Best Beaches in Tenerife Compared: North vs South

The best beaches in Tenerife are not all on one coast, and honestly that’s the first thing I wish someone had told me before I went.

I spent a week there last October and I split the trip on purpose. Four nights up in La Laguna in the north and then three nights down in Costa Adeje in the south. Because I wanted to see both sides properly instead of just taking everyone’s word for it.

And I’m so glad I did. On the Tuesday I was standing on black sand at Benijo watching a red flag flap around in the wind. And by Friday I was floating in water so calm at Playa del Duque it felt like a pool.

Both days were brilliant, but for completely different reasons, and that’s really the whole story of beaches in Tenerife. It kinda feels like two different islands. So this is my honest north vs south comparison, beach by beach, with all the swimming, parking and bus stuff I had to figure out the hard way.

Oh, and if you’re coming in winter and you haven’t actually locked in Tenerife yet, I compared the islands month by month. So you can check whether the south coast here really does beat Lanzarote for your dates before you book anything.

One practical thing before we get into it, because it shaped my whole trip. The north coast is a car job, there’s just no way around it.

If you are planning a full week and want the beaches slotted into a route with Teide, Anaga and Masca, I have written up how I would order a first week on the island so you are not driving in circles, and this post is the beach half of that.

I booked a small car for the north half only, because Benijo and Bollullo are not places you want to be reaching by bus. And then I handed it back the morning I moved south and never missed it. It came to about €28 a day for the five days, which felt like the best money I spent all week.

North vs South at a glance

Here’s the whole argument in one table, because I know some of you just want the answer. It’s based on what I actually saw.

And I double checked the boring but important stuff like lifeguards, facilities and blue flags against the official beach list at Turismo de Tenerife. Which is the one source that actually gets updated when a beach closes.

The best beaches in Tenerife by coast: what actually differs

South Coast North Coast

Best beaches in Tenerife map: south coast in gold, north coast in black.

Best beaches in Tenerife by travel style

And if you already know what kind of beach day you’re after, this is the shortcut I wish I’d had.

• Families with toddlers: Las Vistas and Las Teresitas, because the water is flat, the parking is easy and there’s a toilet whenever you need one.
• Couples and sunset people: Playa de Benijo for the views and the seafood, Playa del Duque for a fancy day of doing absolutely nothing.
• Swimmers and snorkellers: El Camisón and Las Teresitas, both tucked away from the swell, plus the rocky end of Duque.
• Wind, surf and kitesurfing: El Médano, no contest.
• Wild black sand and cliffs: Benijo in the north or Playa de los Guíos in the west.

Same thing again beach by beach, for the skimmers among you:

The best beaches in south Tenerife

The best beaches in south Tenerife are calm because they were built to be calm. And once you know that, the whole coast makes sense.

Pretty much every stretch of sand from Los Cristianos up to La Caleta sits behind a rock breakwater. And the sand itself was either shipped in from the Sahara or dredged up from the seabed and laid over the old black shingle.

I don’t mean that as a dig at all. It’s the entire reason a five year old can paddle happily at Playa del Duque in February while the Atlantic is throwing itself at the cliffs 60km away. So when you hear people talk about white sand beaches in Tenerife, this is what they’re picturing. And it’s pale gold rather than Caribbean white, but it’s lovely all the same.

The south coast is also the reason Tenerife sits at the top of my list of the warmest places in Spain for a winter beach day. Because the sea down here stays a full five degrees warmer than anything on the mainland, and in January you can really feel that.

Costa Adeje beaches: Duque, Fañabé and Torviscas

Playa del Duque is the fancy one, and I mean that affectionately. The sand gets raked every morning. The water was glass calm all three mornings I went, and the lifeguards were on from 10am.

It’s also the priciest beach on the island, so two sunbeds and an umbrella came to just under €20 for the day. And the cafés along the promenade behind it charge proper resort prices too.

Fañabé and Torviscas are the same water two coves along, with cheaper loungers and a lot more towels per square metre. And honestly if you’re staying in Costa Adeje you’ll end up at all three anyway. Because the promenade links them and Duque to Torviscas is only about a 25 minute walk.

El Camisón, the cove nobody lists

El Camisón was my best south coast find, and it didn’t appear on a single list I read before the trip. It’s a small sheltered cove between Los Cristianos and Playa de las Américas. Maybe 150 metres of sand behind a low breakwater, and it had the warmest, calmest water of my whole week.

I found it completely by accident while walking the coastal path from Los Cristianos, which takes about 15 minutes, and I ended up going back twice.

There are loungers, a couple of bars and a lifeguard, but it never felt busy even at 2pm. Mostly because people just walk straight past it on their way to the bigger names.

