The Beaches

The number one beach still is Puerto Naos, with the longest and widest beach on the island, starting at Hotel Sol La Palma and continues along half a mile promenade, where shops offering all kind of beach gear and restaurants inviting into shady areas for drinks and snaks. On weekends it can be very crowded here and parking your car is pretty much impossible if you are late and coming after noon. Locals love their beach too and will enjoy all the way just like you do. If you have children, you rather want to stay on the north side, where smooth lava sand makes the beach more enjoyable and palm trees give some shade. The south side of the “Naos-Beach” is covered with rocks and stones.

Puerto Naos - The biggest beach on the island

One beach further south, heading to Charco Verde, you will find an insider beach, where parking is not necessarily better, because this beach is the only official “cloth optional”. Do not think this beach has less visitors. On sunny days just the opposite is true, especially guests from Germany and the Netherlands like to get a seamless tan. That is the main reason, coming to Playa de Las Monjas. Besides, the little black lava bay is counted, one of the most beautiful of the island. Taking a bath in the ocean is much more enjoyable, if waves are calm or not even there.

Right between the bananas - Playa de Las Monjas - beautiful little bay, cloth optional

The lava steps or the rocks below is your best choice to stay here with rough waves

Same road, same direction, two other beaches are still showing up. First one is Charco Verde and a little further down the road, El Remo.

The beach of Charco Verde framed from banana plantations, is just the beach for kids. When in Puerto Naos and Playa de Las Monjas waves are transforming into breakers, Charco Verde still remains calm. The fine and smooth sandy beach is just a perfect one for kids, while El Remo needs at least teens, because of the rocky coast. El Remo has a natural build “Ocean-Pool” where water is calm inside and a great outdoor restaurant just at the same spot. Parents could sit in the shade with a cool drink, a vino tinto and lunch or dinner. El Remo is also the dead end of the road.

Charco Verde - The beach for kids - fine smooth sandy beach with mostly calm ocean

To get to the beaches at south of the island, you need to climb up all the way via Puerto Naos, Todoque and Las Manchas, to San Nicolas, where you hit the main road (LP-1) to Los Canarios (earlier Fuencaliente) and hopefully with a car.

Playa de La Zamorra, Playa de Punta Larga, Playa Nueva and Playa del Faro, which is the absolute south beaches of La Palma and right at the lighthouse with the volcanoes Teneguia and San Antonio in the background and an incredible beautiful and unique scenery. Take a look to the Salinas, where the salt is coming from your eating in your meals everyday, they are close by.

El Remo - natural pool for teens and older with shady restaurants right beneath

Those are pretty much the beaches on the west side of the island, just the beach of Puerto de Tazacorte needed strongly to be recommended too, because this beach is build up very nicely over the last years and is rising in peoples favor now. The old “banana-dock” breaks the waves from the ocean side, so the water is save and calm inside the little bay. Showers are installed now and a beautiful promenade with a lot of benches, where everybody is invited, does not want to sit in the sand. Drinks and snakes are easily taken at promenades café’s and restaurants, where you can sit outside, while your towels remain on the beach.

The beach of Puerto de Tazacorte - rising in peoples favor - great beach for kids

The beaches at the eastside La Palma’s from north to south start with the Piscinas de La Fajana, which are actually pools just below Barlovento, chiseled into lava stone and naturally filled by the ocean and the main attraction in summer for locals around. Weather conditions must be good for a visit to the pools. A rough sea makes bathing impossible. On the plateau offshore the steep coast, camping is possible and permitted.

The beach of Puerto Espindola is not to mention and besides a lot of concrete, the old little harbor was build from, for shipping bananas in earlier times, there is just the restaurant Mason del Mar, which actually offers good meals, to mention.

Also don’t expect too much of a beach in Charco Azul. Like the Piscinas de La Fajana, Charco Azul has a natural ocean pool, built into the lava rocks, but will be save inside, while the breakers outside hitting the rocky coast.

Playa de Nogales, one of the very beautiful sandy beaches of the island, because of it’s wild, untouched nature. Swimmers need to be very careful, heavy breakers are dangerous sometimes and tragic accidents have already taken place here. Even you are not here to take a bath in the ocean, the beach is worth to be visited. The climb down leads through a tagged coastal cliff and ends 200 meters below the steep cliff on a fine sandy beach. Sun tanning is also just for early birds, because the sun disappears already about noon behind the cliff.

The beaches of Los Cancajos, are right in the islands center of tourism. In the 80^th, when islands government decided to bet the bucks on tourism, a hotel and apartment complex was quickly build up and concrete blocks, dropped into the ocean, to calm the sea down. A sandy beach was developed and got very popular for the all-inclusive-tourism but not only for them. On sunny weekends inhabitants from the capital Santa Cruz are coming to near Los Cancajos and fill up the beaches with a massive crowd.