The best view of the Los Gigantes cliffs is from the water, looking up. You do not need a whale-watching ticket or a skipper’s licence to get it: the marina and the beach beside it launch guided kayaks, paddleboards, small self-drive boats and serious fishing charters, all within a few minutes of the cliff face. Prices and rules below are as published in July 2026; one of those rules changes this autumn, so read the boat-hire section before planning a return trip.
Paddling under the giants
The signature outing is a guided kayak run along the base of the cliffs towards Masca Bay. Los Gigantes Blue, based at the marina, shuttles paddlers out by boat and guides the return leg — about two hours, €35 per adult and €15 for children from age six, with snorkel gear, life jackets and a support boat included. Teno Activo runs a similar kayak-and-snorkel trip with multilingual guides and a safety boat, at around €25–35 depending on the package. If you would rather go unguided, Nautilos SUP in the Poblado Marinero rents paddleboards, kayaks and snorkel kit by the hour — best kept for calm mornings and confident paddlers, launching from the beach rather than through the harbour mouth, which stays busy with excursion traffic. All the guided operators divert or cancel when swell builds, and you want them to.
Your own boat, no licence — for now
Spanish law lets adults take out a small boat with no qualification at all: motorboats up to five metres and 15 hp (sailboats up to six metres), in daylight, staying within two nautical miles of the departure point. At the Los Gigantes marina that translates to a self-drive day along the cliffs. AD Boat Rental, for example, hires licence-free boats for up to six people from €220 per boat with insurance and basic fuel included and a €150 deposit, briefing included, from pontoon 6. Two notes on the fine print. First, the two-mile legal radius means the cliffs and back, not Punta de Teno — whatever a listing’s map suggests. Second, and more important, a December 2025 reform (Royal Decree 1188/2025) removes rented boats from the no-licence exemption from 1 October 2026. This summer the licence-free hire is legal as ever; from this autumn, renters will need at least the basic Spanish boating qualification, and operators are expected to adapt with short courses or skippered options — ask when booking.
Skippered, sailed and fished
Prefer to be a passenger? Los Gigantes Blue’s sailing boat takes private groups for three hours at €630, sells shared three-hour sailings at €75 per person, and runs a small-group motor trip (maximum twelve) at €30 for an hour and a half. Charter platforms list a spread of skippered boats from the marina across a wide price range. For fishing, TAMBO Fishing operates a ten-metre sportfisher from the marina with shared and private trips (reviewers report serious bigeye tuna), and Fish ’N Chips, five minutes away, holds a 4.7 rating from 34 reviews on FishingBooker with private charters from €320 for up to six. Blue marlin run roughly June to October and bluefin tuna through winter and spring; ranges vary by boat, so ask the captain what is actually biting. Jet skis exist here too — Los Gigantes Blue lists an hour at €130 — but they are excluded from the no-licence exemption entirely: solo hire requires a Spanish qualification, which is why the popular option is a guided safari, several of which ride up to these cliffs from Puerto Colón.
The rules of this particular water
This whole stretch is the Teno-Rasca marine protection area, home to resident pilot whales and dolphins, and the cetacean rules bind kayaks and hire boats exactly as they bind the excursion fleet: never approach within 60 metres, never chase, cut off, feed or swim with the animals, and if they surface near you, stop and let them decide. On a paddleboard that encounter is a privilege; treat it like one and it stays legal. Around people, the etiquette is equally simple — stay clear of buoyed bathing zones, give beaches a wide berth, use marked channels, and crawl through the harbour. Life jackets come with every rental and guided trip; wear them.
Timing the water
One pattern governs everything here: calm mornings, choppy afternoons. The cliffs shelter this coast from the trade winds, but a local breeze builds from around midday and puts chop on the water, so book paddles and self-drive boats for the first slots of the day. Summer delivers the most reliable glass; winter brings occasional west-facing swell that closes the Masca run and cancels trips. Operators decide on the day, so check the wind forecast the same morning before you walk down to the marina.
Photo: dronepicr, CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), via Wikimedia Commons