🌊 Mirador de Aguaide – a View from Above the Precipice

From the square in Chinamada, it is worth walking a little further. After around 600 metres, the path leads to Mirador de Aguaide, high above Tenerife’s northern coast. It is only a short walk, but the view at the end completely changes your perspective – the houses and agricultural terraces suddenly disappear, and the Atlantic opens up before you.

From the viewpoint, you can see Punta del Hidalgo, the distinctive Roque de los Dos Hermanos and the lighthouse on the coast. Official materials from the Anaga Biosphere Reserve identify these as some of the key features of the panorama from Aguaide.

But it is also worth looking down and at the surrounding slopes. Only from here can you truly appreciate the difficult terrain in which Chinamada developed. Steep slopes descend towards the ocean, ridges are divided by deep ravines, and the small patches of land suitable for human use seem almost to cling to the mountainsides. It becomes easier to understand why the inhabitants made use of caves, created agricultural terraces and, for centuries, travelled mainly on foot.

👀 Look closely: look down towards Punta del Hidalgo far below. The old trail from Chinamada leads in precisely that direction – the route once used by people travelling between the mountains and the coast. Today, it is one of the best-known hiking trails in this part of Anaga.

🥾 Chinamada–Punta del Hidalgo Trail

If you want to understand just how isolated Chinamada once was, the best way is to follow the route used by its inhabitants for generations. The section of the PR-TF 10 trail from Chinamada to Punta del Hidalgo is 4.7 kilometres long and leads from the mountain settlement almost all the way down to the Atlantic. Officially classified as a moderately difficult route, it takes around 2 hours and 15 minutes to complete.

The trail begins beside the chapel in Chinamada. At first, it passes through agricultural terraces where crops including potatoes and pumpkins are still grown, but the landscape gradually becomes more rugged. The path runs above Barranco del Tomadero, between rocks, caves and the steep slopes of Anaga.

One of the most distinctive landmarks along the route is Roque de los Dos Hermanos, rising above Playa de la Fajana. From here, wide views open up over the northern coastline. The final section is a definite descent – the path zigzags down the slope towards Barranco del Río and then continues to Punta del Hidalgo.

There is one important thing to bear in mind: 4.7 kilometres may sound like an easy walk, but this is not a flat seaside promenade. You are walking through mountainous terrain on a rocky path, with some fairly steep downhill sections. Good footwear is therefore far more important than the distance alone might suggest.

💡 You can also walk the much longer version of the PR-TF 10. The full trail begins at Cruz del Carmen, passes through the forests of Anaga, Las Carboneras and Chinamada, and finishes in Punta del Hidalgo. It is 10.4 kilometres long, takes around 4 hours to walk and involves approximately 1,300 metres of cumulative descent.

👉 Before setting off, check the current status of the PR-TF 10. Tenerife’s official tourism website recommends checking the latest information from the trail authorities before starting, as individual sections may be temporarily closed following bad weather.

👀 Don’t Miss

🏠 The façades of the cave houses – look closely at where the masonry ends and the natural rock begins. Sometimes a small façade with a door and window is simply the entrance to a home hidden deep inside the hillside.

🪨 Rock instead of walls – look for places where the building literally merges with the mountain. This is the best way to see why the casas-cueva blend so naturally into the landscape of Chinamada.

🌾 Old agricultural terraces – small plots and stone walls can still be seen on the steep slopes. They are remnants of a landscape shaped by people who had to make use of almost every piece of land suitable for cultivation.

🚶 Old paths – before the road was built, they were Chinamada’s only links with other settlements and the coast. Today’s hiking trails were once simply the everyday routes used by local people.

🌊 Mirador de Aguaide – walk around 600 metres from the centre of the settlement. From the viewpoint, you can see the Atlantic, Punta del Hidalgo and Roque de los Dos Hermanos – but above all, you can appreciate the scale of the mountains in which Chinamada developed.

🐐 Traces of traditional farming – look for animal enclosures, small fields and the working areas of the casas-cueva. Chinamada did not develop as a picturesque mountain village for tourists – for generations, it was a place where farmers and herders lived and worked.

