Barranco del Infierno

What it is

In the dry south of Tenerife, where almost everything is lava badland and scrub, this ravine has running water all year. That makes it an ecological exception: riverside vegetation grows on its walls that exists nowhere in the surrounding kilometres, and the floor narrows steadily until the walls close in and leave only a strip of sky.

That same water explains its history. The galleries and channels you pass along the way carried the ravine’s water down to the sugar-cane and banana crops on the coast, and they are the work of several centuries of pick and shovel. The trail largely follows those maintenance paths.

It is protected as a special nature reserve, which is why access is controlled: 300 people a day enter in staggered groups, always with a booking made through the site’s own website.

What the walk is like

It is about six and a half kilometres there and back, along the same path, and usually takes around three and a half hours at an unhurried pace. There is no serious climb: the difficulty is the ground, with loose stone and a few narrow sections, not the ascent.

The end is the waterfall, dropping inside a ring of high walls — the tallest on Tenerife. The temperature inside the ravine falls noticeably compared with the coast, which is part of the appeal when the sun is hard on Adeje.