On In Between Travels you can find multiple articles on Tenerife, a beautiful Canary Island. That is for a reason, as there is plenty to explore! You can easily explore most of the islands with this 7 days in Tenerife itinerary, however, if you would like to embed some more rest and beach days during your trip, you can best upgrade this travel plan to a 10-day Tenerife itinerary.
This Tenerife Travel Guide, combined with this Tenerife Bar & Restaurant guide gives you all you need to know about Tenerife. However, I would like to make your life even easier by proposing a 7-day plan to explore Tenerife’s main sights.
During our trip, we stayed in Los Gigantes as our main base. This 7-day Itinerary of Tenerife is written with one home base during your week. However, if you want to optimize your travel time, you can best opt for one accommodation in the south of Tenerife and one in the north of Tenerife. This itinerary indicates whether the locations are easiest to explore from the South or North. Of course, you can also switch this the days around in this 1 week Tenerife itinerary to your personal preferences.
Where to stay in the North: El Sol, La Laguna Gran Hotel, Puerto Azul or Hotel Best Semiramis
Where to stay in the South: Royal Sun Resort, the Klayman Diamond Apartments, H10 Costa Adeje Palace or Adrian Hoteles Colon Guanahani towards Costa Adeje
Day 0 || Travel time and arrival in Tenerife
Day 1 || Bodegas Frontos, Santa Cruz, La Laguna
Day 2 || Masca
Day 3 || Explore Tenerife’s natural pools, Orotavo and Bodegas Monje
Day 4 || Hike around Mount Teide and visit Costa Adeje
Day 5 || Visit Anaga national park, Playa Benijo (and Playa de las Teresitas)
Day 6 || Rest day (or Playa de las Teresitas)
Day 7 || Visit Playa de las Americas and fly home
During the first day, we started our drive from Los Gigantes to Bodegas Frontos for a bit of wine tasting in the south-east of the island. We started our drive around 10:00 am in the morning and left the wine tasting to drive up north around 11:30 am. This allowed us to arrive in Santa Cruz de Tenerife for our lunch at La Hierbita. After lunch, we decided to continue our trip to La Laguna, a smaller town in Tenerife that is famous as a student town. Personally, I liked La Laguna better than Santa Cruz, so if you don’t feel like squeezing in two cities on day 1, I would recommend visiting La Laguna. In the afternoon, we drove back to Los Gigantes for a little dip in the pool and dinner at Fisherman’s Inn.
On day 2, it was time to visit Masca. Masca was the part of Tenerife I was most looking forward to. Initially, we were planning to hike up to Masca from Santiago del Teide, however, unfortunately, the trail was and is still closed. Therefore, we drove up to Masca village. Despite messages online on it being a challenging road, I would still advise to drive the road yourself. If you are an experienced driver, you are more than fine doing so. When in Masca, we hiked up to Mirador de la Cruz de Hilda (less than 1-hour return, so very accessible). Afterwards, we had lunch at the amazing Casa Riquelme, my favourite place in Tenerife with the best view.
Based on current research, there is a new option available when visiting Masca, which is the Masca Gorge Trail. You can start this trail from Masca Hemlet and a return-trip takes about 7-hours. Read more about this hike and book your tickets on the official website.
Along the west coast of Tenerife, you cand find many natural pools. Keep in mind, that if you would like to swim, you have to pick a beautiful day with no wind, which can be difficult in some seasons. Nevertheless, the natural pools are also worth exploring when solely admiring their beauty. Check out my guide on the 7 Best Natural Pools for a full overview. During this day, we have visited the natural pools driving from south to north on the west coast: Charco Los Chochos, Charco del Viento and Charco de la Laja. We finished our tour visiting the natural pools in Tenerife around 13:00. Afterwards, we drove to Orotava for a visit to a lunch restaurant that was high on our list called Dabeke. Definitely worth a visit! Afterwards, we walked around Orotava town (you can easily visit the town in 1 hour) before continuing to Bodegas Monje for another wine tasting. Afterwards, we drove back to Los Gigantes for dinner at Tas-k.
On our fourth day in Tenerife, it was time to visit the most famous National Park on this Canary Island: Mount Teide National Park. Driving around Mount Teide is an experience in itself, but there are also great day hikes that you can do during your visit to Mount Teide. We started our day driving up to Mount Teide and hiking the Samara Loop Trail and the Roques de Garcia Trail, which can easily be combined on a longer morning when starting early. Around 14:00, we finished hiking and drove back to the south coast of the island and visited Costa Adeje and Playa de la Caleta, which is the perfect place for a lovely lunch.
During the 5th day of our 7 days in Tenerife Itinerary, we decided to drive up north again to explore Anaga National Park. The north of Tenerife offers stunning and lush green scenery and great hiking opportunities and beaches. We started adding Mirador Batan to our GPS to start exploring the north with a beautiful viewpoint. Afterwards, we walked to well-known trail Sendero de los Sentidos, however, if you are more into adventurous hikes you can better skip this one and spend your time exploring the area by driving to Tagana and hiking around Playa Benijo by walking the Benijo to Faro de Anaga Circuit Hike. Unfortunately, the roads were closed during our visit, but from pictures online it seems definitely worth it. Because we couldn’t access the area, we decided to drive to Playa de las Teresitas, but the best idea is to move this beach to the rest day on day 6.
Dependent on how you want to spend your rest day, you can either hang around by the pool, visit the southern beaches or head to a superficial sand beach: Playa de las Teresitas. This beach is the largest beach of Tenerife and has been created by importing Sahara sand. On the beach, there are plenty of beach bars for lunch or a drink.
On our final day in Tenerife and the day we flew back, we decided to check out in the morning and drive past Playa de las Americas for some final beach views. We enjoyed a book and Barrequito on the beach and some final tapas at Pipo Cafe. Another good option for lunch in Playa de las Americas is the Monkey Beach Club.
As mentioned, Tenerife is in my opinion the perfect Canary Island to explore in 1 week (7 days). It is less touristic than I expected and the island has so much to offer. Definitely rent a car to be able to explore the island at your own pace.