📸 Details of everyday life – a television aerial, an electric cable or a car parked outside an entrance carved into the rock may not seem particularly photogenic, but they tell one of Chinamada’s most fascinating stories: a home may belong to a centuries-old tradition, while life inside it belongs firmly to the 21st century.

🧭 Continue Exploring Tenerife

🌿 Anaga – discover the mountains where Chinamada is hidden and find out why this part of Tenerife looks so different from the south of the island.

🏘️ Taganana – one of Anaga’s oldest settlements, surrounded by mountains, agricultural terraces and vineyards.

🌊 Punta del Hidalgo – a town on the northern coast connected with Chinamada by an old mountain trail.

👣 The Guanches – discover Tenerife’s first inhabitants and find out why caves were such an important part of their world.

🗺️ Want to see more? Discover all the places and stories on the → Tenerife page

🌾 How Did the People of Chinamada Live?

For most of its history, Chinamada depended primarily on what the mountains could provide. Its inhabitants cultivated small plots of land and kept animals, and households had to be largely self-sufficient. Throughout Anaga, small-scale farming supplemented by livestock was the basis of everyday life, while steep hillsides were transformed into terraces supported by stone walls.

Potatoes were particularly important. Agricultural terraces can still be seen around Chinamada today, and farming has not disappeared completely. One current resident recalls that she still grows the local papas morrallas variety. In the past, other crops needed by the family were also grown around the houses, while any surplus could be exchanged or sold outside the settlement.

Animals were equally important. Goats provided milk, meat and cheese, and goat herding was one of the characteristic occupations of Anaga’s inhabitants for centuries. As recently as a generation ago, there were many goats in Chinamada and their milk was used to make cheese. Today, the occupation of cabrero – goat herder – has disappeared from the settlement itself. Farms in Anaga also kept pigs, chickens and rabbits.

The greatest difficulty, however, was isolation. Anything that could not be produced locally had to be carried or transported along mountain paths. In the opposite direction went sacks of potatoes, cheeses and other farm produce. It was only the development of roads that fundamentally changed everyday life in the settlements hidden in the Anaga Mountains.

Today, many of the old fields are no longer cultivated, and traditional goat herding has almost disappeared from Chinamada. The terraces, paths and casas-cueva, however, remain as traces of a time when the mountain was simultaneously home, farm and workplace for its inhabitants.

🚶 Chinamada – Once Accessible Only by Footpaths

Today, you can easily reach Chinamada by car, but just over thirty years ago this was impossible. For centuries, the only routes connecting the settlement with the rest of Tenerife were footpaths leading through the mountains and ravines of Anaga. Life was similar in many other isolated settlements throughout the massif.

Change came surprisingly late. The first car reached Chinamada on 4 December 1991. The road was officially opened in 1992, and it was not until several years later, in February 1998, that the asphalting was completed. Interestingly, the residents themselves were involved in creating the road connection – the local association helped finance the work by organising fundraising events, lotteries and other activities, as well as collecting voluntary contributions.

Before then, everything had to be carried on foot: food and other essential goods in one direction, and farm produce in the other. Anaga’s steep terrain meant that even a short distance could involve a long journey across the slopes. The old paths were therefore not recreational trails – they were the inhabitants’ everyday transport network.

Many of them still exist today. The trails now walked by hikers between Cruz del Carmen, Las Carboneras, Chinamada and Punta del Hidalgo cross a landscape where, even at the end of the 20th century, travelling on foot was a necessity rather than a leisure activity.

💡 Did You Know...?

When the first car reached Chinamada in December 1991, most of us would already have regarded cars as something completely ordinary. For the inhabitants of this mountain settlement, however, its arrival marked the end of centuries of transport isolation.

🏠 How Did a Natural Cave Become a Home?

Not every casa-cueva in Chinamada originally looked the way it does today. Some began as natural caves that were gradually enlarged by their inhabitants, who carved additional rooms into the relatively soft rock. In this way, a small shelter could slowly develop into a home consisting of several rooms.

