Last weekend we drove over the island to get a little bit of an overview and passed through the Rural de Anaga Park on our way to Playa de Las Teresitas.
After a rather busy week of work, we want to spend today as much time as possible in the nature and our plan is to do the Llano Frío - Cabezo de Toro - Casas del Río hike which is a 3.7 kilometer lightly trafficked loop trail located near Tegueste. Depending on how long this will take us, we want to end the day at Playa de Las Teresitas, which is the most beautiful beach we have seen here on the island thus far.
From the map I can see that the Llano Frío - Cabezo de Toro - Casas del Río hike starts from the small restaurant Merendero Casa Carlos, which is perfect as it's already close to lunch and we rather eat before the hike.
The drive from our stay in Santa Cruz de Tenerife takes about 30min and once off the highway (TF-5), we enjoy driving the road (TF-12) through the lush green Rural de Anaga Park.
There is quite some traffic along the TF-12 which keeps me worried that the restaurant and hike might be busy, but when we arrive to Merendero Casa Carlos, there are only a few locals having a drink.
We find an english menu on the wall of the building and the super friendly waiter hands us an english menu printout with various hand written additions and prices on it. Glancing over the menu Lauza spots a goat's stew, which is something that she has wanted to try for a while now but it was always sold out - today we are early for lunch so she is lucky ;-)
I go for the Carne Fiesta (which is marinated, fried pork meat) for the main, and goat's meat croquettes for a shared starter.
We take our time to enjoy the delicious food, and completely forget about time while having a super interesting and inspiring conversations about a future project that we have been dreaming about for a while. All while sitting in this beautiful setting where clouds are passing by, creating this mysterious atmosphere.
After almost 2 hours of lunch break we finally head off to the hike, which conventiently enough just starts behind the restaurant.
According to AllTrails, this hike shouldn't take too long which is probably why we didn't rush and took our time to enjoy lunch.
Before we even start the hike and set the first foot on the trail, we are immediately surrounded by lush green and row beauty of nature, which is where we immediately take that cover image.
The hike takes about 2.5 hours and at first it's a clear trail which goes most of the times downhill, however, when the loop turns back we often lose the trail and try to just head in the right direction as indicated by the recording we follow on AllTrails.
The last bit of the loop leads back to the restaurant along the road, but because we have been walking uphill for a while now, I suggest to just turn to the right, to continue walking the road uphill. Just when I check AllTrails for how far away we are from the restaurant, I recognise that we have been walking in the wrong direction 🙈.
We turn around and walk all the way back to the car, which added probably 20min of downhill walking but was totally worth it as even walking along the road is stunningly beautiful.
We couldn't be happier about the choice of the hike and with a happy face we jump into the car, change into our swimming cloths and drive down the TF-12 towards San Andrés, Santa Cruz de Tenerife to spend the evening swimming at Playa de Las Teresitas.