Hotels in Puerto Santiago

Puerto Santiago

Puerto de Santiago is a coastal town on the west side of Tenerife and the largest settlement in the municipality of Santiago del Teide, lying about fourteen kilometres from the municipal capital at an average altitude of some 57 metres. It grew around a small cove sheltered by a lava flow that reached the sea, which made it one of the few natural refuges along the island's western coast. That origin is still visible in the small fishing harbour, and the town keeps a fishing museum recording the trade it lived on before tourism. Today it runs together with Los Gigantes to the north and Playa de la Arena to the south, forming a single continuous strip along the shore. Playa de la Arena, at the southern end of that strip, is a compact bay of black volcanic sand that shelves steeply, so the waves break hard against the shore, and it was the first beach on Tenerife to hold the Blue Flag. Immediately north rise the Acantilados de Los Gigantes, the sheer cliffs that drop straight into the Atlantic and give the neighbouring resort its name. The town is reached by the TF-47 and is a full working community rather than a purpose-built resort, with a parish church, schools, a health centre, a library, a sports complex and everyday shops alongside the hotels. Boats leave the nearby marina for the strait between Tenerife and La Gomera, where a resident population of pilot whales and dolphins lives year-round. The western coast sits in the rain shadow of the island's central massif, so it is markedly drier and sunnier than the north and stays mild through the winter. Visitors here get a beach and a working harbour without the scale or the nightlife of the southern resorts.