Tenerife: North East Road Trip

La Orotava * Punta del Higaldo * Playa del Ancon

We began our day by driving the short distance to La Orotava in search of breakfast! La Orotava is a delightful historic town but it’s narrow cobbled streets were not built for hundreds of 21st century cars so it took a while to find a parking space. We ended up parking a 15 minute walk from the main Old Town however walked up and enjoyed breakfast al fresco in the cute little higgledy piggledy pavement cafe above.

After breakfast we spent some time exploring the quaint historic streets of La Orotava on foot.

We returned to the residential area where we had parked and were both really drawn to the well maintained neat little houses which gave us a few ideas for holiday home or retirement options!

Punta del Hidalgo

We drove from La Orotava to Punta del Hidalgo which is located on the north east coast of Tenerife and took about 40 minutes. I had chosen this location as I had read about a spectacular hike to a place called Chinamada. We had decided not to do the hike as we had left it too late but I was anticipating Punta del Hidalgo to be a captivating little village at the top of some rugged cliffs in the mountains!

This wasn’t the case… the shoreline was certainly rugged with the Atlantic constantly pummelling away however the area in which we had parked was most un-scenic. We were at the back of the town and walked along a grotty track until we entered a derelict piece of private land before hopping over a fence and arriving at the coast near to the surprisingly ultra modern lighthouse.

But the spectacular coast line was a wow factor…

After spending some time watching the crashing waves, in today’s warm temperatures of around 24 degrees from the lighthouse we set off towards the village in search of a drink. We walked past another natural seawater pool.

There wasn’t much open and the village seemed to lack any kind of atmosphere. We entered a hotel and ordered drinks at the poolside bar however as soon as the staff realised we were not guests of the hotel we were politely asked to leave! Maybe this was a one-off or maybe its a covid thing… back in the day we would think nothing of freely wandering into a hotel, ordering a drink and sitting on at their poolside terrace to drink it.

Feeling thirsty we continued to head to the back of town in the direction of the car and in the hope of a cafe or a bar. Disappointingly all we found was a cafe attached to a supermarket but this was better than nothing!

We drove to the end of the village and came across an awesome bay with an impressive mountain backdrop! I think Chinamada is up there somewhere but that will have to wait for another trip.

We were not yet ready to return back to our villa so on the way back decided to stop at a beach and possibly to have a swim. Playa del Ancon is fairly close to where we were staying and we parked the car and set off along the coast path in search of the beach.

The coast path hugged the top of the cliffs and gave us a constant amazing view of the sea. It took about 25 minutes of walking and quite a few steps to descend.

Eventually we reached the wild and remote Playa del Ancon beach. The tide was in and the waves were almost reaching the foot of the steep steps we had just climbed down so there was no chance of a swim! But the exhilaration of being so close to the pounding restless sea was well worth it. Even with the steep 25 minute uphill climb back to the car!

At the end of this day we returned to La Orotava in the evening for dinner.

Summary

We were disappointed by Punta del Hidalgo, however a visit to historic La Orotava is highly recommended. And the invigorating walk to Playa del Ancon was a real highlight at the end of the day.