It’s also the best snorkelling on the south coast, because the breakwater rocks at each end have parrotfish and the odd octopus. And since nothing churns the water up in here I could see a clear four or five metres every time I went in.

Las Vistas in Los Cristianos

Las Vistas is the big, sensible family beach, and I mean that as a compliment. It’s 850 metres long with a gentle slope into the water, loungers are about €6 each. And the promenade behind it is basically wall to wall ice cream.

It does get busy, but it’s so wide that busy never actually feels crowded. If I had kids under ten with me, this is where I’d spend most of a south coast week and not think twice about it.

It’s also the beach that makes Los Cristianos the base I’d pick for a family with no hire car, because the whole town is flat and the ferry port is a ten minute walk.

La Tejita and El Médano, where the wind is the point

Drive 30 minutes east of Costa Adeje and the coast changes completely. La Tejita is a long natural beach under the red cone of Montaña Roja, with no breakwater and no loungers.

And the wind on the day I went was strong enough that I gave up on the towel entirely and just sat in the dune watching the kitesurfers instead, which turned out to be a great way to spend an hour.

There’s a naturist section at the far western end. Right next door is El Médano, which is the one beach on Tenerife where the wind is a feature rather than a problem. With a chilled little surf town behind it where I had the best cheap lunch of my trip.

Come here for a change of scene, not for a lazy swim.

The best beaches in north Tenerife

The best beaches in north Tenerife are the most beautiful beaches in Tenerife, full stop, and they’re also the hardest ones to actually swim at. Nobody seems to put those two facts in the same sentence, so I will.

Benijo, Bollullo and Playa Jardín are the ones everyone photographs, and between November and March they fly red flags a lot. People drown on this coast most years, and it’s usually someone who waded in on a day that looked perfectly fine from the car park.

I’m not saying skip the north, because I’d never say that. I’m saying go to look, to walk, to eat and to take photos, and treat any swim as a bonus.

Things
to bring

What I pack for Tenerife’s black sand beaches. Sharp rocks, hot sand, and no shade.

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Swimsuit

Reef-Safe Sunscreen

Sun Hat

Aqua Shoes

Quick-Dry Towel

Snorkel Mask

Water Bottle

GoPro

Drone

→

Playa de Benijo

Benijo is the one on every postcard, with black sand, sea stacks, cliffs behind you and waves that come in like walls.

The car park at the end of the TF road above the beach was full by 11am on a Tuesday in October, which tells you everything. And the walk down is a steep set of steps that’s fine on the way down and a proper workout on the way back up.

The sand is coarse black grit and it gets into absolutely everything. Both days I went the flag was red and nobody went in past their knees. So the real reason to come is the restaurant terraces above the beach.

I sat up there for two hours with a plate of grilled cherne just watching the swell roll in, and I didn’t regret a single minute of the hour long drive.

Playa Jardín in Puerto de la Cruz

Playa Jardín is the one north beach with lifeguards and easy access. Which makes it the safe default if you’re based in Puerto de la Cruz, and the easy stop if you’re driving down from La Laguna like I was.

It’s black sand with the César Manrique gardens behind it, and it’s a 30 minute drive from La Laguna, so I gave it the morning of my Puerto de la Cruz day.

The flag was yellow when I got there at 10am and red by the time I left after lunch. So it’s fine for families to sit on and paddle at the edge before lunch. But it’s not somewhere I’d send a confident swimmer expecting to do lengths.

Hidden beaches Tenerife locals actually use: Bollullo, Antequera and Los Patos

If you only have one north coast morning, spend it at El Bollullo. The path starts at the car park near La Paz in Puerto de la Cruz and takes about 15 minutes through banana plantations, which is a lovely walk in itself.

And the bar at the bottom was open in October selling cañas and papas arrugadas, which is honestly all you need.

The waves broke right on the shore, so I only swam in the shallow shorebreak and only at low tide. Los Patos is the next cove along with a rougher path and no bar, and then there’s Playa de Antequera way out on the Anaga coast.

Which you can only reach by boat or a long hike from Igueste de San Andrés, and that’s exactly why it’s empty. These are the quiet beaches in Tenerife, but the quiet comes with no lifeguards and no phone signal at the bottom, so tell someone where you’re going before you head down.

The west coast wild option: Playa de los Guíos

If you want the black sand and the cliff drama of the north without driving all the way out to Anaga, Playa de los Guíos in Los Gigantes is the west coast version.

It’s a small natural black sand beach right at the foot of the cliffs, two minutes from the marina. And on a green flag day it’s a genuinely good swim because the cliffs block the northerly swell.

