater wall.
We’d tried this walk before and had missed the turn off because some thoughtless hiker had chosen to take a break by leaning against the directional signpost, thus obscuring it from view. We walked all the way to the start of the Vilaflor pine forests before realising our mistake and re-tracing our steps but by then, we were too tired to make it all the way to the summit.

I’d been waiting for a chance to finally get there ever since.

It was a perfect day; the sky was the sort of blue that when you see it in holiday brochures you just know it’s been Photoshop’d, and the crater was wearing its most vivid of winter hues. The air temperature in the National Park was about 11°C and the wind chill factor was bringing it down to about 9°C but the sun was hot and within minutes of walking, I’d shed my fleece and was down to a T shirt and shorts.
I remembered the first ascent of 175 metres as being quite strenuous but then last time we did it, the crater was filled with snow and ice which made the path a bit treacherous in parts. This time, I was pleased that it only took 30 minutes to get to the ridge.

No mistakes this time, despite a couple of hikers once again resting right where the directional sign was, we turned up into the final Guajara ascent. The path was eroded from recent heavy rains and it was hard going. At times the path disappeared completely before re-emerging a few yards further on. By the 50 minute stage I’d lost the feeling in my hands and legs; my hands because the temperature was now down to an icy 2°C and my legs because they were so tired from altitude walking.

Another 10 minutes and we emerged at the summit, 2715 metres above sea level, and the whole crater opened up below us. It was awesome.
We sat on the little stone benches and ate our sandwiches (turkey – naturally) completely hypnotised by the beauty of the mountain cradled in its kaleidoscopic setting dotted with shimmering lakes beneath a blindingly blue sky.

Nowhere else on this planet can you walk in such an astonishing landscape and witness the drama of nature’s explosive past from your vantage point above the clouds. It’s a humbling experience.
But when you do it, please choose your rest spots carefully and don’t inadvertently ruin another hiker’s day…happy trails and Happy 2010!

Sunday Strolling

The eastern coast of Tenerife is the part that every visitor sees as they whiz along the TF1 motorway from the airport to their resort, and back again. Very few visitors ever spend any time there which means that, when it comes to walking, you’re quite likely to have the whole place virtually to yourself.

Last Sunday we wanted to do a short walk with a friend of ours who lives in the south of the island. The weather had been cloudy and damp just about everywhere on the island and the forecast was for more rain so we wanted somewhere that was a) our best shot at catching dry weather b) somewhere half way for us each to travel and c) in or around 2 hours maximum with a nice restaurant in which to end with lunch.
There was just one place that fitted the bill perfectly; the Güímar Malpaís.

Starting at the little port of El Puertito, we ambled across the badlands alongside the sea amidst great swathes of tabaiba, cardón and sea lettuce. In the spring and summer, the grasses are tall and green but in winter they’re brown and wispy, rippling the landscape in the breeze.
Crossing the lava fields we headed inland to Montaña Grande and skirted the base before heading back on a different route to the fish and seafood cafes and restaurants of Puertito. An idyllic little 2 hour circular stroll with views along the coast northwards to Las Teresitas beach and Santa Cruz and southwards to the lighthouse at Poris de Abona.

And if you’re staying in the south of the island, there’s a fantastic drive that takes you to El Puertito along the old Forgotten Road so you can combine touring with walking…perfect.

Good News for Tenerife Walkers

The press invitation had quite clearly stated that walking shoes and warm clothing should be worn but it seems that for the staff of the local Town Hall, a visit from the President of the Tenerife Council was too important an occasion not to dress up for.

18th November was the 100th anniversary of Tenerife’s last volcanic eruption which came from Mount Chinyero in the pine forests of Santiago del Teide municipality. To mark the anniversary a plaque was to be unveiled at the foot of the volcano and some doves were to be released to fly over the frozen black lava that today fills the landscape.

Heeding the advice in the invitation and wearing sensible shoes and a warm jacket, I had to stifle my giggles as I watched the ‘suits’ from the Island Council and the local Town Hall trying to walk over the lava fields to where the plaque was being unveiled. Even funnier were the women, one in little white ballet-type shoes, one in gold sandals and one in high heel knee boots.
Apart from the Dick Emery type gait that they all had to adopt as they slipped and wobbled on the pumice rocks, they all had hunched shoulders and goose-pimply flesh from the distinctly nippy breeze that was blowing around the volcano.

Still, plaque uncovered and doves released, we all trooped our way back to the Casa del Patio in Santiago del Teide for the much more sedate second part of the centenary celebration.
Casa del Patio is the 17th century former home of the Hoyo y Solórzano family who used to own Santiago del Teide and it has now been beautifully restored by the Tenerife Council. Housing a permanent exhibition to the Chinyero eruption of 1909, this was the perfect occasion to officially open the Casa to the public.

It’s in an idyllic setting just behind the church in Santiago del Teide and stepping through the gates is like stepping back in time. Apart from the assorted cockerel, ducks and geese underfoot, there’s a wine museum, a wonderfully atmospheric Tasca with cheeses, hams and local wine and a rather elegant restaurant. There are also riding stables and there are plans to open riding trails locally so everyone can enjoy the spectacular scenery on horseback, the way many locals still do.
If you’re planning a trip to Masca I recommend stopping off here for an hour to wander the grounds, browse the shop and museums and sample some local produce at the Tasca.

Best of all, there’s a small rural hotel on the site which is due to be opened shortly and which will be the perfect stopover for hikers.
The trails around Santiago del Teide valley are some of the most diverse on Tenerife with terrain moving from lush, wild flower-filled valley, to pine forest and frozen lava fields around Mount Chinyero. You even move through climate zones from the humid, cooler Erjos Pools to the arid south at Arguayo. Walking these hills and valleys is akin to walking on at least three different islands.

When Casa del Patio Rural Hotel opens we’ll be able to combine a great day’s walking with a night in a stylishly rustic hotel and lunch at the Tasca.
Now that’s something to look forward to.

Walking in the South of Tenerife

The most enquiries we get from people about walking on Tenerife are:
1) I’m staying in the south and would like some walks within easy distance and
2) do you have any walks that aren’t too long?

Well, if I was a stone, I might just have killed two birds…

This week we’ve published ‘The Old South’ which is a series of five walks set, as the name suggests, in and around the south of Tenerife.
They range from an ancient trading route which takes you through the pretty hamlet of San Miguel before heading out into idyllic rural scenery and spectacular views, to pine forests and cliff-side paths above plunging ravines with magnificent vistas over Costa Adeje.
From above barrancos to within barrancos and from village to valley, all the walks in The Old South are less than 3 hours in duration and can easily be done by any reasonably fit person without the aid of breathing apparatus!

You can buy ‘The Old South’ for just €2 or you can buy the whole Island Walks series for just €6. Every purchase gets a free copy of ‘A Captivating Coastline’ which gives you a free bonus of five beautiful Tenerife coastal walks.
Happy hiking!