The work was carried out, in a sense, “from the inside”. Rock was removed wherever another room was needed, and the stones excavated in the process could be used to build walls separating individual spaces. There was therefore no need to construct an entire house – the mountain itself provided its walls, ceiling and roof.

The most visible transformation took place at the entrance. The cave opening was enclosed with a masonry façade containing doors and windows, allowing light and fresh air into the interior. Over time, façades were modernised, doors and windows replaced and the houses adapted to changing needs. This is why, as you walk through Chinamada, you may notice something surprising: from the outside, a building may look like a small, ordinary house, while a large part of it actually extends deep into the rock.

Not all casas-cueva look the same either. In some, almost the entire house is hidden inside the mountain; in others, the section carved into the rock has been combined with rooms built onto the front. The official guide to Anaga highlights this characteristic feature of Chinamada – you can see part of the house, while the rest remains hidden inside the rock.

👀 Look closely: as you walk through Chinamada, do not focus only on the façades. Look for the point where the masonry ends and the natural rock begins. Only then do you realise that what looks like a small house attached to the hillside may actually be little more than the entrance to a much larger home hidden inside the mountain.

💡 What Is It Like to Live in a Cave House Today?

A cave house may bring to mind a dark, damp interior without modern comforts, but today’s casas-cueva in Chinamada are ordinary homes. Tenerife’s official tourism website confirms that local people still live in them – they are not simply used as storage spaces or preserved as a tourist curiosity.

Inside, there may be a living room, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. A good example is one of the casas-cueva in Chinamada itself, now also used as tourist accommodation – it has a full bathroom, an equipped kitchen, a bedroom and a living room. The biggest difference is not the furnishings but the walls: some of the rooms are quite simply surrounded by rock.

This has a surprising advantage. The thick layer of rock acts as natural insulation and reduces fluctuations in temperature – the interior heats up more slowly on warm days and loses heat more slowly when cooler air moves across Anaga. The disadvantages can include limited natural light and the need for adequate ventilation, particularly in rooms extending deeper into the hillside.

The biggest change, however, came surprisingly recently. Electricity did not reach Chinamada until August 2004. The local publication Anaga Cuenta reported enthusiastically at the time that it was one of the last settlements in the area still without electricity. Today, you can see lighting, television aerials, cars and waste containers beside the casas-cueva – ordinary features of modern life, except that they stand outside homes extending deep into the mountain.

And it is precisely this contrast that makes Chinamada so fascinating. The tradition of using caves as homes has very ancient roots, but life behind their doors did not stop several centuries ago. An old rock shelter could acquire electricity, running water, a bathroom, a modern kitchen and internet access – without ceasing to be a home hidden inside the mountain.

💡 Did You Know...?

At the beginning of the 21st century, a resident of Chinamada could still be living in a cave house without access to mains electricity. Electricity did not arrive here until 2004 – just over two decades ago.

👣 Did the Guanches Live Here?

Yes. The Guanches inhabited the area around present-day Chinamada and made use of the natural caves found here. Official materials from the Anaga Biosphere Reserve indicate that before the Castilian conquest, some caves in the Anaga Mountains were used as dwellings, while others served as burial places. In the case of Chinamada, the surviving group of cave houses probably has its roots in the pre-Hispanic period.

This does not mean, however, that today’s casas-cueva are unchanged Guanche homes dating back more than five hundred years. The island’s first inhabitants primarily used natural caves. After the conquest, people continued to live in caves, gradually enlarging them and adapting them to new needs. Small houses made of stone and clay were also built alongside them, initially with thatched roofs.

And this is where the story becomes particularly interesting. In many parts of Tenerife, former Guanche caves became archaeological sites, storage spaces or animal shelters. In Chinamada, the tradition of living inside the rock survived – although the houses themselves changed over the centuries and were adapted to modern life.

