El Teide volcano
El Teide volcano towering over the entire island is the highest peak in Spain with a height of 3,715 m above sea level. The cable car goes up to 3,555 m above sea level and that’s as far as Gabriela and I managed to get. Tomasz managed to reach the top! But first things first.
To reach the top of the volcano, we need a special permit. It is free, but only 200 people a day can get it and you need to get it a few months in advance. Unfortunately, I missed this moment and we didn’t manage to get tickets for the whole family. Yes, I had an ambitious plan of all of us getting to the top (I mean the hike from the upper station of the cable car, i.e. a trail with a length of about 600 m, but elevation is 200 m). As we didn’t have tickets, I accepted the fact that we just take the cable car and have a walk to one of the viewpoints.
But there is another way to reach the summit of El Teide – if you go through the gates where they check the tickets before 9 am, you are free to enter. For some volunteers, this means staying overnight in the Altavista refuge (about 4 km before the top station of the cable car) and ascent to the top at dawn, and for the more brave and crazy, it means going to the top of the entire route at night. Tomasz J. and my husband came up with such a fantastic idea. From the parking lot at Sendero de Montaña Blanca, it is a total of about 9.5 km one way. In complete darkness. The elevation is about 1,200 m. The guys ambitiously wanted to be at the summit even earlier than 9, because they planned the sunrise from the top of the volcano (around 8 am). In order to be on time, they started climbing at 4 am (plus the driving from our house over an hour). Madness for me! And despite the fact that I know that I would not be able to do it, due to the lack of strength and training, I was a bit jealous 🙂 But the guys did a fantastic job and we are very proud of them!
Me and the children, or actually me and Gabriela (and Emi with Oskar) enjoyed the afternoon trip. We left the youngest members of the family at home (Adam wanted to stay with Konrad and play, but I wouldn’t mind taking him with me). We took the cable car as high as we could, and then we made a short route to the Mirador La Fortaleza viewpoint (the route is about 600 m, more or less at the same height). We were very lucky with the weather, because it was no wind and cloudless. The day before, the funicular was closed because of the wind. And we succeeded and the sun was shining beautifully. We were finally above the clouds! And it wasn’t even as cold as we expected. I.e. hats and gloves came in handy but we had no winter jackets or boots. There was no snow on the top. Despite the thin air, neither me nor Gabriela had any breathing difficulties and I think that we could easily reach the top. But not this time 🙂
Currently, due to the corona, the number of tickets sold per cable car is very limited, so it is worth getting them a few days or even weeks in advance. They can be returned or exchanged up to an hour before the planned entry (we also had tickets for Adam and Konrad, but I returned them by phone on the same day in the morning). If the funicular is closed, we will be informed about it by text or e-mail, so we will not go to the mountains unnecessarily. We bought the tickets on THIS website.

Roques de Garcia
If you do not want to or cannot take the cable car to El Teide, but would like to try the routes located at its foot, you can go for a 3.5 km hike along Roques de Garcia. Of course, you can also go there when entering the summit, one does not exclude the other 🙂
The circular route around Roques de Garcia is located in the Teide National Park, at an altitude of over 2000m above sea level. It starts and ends at the car park and the Mirador la Ruleta viewpoint, about 4.5 km before the cable car station. For us, it took about 1.5 hours to complete the trail with 4 children, so I think that without any breaks for chocolate and photo sessions, you can easily complete it in an hour (according to the website, 2 hours, but this is an exaggeration). Part of the route (about 1 km from the parking lot) is very easy and I think it can be covered even with a pram. For us, it was just the end, because we started with a steep descent (see the photo below). The trail, as I wrote earlier, is circular, so we can choose which way to go first. Apart from the steep descent (or ascent if we started from the other side), the route is relatively easy and our 5-year-olds coped with it calmly. But we advise you to have reasonably good shoes. You should also remember that at this altitude the weather can be completely different than on the coast, so it is worth bringing with you a jacket (in our case the temperature difference was about 10 degrees compared to the coast).

Montaña Roja
Montaña Roja, or Red Mountain, is a peak overlooking the sea near the town of El Medano, east of the Tenerife Sur airport. The summit is 171 m above sea level and is said to be the best sunset spot on the island. We climbed there maybe an hour before sunset, but it was obvious that many people are going there to admire the sun disappearing behind the horizon.
The route from the parking lot is about 2 km long and it took us about half an hour to walk it. It is not far, but it is steep and, above all, very slippery, because the slopes of the mountain are covered with gravel and red sand (hence the name). In fact, it was more dangerous to go down and some of us sat on our bottom a few times;)
Adam went on strike that day and needed his dad’s help, but Gabriela was eager to climb and admired the views. If you live in the area, it is definitely worth a short hike.