Teide Masca (Grand Tour)

I have booked an English tour. The first warning sign was when the Tour Operator emailed me my pickup details, in Spanish. I know how to use google translate, so I cracked the code but for me this is not great customer service. On the day the pickup was in time, no issues. The Guide was nice and looked enthusiastic. Her English was good enough to make her understood. The first stop was at the dragon tree -15mins, comfortably enough to look around. Then we headed to Garachio. On arrival we got free time (with no other recommendations then use the toilet or have a coffee)-45mins. Beforehand the Guide promised us to have a walking tour later. The so called walking tour was a 15mins (if we are generous) walk back to our bus, passing some of the points of interest on the way. Commentary was minimal: ‘This is this, this is that’… that’s it. (To be frank she gave more details on the bus before arrival, but what we got was simply not what most people means by a walking tour.) I’d not challenge this setup in reversed order, because the free time would have given us opportunity to make our own agenda and spend time as we’d like, but in the lack of initial orientation from the Giude that 45mins was useless. Next stop was Masca for approx. 15-20mins. Clearly not enough. We used the toilet or rushed for the closest possible point to take some pictures -we had no time to go very far, so we photographed what we came across, not what we planned. Next stop should have been Teide National Park. Due to a rescue operation we couldn’t make a stop there - nobodies mistake, such things happen. We stopped for 20mins at a viewpoint before lunch, time was enough. The Restaurant where we stopped was in the middle of nowhere, if you felt that lunch after 14:30 is not your thing you were welcomed to make yourself comfortable for 1 hour in the parking lot. There was nothing to see or do around and you were not allowed to stay on bus either. This 60 mins in the pouring rain - temperature: 11C was definitely the low point of any tour what I’ve ever made anywhere in the world. Nothing tells more about how unnecessary this stop was than right after we started our journey back to our hotels. It’s not unusual that tour companies are using commercial stops to fill some space in the itinerary to be able to sell a program what takes not more than 3-4 hours as a day trip, but this case was just extreme. In total this so called day tour actually included max. 50mins content + 105mins “free time” plus transportation. I would not recommend this tour to anyone because of the above ratio. On the positive side let me highlight that our driver was amazing. Hats off to him, he did a great job all day long. Maybe the Tour company has a couple of points to work on related to the structure of this tour, but one thing is for sure: safety matters to them.

It was fantastic to see Teide and the national park. But the guidning left a lot to wish for. It was like a tape put on repeat in short sentences in three different languages. No enthusiasm, no dialogue with us paying for the tour. Shortly, a very mechinacal performance from the guide. He seemed very bored with us and his job.

the kayak excursion proved to be a rewarding experience. Our guide David is very friendly and funny. we totally enjoyed the trip. Not only wespotted gigantic turtle, we aslo had the opportunity to watch dophon dance at a very close distance. they even swam towards our boat, a handful of dolphins. highly recommended

Excellent guide

Merci pour cette journée magnifique. On a passé super journée grâce à vous. Notre guide Isabelle et notre chauffeur Eibe. Chauffeur était au top dans le virage de Masca. Merci beaucoup. Avec enfants de 1 ans et 6 ans nous avons pu voir beaucoup de chose.