✶ Las Cañadas del Teide
Two thousand
metres, in
about an hour.
The climb from the coast to the crater floor is the drive people remember from Tenerife, and it is genuinely easy: wide sealed roads, gentle gradients, and three landscapes in sixty minutes. The parts worth planning are the timing, the temperature and the way down.
✶ Any car on the list does this drive
135 cars from €16 a day on these dates
Pick-up and drop-off
Dates
Free cancellation on many carsThe deposit is on the car, before you book itPrices in euros, the figure you see is the figure you pay
Pick-up
Dates
The crater floor, at around two thousand metresWhat the drive is actually like
You start on the coast in scrub and banana terraces. Within twenty minutes the road is climbing steadily through agricultural land and small white villages, and the air through the window changes temperature noticeably. Around a thousand metres the Canary pine begins: tall, sparse, and with a smell that is the first thing people mention afterwards. On a cloudy day you drive up into the cloud somewhere around here and come out above it, which is a genuinely strange few minutes.
Then the trees stop. The last stretch crosses a lava plain with the cone standing at the back of it, and the surface either side of the road is rock that has clearly not been rained on in a while. Nothing grows. It is about as far from a beach holiday as you can get in an hour of driving, which is the whole point of having a car on this island.
Two ways up, and they are not interchangeable
The southern approach is the TF-21 from Vilaflor. It is the classic one: longer, more varied, and it goes through the pine belt for a good half hour. From the south coast resorts it is around an hour to the Parador.
| Where | Time | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| Vilaflor | 39 min | 28 km |
| Teide, Parador de Las Cañadas | 1 h 02 | 49 km |
| Teide, El Portillo | 1 h 16 | 63 km |
The northern approach is El Portillo, reached up the Orotava valley. It is a shorter climb and a greener one, and from the north coast it is barely half an hour. If you are based in the north it is not a close call.
| Where | Time | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| Teide, El Portillo | 38 min | 29 km |
| Teide, Parador de Las Cañadas | 54 min | 44 km |
If your week allows it, go up one and down the other. From a south-coast base that means Vilaflor up, El Portillo down, and a return along the north coast and back over or around the island: a long day, and the best single day Tenerife offers a driver.
Four things to get right
01
Go early
The cloud that sits against the north of the island tends to spill over the ridge through the afternoon, and the view is most of the reason you drove up. Leaving the coast at eight rather than eleven changes the day.
02
Take a jacket, and a bottle of water
Twenty degrees colder than the coast, with wind. The altitude also dries you out faster than you expect, and there is very little up there to buy anything from once you are past the visitor centre.
03
Fill up before you climb
There are no fuel stations inside the national park. Fill in Vilaflor or La Orotava depending on your side, not on the way home. Fuel here is cheap enough that a full tank is not a decision worth agonising over.
04
Come down in gear, not on the brakes
Forty minutes of continuous descent will cook a set of pads if you ride them. Drop a gear and let the engine hold the car; automatics on this island have a manual mode or lower ranges for exactly this and it is worth knowing where they are before you set off.
The cable car and the summit
The cable car runs from a station on the crater floor up to around 3,555 metres, which is most but not all of the mountain. It books out and it closes in high wind, so reserve ahead and have a plan for it not running. Going to the actual crater rim above the top station requires a separate permit obtained well in advance, and the number issued each day is limited.
None of that should decide whether you make the trip. The drive, the crater floor and the rock formations at Roques de García are worth the day on their own, and most people who go up do not take the cable car at all.
Which car, honestly
Any of them. The roads are wide and well surfaced and the gradients are long rather than steep, so a small manual hatchback climbs this perfectly happily and descends it better than something heavy. There is no version of this drive that rewards a big engine, and there is a version that punishes a wide car, which is the TF-436 to Masca on the same day.
What does matter is the rest of the paperwork before you go anywhere: what the standard cover leaves out is worth five minutes, because the undercarriage and the wheels are excluded and the park car parks are gravel.
✶ Asked about the mountain
Cars, cold
and cable cars.
Do I need a four-wheel drive?
No, and anyone selling you one for this is selling you something. The roads into the park are wide, sealed and well engineered, and an ordinary small hatchback does the entire climb without complaint. What you must not do is leave the tarmac for any of the tracks that branch off it: every rental agreement on this island restricts you to paved public roads, and this is the clearest place on Tenerife to break that by accident.
How cold does it actually get up there?
Roughly twenty degrees colder than the coast you left, because you have climbed two thousand metres. A pleasant twenty-two on the beach at the busiest stretch of the south coast is single figures at the Parador, with wind on top of that. There is snow on the cone most winters. Take a jacket even in August, and take it out of the boot before you get out of the car.
Which entrance should I use?
Whichever is closer to your bed. From the south coast it is the TF-21 through Vilaflor to the Parador. From the north it is El Portillo, which is far shorter from the north coast town or from Los Rodeos. The best version, if you have the day, is to go up one side and come down the other, which turns a return trip into a crossing of the whole island.
Is the cable car worth booking?
If you want the summit, yes, and book ahead: it sells out and it closes in high wind, which is not rare. It takes you to around 3,555 metres. The final walk to the actual crater rim needs a separate permit applied for well in advance and it is not something you can arrange on the day. The drive itself and the crater floor are worth the trip whether the cable car is running or not.
✶ The reason to have a car
An hour from the beach.
No bus makes this drive on a schedule that gives you the morning at the top. Search your dates, take the free cancellation, and go early on the clearest day of your week.