Anaga Mountains Tenerife: 12km Hiking Tour & Laurel Forest

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Free cancellation

1/17

Duration8h

GroupUp to 6

LanguagesEN

PickupAt your hotel

Five hours in Tenerife's oldest forest, where the ground still remembers the Tertiary Period

You hike 12km through protected nature reserves in Anaga, climbing 600 meters through ravines, remote villages, and a 60-million-year-old laurel forest. Your guide explains the geology and ecology while you navigate moderate-to-hard terrain over 5 hours. Hotel pickup and full insurance are included, so you only need to show up fit enough to walk.

Step-by-step itinerary

Hiking in Anaga Mountains

Start hike in Anaga Mountains
Walk through coastline and ravines
Explore ancient laurel forest
Observe native fauna and flora
Complete 12 km moderate to hard hike

The Experience

You've just landed in Tenerife, or maybe you're staying nearby with an afternoon free. The Anaga Mountains sit in the northeast corner of the island—close enough to reach by car, remote enough that you'll forget you're in Spain. The 12km hike here isn't a casual stroll; it's 5 hours of climbing and descending through ravines, past villages so isolated they feel like they've been left behind on purpose, and into one of the world's last surviving laurel forests. The terrain is moderate to hard, which means you'll feel your legs, but the payoff is something most tourists never see.

The walk takes you through Anaga Rural Park, which got its protected status back in 1994 and has only gotten stricter about conservation since. You're moving through three separate nature reserves—Ijuana, El Pijaral, and Los Roques de Anaga—each with its own ecosystem. The laurel forest itself is the thing that stops people mid-stride. It's a Tertiary Period relic, meaning it's been here since before the ice ages, and it only survives now in a handful of places: the Canaries, Madeira, and a few islands in the Azores. The forest is so dense it traps moisture from the air, feeds the island's aquifers, and keeps the soil alive. You walk under trees that have been doing this job for millions of years. The geology shifts as you go—the rock formations, the way the ravines cut, the sudden views of coastline—and your guide Andy points out how the island's isolation created all this botanical strangeness. Native plants and animals that exist nowhere else on earth.

The hike includes pickup from your hotel, so you don't navigate the winding roads yourself. You get full insurance coverage—public liability and rescue—which matters when you're on terrain with real elevation change and no cell signal in some spots. Andy brings the history and geology with him; he's not just walking ahead, he's explaining why the landscape looks the way it does and what you're actually standing in. The 600 meters of ascent and descent is real work, especially in the middle hours when the sun is direct, but the contrasts are what make it stick with you—moving from open ridge to dense forest to a sudden drop to the sea.

What’s included

Private hotel pickup and return transportation, a guide (Andy) for the full 5 hours, complete public liability and rescue insurance, and detailed information about the geology, geography and history of Anaga Rural Park and its three nature reserves.

Good to know

Moderate physical levelStroller friendly

Operated by Tenerife guided walks

Is this one for you?Book this if you're fit enough for sustained climbing and want to see a forest that has survived 60 million years without a crowded trail—the small-group format and remote location are what keep it that way.