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The beaches and seafront of Puerto de la Cruz |
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Written by Steve Andrews
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The northern Tenerife coastal resort of Puerto de la Cruz has much to attract visitors to the island and it boasts a very extensive seafront with several excellent black sand as well as rocky beaches and a choice of swimming pools.
Playa Jardín, which is on the same side of Puerto de la Cruz as the very popular Loro Parque zoological park, has as its name suggests a series of gardens with pathways and borders filled with exotic flowers, bushes and trees. There is plenty of room on this Tenerife beach, which many sunbathers enjoy. Lanzarote artist and architectural designer, César Manrique, created Playa Jardín in 1992 having already been the inspiration behind the construction of the very popular Lago Martiánez lido further along the Puerto de la Cruz seafront.
 At the one end of Playa Jardín is the Castle of San Felipe (Castillo de San Felipe), which looks out over the fishing quarter known as Punta Brava. It was named after King Philip IV of Spain (1621-55) and has now been fully restored and functions as a cultural centre.
Right next to this impressive Tenerife fortress with wooden drawbridge and door, and which now stages music concerts and art exhibitions, are public the swimming pools. Graceful palms planted outside give the whole area a very exotic and tropical look.
 Coming back towards the main part of Puerto, the seafront is undergoing a massive reconstruction into a Tenerife maritime park but at present boasts a long walkway overlooking the sea and a huge car park. Then just minutes from Plaza del Charco, which is Puerto de la Cruz’s most popular square, there is the little working fishing harbour and beach known as Muelle Pesquero, where many brightly painted boats are moored up on the beach of volcanic pebbles.
Along from here is Plaza Europa where many events are staged, and then next along Calle San Elmo we find Playa San Elmo and the white walls of the Chapel of St Elmo (Capilla de San Elmo). St Elmo is the patron saint of Tenerife’s sailors who erected the chapel in 1626. A garden around this beautiful place of worship and flocks of pigeons that gather on the roof and on the paving stones below completes the picture.
 Avenida de Colón leads us to the well-known Tenerife tourist attraction, the Lago Martiánez, which is also known as Costa Martiánez, Lido de San Elmo and Lido de Martiánez. This filtered seawater lake and complex has eight smaller pools, fountains, terraces for sunbathing, palm trees and its own show restaurant.
Finally Puerto de la Cruz’s seafront offers the black sand beach Playa Martiánez, which is overlooked by cliffs with caves where the ancient Guanche people once lived. The cliffs have been built on top of and now house many streets and the Plaza Mirador de la Paz but the caves serve as a reminder of what was once here.
All along the main seafront of Puerto de la Cruz there are plenty of bars, restaurants, shops, hotels and you even get street entertainers and pavement artists too. The main shopping streets of the town, and its well-served bus station, are only a short walk away from the sea and so it is easy to see why Puerto de la Cruz is one of the most popular parts of Tenerife North.
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Tenerife Island