The catch at Parador de Cruz de Tejeda

There is no free hotel pool. The outdoor hydrothermal pool that looks across the caldera is part of the spa circuit, which costs hotel guests €35 a person for 90 minutes and has to be booked ahead, because places are limited. Swimsuits and rubber slippers are compulsory, and the spa reception sells the slippers. The spa opens from midday (11am on Sundays) until 8pm, and children from six may use the circuit only in its first two hours, with an adult. The cheapest rate is room only, so breakfast is extra as well. The cost of the extras is the complaint guests return to most often: the view comes with the room, the water and the meals do not.

The hotel sells itself on sleeping above the clouds, and the sea of cloud below the spa pool is real, but the same weather sometimes climbs over the pass. Several recent guests, in March 2025 and March 2026 among other months, describe fog that hid the caldera for a day or two, rain, and cold evenings, which is what the guests' lounge and its fireplaces are for. The south coast can be in full sun at the same moment, with the Maspalomas lighthouse 79 minutes' drive away. No official climate averages are published for the summit, so no month is a promise, and every view the Parador is known for depends on the cloud staying below you.

The Parador stands at the top of the island, and every route down is on winding mountain roads. With the roads clear, the city beach of Las Canteras is 51 minutes away, the airport and the cathedral in Las Palmas 52, the Maspalomas dunes 76 and the lighthouse 79; allow longer in cloud or rain. Line 18 stops two minutes from the door, but only three buses a day come up from the Maspalomas lighthouse, the last at 3pm. Even the Roque Nublo path has lost its car park at the Degollada de La Goleta: drivers leave the car at Cruz de Los Llanos, 10 minutes away, and ride line 18 for the last stretch, and entry between 9am and 5pm needs a booked slot.

Most rooms look over the Tejeda caldera, though not all, and the hotel sells its four categories by space and furnishing rather than by outlook. Some Standard Doubles are attic rooms under the wooden roof, which the hotel pictures without a terrace, one with its window onto the pines. Every category has rooms with a terrace, and the hotel's own photographs show Standard, Superior, Junior Suite and accessible terraces looking out over the mountains, but the terrace and the caldera side are a request, not something the booking guarantees. Paying more buys space and, in the Junior Suite, a sitting room and a canopy bed. It does not buy a better view.

At the pass, the Parador's restaurant serves dinner from 7 to 10pm, and Tajinaste, in the small rural hotel four minutes' walk away, cooks dinner every evening. The grill three minutes away closes at 5pm on weekdays and 7pm at weekends and is shut on Tuesdays. Everything else is in Tejeda village or beyond, 11 minutes or more by car on a dark mountain road, and most of the restaurants in the hills around serve lunch only. Inside the hotel, guests in 2025 and 2026 keep describing slow or thinly staffed service at breakfast, in the cafeteria and at dinner, and prices in the restaurant that add to the bill for extras.