Parque Marítimo César Manrique — Attraction in Santa Cruz de Tenerife

One of the highlights of our trip to Santa Cruz!

If you arrive early, parking should be easy enough, there is a large car park right outside the entrance. We paid at the gate, only a few euros.

The water and the pool area itself was very clean and well maintained. Much to our surprise, the day of our visit was nice and quiet, we arrived mid-morning which was brilliant and it felt as though we had the entire place to ourselves, at least for the first few hours. There are stunning views of the sea to the east with waves crashing onto the rocks. Our older two children are learning to swim and this was a great place to practice as the pool is so wide!

We visited with our 3 young children (aged 6, 5 and 2) and they had the best time and wanted to return, which we certainly will when we revisit Tenerife next time!

My only criticism would be the café/bar area and a very rude staff member working here. He was clearly annoyed with us that we did not speak fluent Spanish, despite us trying with the words and phrases we knew and trying Google translate to help us communicate. He was perfectly polite to the local/Spanish speaking clients, so he clearly had an issue with foreigners or maybe he just didn't like the look of us 😅

But would definitely recommend a visit if you have a day to spend in Santa Cruz, especially if you have...

The pool landscape is beautifully laid out and clearly the architecture is an attraction by itself.

I went with my kids and their expectation was to have pool fun which was only partly achieved.

The water temperature was on the low side. The pools are filled with unheated filtered sea water and in April the temperature was just bearable for my older daughter but too cold for my younger daughter.

Only one of the pools was open today, though appearantly this was due to renovation just being completed and might change soon. My younger daughter did not have a good play area, as the water in that pool was at least 1,40m deep.

We couldn't find lockers or a changing room. I changed in the men's room and a gentleman offered nicely to watch our belongings and the pool was not busy today, so it worked out for us. However your mileage might vary depending on the day and the circumstances.

Entry tickets are really cheap. Staff friendly but limited English. There is a cafeteria which we didn't try. We still liked it because of the architecture and I think when the other bassins open as well it...

Absolutely awful experience. First of all we were charged for 1 extra person on the gate who must have been invisible then he argued that we weren't overcharged (charged for 3 adults 2 kids & we were 2 adults 2 kids). Then we were accosted by another man over umbrellas (which we had paid for). The changing rooms were closed so had to get changed in toilets which were filthy dirty. The last straw was when we tried to order food. I have never met a more rude member of staff. Nobody in the place spoke or understood any English so I used Google translate. He was giving off because I wanted to order paella & chips as he thought I was ordering too much. He rolled his eyes, tutted, spoke in Spanish and was so incredibly rude. We ended up telling him to forget about it and just left. Don't even get me started on trying to get a taxi from the place, they won't stop at the taxi rank and we ended up having to walk. Absolute disaster of a day after paying to get there & tickets into the place. Would not...