The catch is that it closes for rockfall risk more than any other beach on the island. Sometimes for weeks at a time, so never build a whole day around it without checking first. If it is shut, Playa de la Arena is ten minutes down the road and that one’s always open.

If you only visit one beach, make it Las Teresitas

The best beach in Tenerife, if I have to pick just one, is Las Teresitas, and it’s technically on the north side just past Santa Cruz.

It’s the beach where both coasts sort of meet. With pale golden sand shipped over from the Sahara in the 1970s, a 1km breakwater that turns the Atlantic into a swimming pool, palm trees, showers, lifeguards, the lot.

I drove in from the north via Santa Cruz and parked in the long free car park behind the palms in under a minute. Which after Benijo felt like a miracle.

If you don’t have a car, TITSA bus 910 from the Intercambiador in Santa Cruz took me 20 minutes and cost under €2 a single. And you can check the current fare and timetable on TITSA.

Las Teresitas is the only Tenerife beach I’d put on the same page as my favourite coves on the mainland. And you can see where it lands when I rank the clearest water in the whole country.

Which coast is right for your trip?

Go south if you’ve got kids, if you’re coming between November and March, or if you’re not renting a car. Everything is on a promenade and the water is swimmable pretty much every day, which takes all the guesswork out of it.

Go north if you’re coming between May and October, you’ve got a car, and you’d rather have one wild beach to yourself than a raked one shared with two hotels. Surfers and walkers, this is your coast.

If you’re a couple with a car and a week, do both, using the split I describe below. And if you’ve got under five days and no car, stay south and do Teresitas as a day trip, which is about two hours each way by bus with a change at the Intercambiador.

How I did both coasts in a week

I did four nights in La Laguna with the car, then three nights in Costa Adeje without it, and the order genuinely matters.

Doing the north first meant I got the driving, the steep paths and the early starts out of the way while I still had the energy.

And then I finished the trip with days where the hardest decision was which lounger to lie on. I booked both bases with free cancellation so I could shift the north nights if the swell forecast looked bad, which is a real risk between November and March.

The direct drive between the two is about 75 minutes on the TF5 and TF1, but I went the long way round the north coast through Garachico and it took the whole day, which I’d recommend. Teresitas I did on my first afternoon by bus from Santa Cruz, before I even had the car.

If you would rather have someone else work out the order, the week I would plan for a first visit uses the same north first logic and adds the mountain days this post leaves out.

If you’re skipping the car altogether, I’d book a transfer from Tenerife South to Costa Adeje and then just walk or bus between the beaches. Which is easier than it sounds. The airport is only 20 minutes from Costa Adeje, and between the promenade and the local TITSA buses you can reach every south coast beach in this article.

One west coast note. Playa de los Guíos was closed the day I went, rockfall risk again, and the locals told me that happens a lot. So I booked a boat trip from Los Gigantes marina instead, and honestly it turned out to be the better way to see the cliffs anyway.

It was about €35 for two hours with a swim stop, and it suits anyone who wants the cliffs without gambling on the beach being open. That same marina is where the ferry leaves from, by the way, which is handy if Tenerife.

Check the flags before you drive north

Every north coast morning I did the same two minute check before leaving. I kept an eSIM running the whole trip so I could check the AEMET marine forecast before committing to the hour long drive out to Benijo.

And if the swell on the Anaga coast was above two metres, I changed the plan. The forecast is free on AEMET, the Spanish state weather service, and it takes about a minute to read once you know what you’re looking at.

Green flag means swim, yellow means paddle where you can stand, and red means the sea is closed, and the lifeguards, where there are any, will pull you out and fine you.

The thing nobody told me

I expected the south to feel fake and the north to feel real, and I had it completely backwards.

The south beaches are engineered, sure, but that’s the whole point, because I swam every single day there and that’s what most people fly four hours for.

The north gave me the two best afternoons of the trip, sitting above Benijo with a plate of fish, watching a sea I had zero intention of getting into.

If I went back with only a week, I’d still do both, but I’d stop pretending the north is a swimming destination and just enjoy it for what it is.

Need help planning your trip?

If you want both coasts in one trip without losing a whole day to the motorway, I can plan the whole route around your flights and the beaches you care about most. I build day by day plans for Tenerife and the other Canaries based on your dates, your pace and whether you even want a car.

Questions I get asked about Tenerife beaches

Best beaches in Tenerife north or south, if you had to pick?

South if the question is where to swim, and north if the question is where to remember. For most first timers I’d honestly say south with one north day trip.

