Parque Nacional del Teide — Attraction in La Orotava

This review will help you to plan your trip to Teide National park based on my trip today:

First of all you need a car and you should know how to drive good because almost 50 minutes of the way up to Teide is curvy and the experience with car is very nice because you can stop in many places the way up to Teide area to take pictures. We rented a car from Cicar ( fiat 2008 ) and it was perfect for 38 Euro per day.

I saw many reviews about the permit but it’s not needed for visiting Teide area but not the Teide mountine it self and the cable car. All what you see in the pictures uploaded here doesn’t need any booking or permit or anything.

I preferred to go at 4 pm so it usually takes like 60 minutes to go up but with some stops in the way might takes like two hours

As soon as you see the sign or Google maps takes you to Teide national park don’t stop just continue until you reach the sign Teide mountine or the cable car over there after you reach it at the left side you will find a three stars hotel ( it’s the only one there ) where you can park your car and have a rest in the hotel or eat something.

We preferred to start out trip late so we avoid the crowed as soon as we arrived to the hotel parking on the opposite side we find many people do hiking and we found a nice route of 40 minutes which we made between the mountine but keep in mind somethings, you need more water than normal, I don’t know why but I had to pie many times :D, you might feel a bit dizzy after you finish the hike and then you can relax it the hotel, don’t get a big meal before going up.

The sunset there was amazing and the stars at night if you feel worry to drive at night as we did ( it was completely fine ) you may can drive during the sunset and enjoy the view in your way back.

To reach to top of Teide you need to book like three months before and you should be lucky that this day is ok and they didn’t close the cable car because of bad weather.

Keep in mind it’s cold over there something like...

We booked half a day Teide tour with fast track cable car ticket with Tenerife Tickets y Excursiones. We should be picked up from our hotel at 11 but the coach was late. Not the best start. For 1.5h we have been stopping at various hotels and picking the rest of the group and then the tour started. We also stopped at some random cafe selling souvenirs. We also had 2 5 minutes photo stops on our way to Teide. When we finally got to cable car everyone in the queue already had fast track tickets so it took around an hour to get inside the cable car which was very crowded. We had 2 h in total and 1 h was already wasted for waiting in the queue. We already have been hungry and we didn’t take any snacks except water because it suppouse to be only half a day tour! Views from top of the Teide are amazing, really worth all our troubles. We spend around 30 minutes at the top and we had to head back to cable car queue. At the top and at the bottom of cable car there was nothing to eat, ecept snacks, maybe because they were already closing it. On our way back we had 1 more 20 min photo stop. This time we went through our hotel first so we didn’t have to wait for all other tourist to be dropped at their hotels. Our tour finished around 7pm! It was cheaper than similar tours offered by big travel agents like TUI but be aware it’s not a half a day tour, it’s full day with no access to food, so bring food with you....

This place is AWESOME, particularly at night. You have to time it correctly so both the sun and the moon have set, but when you do time it correctly you can see more stars than you have had hot dinners. The milky way is spectacular-it may bring a tear to your eyes…it is a very humbling and moving experience.

There are apps, like The Photographer's Ephemeris which will help you determine when the sun and the moon will cause you the least problems. Anything more than about 6% moon will affect the number of stars you will see.

There are some great viewing locations-turn right at El Portillo and head up the dead end road towards the telescopes (where Brian May wrote Tie Your Mother Down) and there's a viewpoint of Teide on the right. Then come down that road, turn right and follow the road for about 7km for some more great views where you can see the peak of Teide with clouds lapping around its base.

I love this place. The solitude is immense. Being alone with your thoughts can be quite scary, but the view of the stars will hopefully distract you enough.

During the day there are some breathtaking views of more or less the entire island and there are some really beautiful places to picnic. Please don't smoke or light fires-we want to keep this place special.

It can get very cold at night and first thing in the morning, at easter it can drop below zero and there may be ice on the roads, but in summer...