Las Galletas

Las Galletas is a working fishing harbour on the southern tip of Tenerife that happens to have tourists in it, rather than a resort that happens to have boats. The fishermen still go out, the catch still comes ashore, and the restaurants along the seafront buy it more or less where it lands. Nothing here is above a few storeys, nobody is handing out flyers for a foam party, and the loudest thing on a weekday morning is a diesel engine idling at the quay.

It sits in the municipality of Arona, immediately west of Costa del Silencio and about fifteen minutes by road from Los Cristianos. Most visitors here are either staying in the bungalow complexes next door and walking over for dinner, or are divers, or are Spanish families down for Sunday lunch. It is a genuinely useful place to know about: the food is better and cheaper than the resort strip, and it takes ten minutes to reach from most of the south.

The shape of the place is simple. A dark sand and shingle beach, a promenade behind it, a stone pier and fishing quay at the western end, a small marina beyond that, and three or four streets of ordinary town behind. You can walk all of it in twenty minutes.

The harbour

The working harbour is the heart of it. Small wooden boats in the traditional colours sit on moorings and on the hard, nets are mended on the quay, and the fishermen's cofradía — the cooperative that all Canarian fishing communities are organised around — handles the landings. This is not a display. The fleet is small and the catch is modest by mainland standards, because the Atlantic drops away to great depth very close inshore here and there is no continental shelf to trawl, but it is real.

What that means for you at dinner is that the fish on the specials board is the fish that came in. Ask what is fresh rather than ordering from a laminated menu with photographs; the answer will usually be vieja, cherne, sama, bocinegro or whatever the day produced. Our guide to reading a Canarian menu translates the names, several of which do not map onto anything a British fishmonger sells.

The fish restaurants

The seafront row is the reason most people come. Plastic chairs, paper tablecloths, a blackboard, and fish sold by weight — which is the thing to understand before you order. You choose from what is on ice, it is weighed, and you pay by the kilo, so a large fish for two people can cost considerably more than a menu price you were half expecting. Ask for the weight and the price per kilo before you commit and there are no surprises.

The standard order is the fish grilled plain with papas arrugadas and mojo, a green salad and a bottle of something cold and Canarian. Sunday lunch is the busy service and tables go to locals who booked; weekday evenings you can usually walk in. Our page on how eating out works in the Canaries covers the timings, which are later than British visitors expect.

Why the town is called "the biscuits"

Here is the local puzzle nobody can settle. Galleta is Spanish for biscuit, and Las Galletas therefore means, quite literally, "the biscuits" — which is an odd name for a fishing village and one that visitors always ask about.

There are two competing explanations and no documentary proof for either. The first is geological: the shoreline here is scattered with flat, round, pale-edged basalt pebbles worn smooth by the sea, which do look remarkably like biscuits, and the name is simply descriptive. The second is nautical: galleta is also the old word for ship's biscuit, the hard baked ration carried on long voyages, and one version has the bay used as a watering and provisioning stop where biscuit was taken aboard. A third, less romantic account attributes it to a family name.

Ask three people in the harbour and you will get three answers delivered with equal confidence. It is a small thing, but it is the kind of small thing that makes a place stick in the memory, and the pebbles really are on the beach if you want to judge for yourself.

Diving

Las Galletas is one of the main diving bases on Tenerife, and for good reason. The marina at the western end of the bay hosts several schools and dive centres, the sites are close inshore so boat rides are short, and the coast here has the volcanic architecture divers come to the Canaries for — arches, overhangs, walls of black rock dropping into blue.

The area is also known for angel sharks, the flat, sand-coloured, entirely harmless species that has become rare across most of its European range but persists around the Canaries, and which appears on sandy patches at modest depth, usually in the cooler months. Rays, moray eels, barracuda and octopus are routine. Our overview of diving in the islands covers certification, typical costs and which islands suit which kind of diver.

Boat trips and the water

The marina is also a departure point for boat trips along the south coast, and it is a quieter and often cheaper place to book one than the big quays at Los Cristianos or Puerto Colón. The resident pilot whales and bottlenose dolphins of the strait between Tenerife and La Gomera are a short run west — our page on whale and dolphin watching explains how to pick an operator that behaves properly around the animals, which matters more than the price.

The beach itself is dark sand and shingle, sloping fairly steeply, with the harbour wall giving some shelter at the western end. It is fine for a swim on a calm day and has showers and seasonal lifeguard cover. It is not a beach you would plan a fortnight around, and nobody local pretends otherwise.

The Sunday market

Las Galletas has a weekly open-air market on the seafront — a mix of the genuine farmers' market model found all over the islands and a flea market, with fruit and vegetables, cheese, honey, plants, clothing and a large quantity of the sort of stall you find at markets everywhere.

Go for the produce end of it rather than the sunglasses. Canarian market stalls are where you find the black potatoes, the tomatoes that taste of something, the goat's cheeses at three ages, and the palm honey. Market days and hours change from time to time and the seafront setup is occasionally moved for events, so check locally in the week you are there rather than trusting a fixed day; our guide to markets across the islands explains how the mercadillo system works.

The walk west: Punta de Rasca

Beyond the marina the development simply stops, and a track runs out into the Malpaís de la Rasca — a protected coastal badland of old lava, low scrub and spurge, running to the southernmost point of Tenerife. At the end stands the lighthouse at Punta de Rasca, squat and striped, with nothing beyond it but Atlantic.

It is an easy, flat walk of a few kilometres each way on a rough surface, and it is one of the better hours in the south of the island — utterly different from the manicured promenades, full of lizards, with Montaña Roja and the airport coast visible east and La Gomera floating out to the west on a clear morning. There is no shade and no water, so go early. If you like this sort of thing, our page on the lighthouses of the Canaries covers the rest of the network, several of which are as remote as this one.

Getting there and staying

Las Galletas is about fifteen minutes from Tenerife South airport by road, which makes it one of the shortest transfers on the island — see Tenerife South transfers for the options. TITSA buses connect it frequently with Los Cristianos and along the southern corridor; the TITSA guide covers the travel card that makes this cheap.

Accommodation is mostly apartments, either in the town itself or in the complexes of Costa del Silencio next door, and there is very little in the way of large hotels. Most people who holiday here are self-catering, which suits a place with a market and a fish quay. For something livelier within walking distance of a proper beach, Los Cristianos is the obvious alternative.

The bottom line

Las Galletas is not a destination in its own right, and a week here with no car would be a long week. What it is, is the best dinner in the south of Tenerife for the money, an excellent dive base, and proof that the island's southern coast had a life before the 1970s.

Come at seven in the evening, walk the pier while the boats come in, eat fish by the kilo, and walk it off along the promenade towards Costa del Silencio. It costs almost nothing and it is a far better evening than most of what is on offer twenty minutes away. Pair it with the Montaña Roja walk at El Médano or the lighthouse track and you have a full and entirely uncommercial day.