So when you look at the casas-cueva of Chinamada, you are not looking at “Guanche houses” preserved in their original form. You are looking at a way of using natural caves that began before the conquest of Tenerife and did not disappear with the Guanches.

🪨 Why Caves?

The Anaga Massif is full of natural hollows and caves formed in volcanic rock, and its inhabitants learned to make use of what the mountains provided. Instead of constructing an entire building from scratch, they could use an existing cave and gradually deepen and enlarge it. This is how some of Chinamada’s casas-cueva developed.

The rock offered another major advantage – it acted as natural insulation. The official guide to Anaga’s heritage points out that rooms carved into the rock remain cool in summer and retain warmth in winter. In the mountains, where the weather can change quickly and moist clouds frequently sweep across Anaga, this type of shelter made very practical sense.

There was also a third reason: land was too valuable to waste on unnecessary building. Settlements in Anaga developed on ridges and rocky areas, leaving more fertile slopes available for cultivation. Terraces were created on the steep hillsides, where crops such as potatoes could be grown. A house partly hidden inside the rock therefore occupied less land that could otherwise be used to produce food.

This way of living was not unique to Chinamada. Cave houses can also be found in other parts of Anaga, including Afur, Taborno, Roque Negro and El Batán. Chinamada, however, has become one of the best places to see them today.

A cave, then, was not an “inferior home” for someone who did not know how to build anything else. In the steep mountains of Anaga, it was an exceptionally practical solution: it provided ready-made walls, protection from the weather and allowed valuable land to be preserved for cultivation.

Chinamada – a Village of Homes Carved into the Rock

In the Anaga Mountains, there is a village where some of the houses are difficult to spot at first glance. In Chinamada, people have been making use of natural caves for generations, enlarging them and turning them into real homes. Behind an unassuming façade with a door and windows, rooms may extend deep into the rock.The history of cave dwelling on Tenerife dates back to the time of the Guanches, but today’s casas-cueva are not simply their preserved homes. They are the result of a centuries-old tradition of using the rock as a place to live – a tradition that has survived in Chinamada to the present day.

📖 Chinamada with Achamán

The homes hidden in the rock are only the beginning. In the Tenerife with Achamán – the Island Told by the God of the Guanches guidebook, I will show you how to plan your visit to Chinamada and combine it with other places in the Anaga Mountains.

👉 You will find directions, places worth stopping at, GPS locations for viewpoints and an interactive map to help you find the places described in the guidebook.

📍 Open the map, choose a point and set off – you already know the rest of the story.

🏘️ Chinamada – a Village Hidden in the Anaga Mountains

Chinamada lies in the heart of the Anaga Massif, surrounded by steep slopes and deep ravines. It is a small settlement belonging to the municipality of San Cristóbal de La Laguna, situated at an altitude of around 600 metres. You will not find the compact rows of buildings typical of many Canarian towns and villages here. The houses are scattered across the slopes, and some are difficult to notice at all at first glance.

The reason is extraordinary – around thirty traditional cave houses, or casas-cueva, have survived in Chinamada, with rooms located partly or almost entirely inside the rock. From the outside, sometimes all you can see is a small façade, a door, a window or a chimney. Behind them may be an entire home carved into the mountainside. Tenerife’s official tourism materials emphasise that some of these houses are still inhabited today.

For centuries, Chinamada’s location meant considerable isolation. The settlement was connected with other parts of Anaga and the coast mainly by mountain paths. A road suitable for cars did not reach the village until the end of the 20th century, and electricity arrived even later. This makes Chinamada fascinating for more than just its houses. It also shows how long a way of life very different from that of the coast survived in the Anaga Mountains.

Today, you can drive to Chinamada and its residents enjoy modern amenities. Yet walk just a few steps away from the road and you will see old paths, agricultural terraces and entrances to homes hidden in the rock. Chinamada is not an open-air museum – it is a living village where an old way of making use of the mountain landscape has survived to the present day.

And that is precisely why its story is far more interesting than the “cave houses” alone. To understand it, we need to go back to a time when Tenerife’s caves were home to the island’s first inhabitants.