Because a week of swimmable beaches plus one wild afternoon is a better holiday than the other way round. Surfers should flip that, and so should anyone who’s already done a resort week here and wants the version they haven’t seen.

Are all beaches in Tenerife black sand, and are there any golden sandy ones?

No, and yes. The natural beaches are black or dark grey volcanic sand, which covers almost everything in the north and west.

And Playa de la Arena near Los Gigantes is the best swimming beach of that type with a blue flag and lifeguards.

The golden beaches are the south coast resort beaches plus Las Teresitas, and every single one got its colour from sand brought in from somewhere else.

One practical thing about black sand that nobody mentions is that it gets seriously hot by midday, so bring sandals for the walk to the water.

Are there any white sand beaches in Tenerife?

Technically, no. Tenerife’s natural beaches are dark volcanic sand and there isn’t a single naturally white one on the island.

The beaches people call white sand, so Las Teresitas, Playa del Duque and the rest of the Costa Adeje strip, are pale golden sand that was imported from the Sahara or dredged from the ocean floor.

And in bright sun it photographs a lot whiter than it looks with your feet on it. If white sand is genuinely your deciding factor, Fuerteventura has the real thing and it’s only a 30 minute flight away.

Is the sea water clear in Tenerife, and where is the snorkelling best?

Clear enough to see your feet at four metres on a calm day, but only where the sand isn’t getting stirred up. The south coast breakwater beaches are the clearest because nothing moves the water.

So El Camisón, the rocky end of Playa del Duque and the breakwater at Las Teresitas are the three spots I’d take a mask to.

On the west coast, locals kept mentioning Playa de Abama near Guía de Isora for fish. And the sea around Los Gigantes is clear too but deep, so it’s better done from a boat.

The north is a different story, because the shorebreak keeps black sand floating in the water most days, which means it looks murky even when it’s safe.

Which are the best beaches in Tenerife for families with small kids?

Las Vistas first, Las Teresitas second, then Duque. Las Vistas has ramps down to the sand, a shallow gradient that goes a long way out, and toilets and showers every couple of hundred metres. Which with a toddler matters more than anything else.

Teresitas adds shade from the palms, which the south beaches just don’t have unless you pay for an umbrella. I’d avoid Playa Jardín with small kids on any day the flag isn’t green.

Where are the quiet beaches in Tenerife in high season?

Almáciga, the smaller beach just before Benijo, was the quietest named beach I found. And it stays that way in summer because the Benijo crowd drives straight past it without noticing.

On the south coast, quiet means early, so Duque before 9am or El Camisón at pretty much any hour. If you want truly empty, Antequera on the Anaga coast is the answer, but it’s boat only or a four hour round hike, and summer only.

Is Playa del Duque worth the sunbed price, or should I just go to Fañabé?

Do Duque once and Fañabé the rest of the time. The water is the same and the sand is the same imported gold. And what the extra euros at Duque actually buy you is space, thicker mattresses and a quieter shoreline. On a two week trip that adds up fast, so I’d treat Duque as the treat day rather than the default.

Can you actually swim in the sea in Tenerife in winter?

Yes, on the south coast, and I’d plan on it. The water sits around 19 to 20°C in January and February. Which is cool getting in and completely fine after a minute, and the breakwaters mean winter swell rarely closes the resort beaches. The north is a different story though, and I wouldn’t plan a single swim there between November and March.

Where I’d send you

Tenerife has two kinds of best beach, and you should pick on purpose rather than by accident.

If you want to swim every day, stay south and book a lounger. If you want the beach you’ll still be thinking about in a year, drive north early, eat above Benijo, and keep your feet dry when the flag says so.

And if you can only manage one beach in the whole trip, get on the 910 to Teresitas, sit under a palm, and forget the rest of the list.

More Spain & Island Travel Guides

If you’re still mapping out your route or comparing warm-weather spots, here are a few other guides to help you plan:

• Spain Coastline Hub: My full collection of Spanish beach guides, itineraries, and region-by-region coastal breakdowns in one place.
• Where to Stay in Tenerife: Best Areas & Hotels: the base I’d pick for every kind of trip, north or south, with one hotel per area and the caveats the booking sites skip
• Spain Coastline, Explained: My full breakdown of Spain’s different coastal regions, complete with maps and where to base yourself.
• Best Places to Visit in Spain in Winter: How mainland Spain holds up against the Canaries when temperatures drop, and where it’s actually worth going.
• Best Beaches in Spain: 25 of the best hidden coves and stretches of clear water across the mainland and islands, all mapped out.
• Costa del Sol vs Costa de la Luz: Another coast-versus-coast showdown if you’re considering mainland southern Spain instead.

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