Island hopping in the Canaries: itineraries for 7, 10 and 14 days
The classic first-timer mistake is wanting to see three islands in one week. It can be done. You can also go home with the feeling that what you mostly saw was ports and airports.
If you are still deciding where to start, we have a piece on which Canary island to choose according to the kind of trip you want. This is the next step: how to combine them, with concrete plans.
The rule that saves the trip: a travel day is a day
This is the thing almost no itinerary says out loud. Changing islands does not cost you the two hours of the ferry. It costs you the whole morning.
You have to check out, get to the port with time to spare, cross, collect the new car or wait for the transfer, and check in at the other end. In practice the hop day produces nothing, and it is worth counting half a lost day in each direction.
With that arithmetic, the sums change: two islands in seven days is not seven island days. It is about six.
The pairings that work
Not all combinations are equal. The ones that go well have something in common: one big island and one small one, with a short crossing.
Tenerife and La Gomera. The ferry leaves from Los Cristianos and the crossing is roughly an hour. It is the most comfortable pairing in the archipelago, and the two islands have nothing in common: one has a volcano and cities, the other has laurel forest and silence.
Lanzarote and La Graciosa. The boat goes from Órzola and takes under half an hour. La Graciosa has no paved roads, so the contrast is immediate.
Lanzarote and Fuerteventura. Playa Blanca to Corralejo, a long half hour, with frequent departures. Two islands of sand, wind and volcano, but with distinct characters.
Tenerife and La Palma or El Hierro. Here the ferry is already long, and the flight from Tenerife North earns its keep. These are for people after strong landscape and few crowds.
Seven days: one island properly, or a big one and a small one
With a week you have two sensible plans, and neither of them includes three islands.
Plan A, a single island. Days 1 and 2 for the area around your base and for settling in. Days 3 and 4 for whatever needs a car and an early start. Day 5 for one long, one-off outing: the Teide, Timanfaya, a ravine. Day 6 with no plan at all, which is when the best of it turns up. Day 7 to travel.
Plan B, big plus small. Days 1 to 4 on the big island. Morning of day 5, hop. Days 5, 6 and 7 on the small one, leaving on the last. It works well with Tenerife and La Gomera, and with Lanzarote and La Graciosa.
What does not work in seven days is three islands. Two whole mornings go on crossings, and you are left with four useful days spread across three places.
Ten days: two islands without rushing
Ten days is, to my taste, the length that pays off best in the Canaries.
Days 1 to 5 on the first island, with room for one mountain day, one coast day and one with nothing planned. Morning of day 6, hop. Days 6 to 10 on the second.
With this split you do not have to choose between the north and the south of a big island, or between the coast and the summit. There is time for both, and that is exactly what the one-week plan is missing.
Fourteen days: three islands, or two in depth
Two paths open here, and which you take says something about the kind of traveller you are.
Three islands. Five days, five days and four days, with two hops. That is the reasonable maximum. Tenerife, La Gomera and La Palma, strung together westwards, for example. It works if you accept that two of those fourteen mornings belong to a port.
Two islands in depth. Seven and seven, one single hop. Fewer stamps, more place. This is for the traveller who wants to go back to the same beach twice and learn the waiter's name. For many people it is the better of the two.
Ferry or plane
Both make sense, at different moments.
The ferry lets you take the rental car, and on short crossings it is faster overall, because the port is in the town and there are no airport queues. For Tenerife with La Gomera, or Lanzarote with Fuerteventura, it is the obvious answer.
The plane wins over long distances, above all towards El Hierro and La Palma, and on any hop that crosses the archipelago end to end. Inter-island flights are short, in the region of half an hour.
One practical detail that catches people out: the rental car cannot always board. It depends on the company and the contract. We cover it in the article on no-deposit rental and the ferries between islands, and it is worth checking before you book rather than at the port.
Three mistakes that keep repeating
Chaining islands by looking at a map. Two islands being visible from each other does not mean there is a convenient direct boat. Check the specific connection before you fix the order.
Leaving the hop to the last day. If the ferry is delayed or cancelled because of the sea, your flight home will not wait. Always leave a night of margin on the island your departure airport is on.
Repeating the same kind of island. Two sandy, sunny islands back to back blur together in the memory. Alternate: one big and one small, one of volcano and one of forest. The contrast is what makes the trip stay with you.
Cover photo: Carlos Teixidor Cadenas, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
