Walking in Tenerife
At the time of year when late winter is lingering over north-west Europe, everyone gasps for a half-term break with a smidgeon of sun and a smattering of fresh air. In the Canary Islands the clouds and the sun arrange things pretty comfortably between themselves – particularly among the steep little volcanic ranges in the northern half of the ‘capital island’, Tenerife. North Tenerife is green, it’s lush, it’s heavily forested, and it’s mostly temperate – that’s to say, cool cloudy mornings and warm sunny afternoons. What could be better for family walking? You can get in your 3 or 4 hours after breakfast and be by the pool or on the beach shortly after lunch. Late strolls in the cool of the evening are delicious, too.
One of our best family holidays, back when the children were little, had been spent walking the coasts and hills of northern Tenerife. Now, though, as we headed back to Tenerife after an absence of several years, our family dynamic had altered. Mary, the daughter that we had first taken to the island as a child of ten, had become a young woman of independent mind, while Ruth had metamorphosed from a university student who wouldn’t stir further than the nearest club into someone whose great weekend pleasure was exploring the hills and woods around London on foot. Bribery and cajolement, threats and promises were no longer part of the ‘let’s go for a walk’ scenario. It was going to be quite a change.
If you want to explore the green heart of Tenerife on foot, you can hardly do better than sign up with Gaiatours. It was their guide Pedro Mederos Fumero who introduced us to a couple of walks that stayed in the mind long after the holiday was over. Dark-haired and intense, Pedro turned out to be a mentor in a thousand – not only capable of reeling off the names of flowers and birds, but knowledgeable about every inch of his home ground, and as full as a shanachie of folklore, tall tales, traditional cures and general island enchantments.
We headed out for the Anaga peninsula at the north-east tip of Tenerife, a wild region of knife-edge ridges and canyons plunging to the sea, all clothed in the pungent and beautiful native greenery called laurisilva. ‘There’s not much laurisilva left in Tenerife,’ Pedro told us as we drove the corkscrew ‘dancing road’ out to Chamorga. ‘Laurels, shrubs, herbs – it’s something special, and Anaga is the best placed for it on the island.’
The lonely hamlet of Chamorga sat out at the end of the peninsula, its red pantiled roofs held down against the wind with large stones. Ruth and Mary were soon two dots on the distant mountainside as they strode out along the stony path. Pedro walked at a more sedate pace with Jane and me, pointing out the early spring flowers that spattered the rocks among the omnipresent prickly pear and yellow flowering genista. Wormwood grew there in tall jagged clumps. ‘The old people,’ said Pedro, ‘when they feel a bad spirit in the house, they make a fire with that and the smoke drives away the devils. Now you see this little plant? It is lengua de gato, the cat’s tongue.’ We let the fat round leaves slip between our fingers and felt their caress, as rough and dry as the lick of a cat.
Volcanic dykes formed banded stairways for us to climb. Out at the end of the peninsula we skittered along a high ridge and stood looking down on the Faro de Anaga, a stumpy, salt-rusted lighthouse like a toy far below on the edge of the sea. For two pins Ruth would have run down there and back, but with the afternoon leaching away it was time to head back through the terraces and laurisilva thickets to Chamorga.
Over the next couple of days we struck out on some walks by ourselves, trusting to the Sunflower guidebook and our own five senses. A memorable outing was to the Parque Nacional del Teide, the extraordinarily baked and contorted landscape around the snow-covered cone of Tenerife’s majestic 12,199-ft volcano, Mt. Teide. The Roques de Garcia route around the bed of the volcano’s original crater is a thoroughly popular and well-known tourist attraction, and we found it a stunningly impressive piece of natural theatre as we wound under cave-pocked cliffs and across slopes wrinkled like rhinoceros hide, passing lumps, bumps and stumps of dramatically coloured and shaped volcanic extrusions.
Our favourite walk of the lot, however, was the descent of the barranco or gorge of Masca, another expedition in the company of Pedro Mederos Fumero. Masca, a crowded little village perched on a precarious saddle in the mountains, was soon left behind, and for three hours we dropped slowly down the barranco beside a stream under tremendous rock faces, with Tenerife’s sister island of La Gomera caught in the blue vee of the sea ahead. The barranco has its own microclimate; the north coast had been cold, grey and rainy when we left it that morning, but here in the cleft of the mountainside we were warm and dry under a blue chink of sky.
The walls closed in until we were threading the gorge like ants in a corkscrew. Squirming under a great boulder that blocked the route, we slid into a cold pool and went on down through drifts of sowthistle and spurge towards the beach and our ferry boat. Pedro pressed his hand to his heart as he glanced up the towering walls to the sky. ‘I really love this gorge – the quiet, the flowers and the little sound of the water. It’s like all the best of Tenerife put into one place.’
Walking practicalities
Guided walks:
Gaiatours (tel 922-35-52-72; mobile 656-94-63-70; gaiatours@teleline.es; www.gaiatours.es ) offer guided walks in all parts of Tenerife.
Pedro Mederos Fumero (c/Dr Gonzalez 36, 38410 Los Realejos, Tenerife; tel 656-94-63-69) is an excellent, knowledgeable guide, very strong on local flora and folklore. He charges about £90 a day (i.e. about £22.50 per person for a party of 4).
Ranger-led tours, generally free, are available in the Parque Nacional de Teide (telephone for details: 922-29-01-29), and also in the Anaga peninsula (tel 922-63-35-76 or 25-93-29)
Independent walking:
Landscapes of Tenerife by Noel Rochford (Sunflower Books) contains 30 detailed walks in the north of Tenerife, as well as many car tours and picnic suggestions.
35 Tenerife Walks by David and Ros Brawn (Discovery Walking Guides) is another reliable guide.
NB – both books’ estimated timings for their walks are for tough, quick walkers – most mortals on holiday should allow much longer!
5 suggested walks
Chamorga to Faro de Anaga
(From Santa Cruz by car – road nos.TF11, TF12, TF123; bus 247)
Bear right on track up behind café, along spine of promontory, to viewpoint over lighthouse. Allow 2 hours there and back; 3-3½ hours if you want to reach the lighthouse, a steep descent/ascent.
Roques de Garcia, Parque Nacional de Teide
(From Puerto de la Cruz by car – coast highway TF5 to Jct 32, then TF21; bus 348)
A well waymarked circuit from Parador de la Cañadas. Hot, dry, rubbly underfoot – take water, hat, suncream. Allow 2-3 hours.
See Landscapes of Tenerife, Walk 11
Masca Gorge
(From Puerto de la Cruz by car – TF5, TF42 to Icod de los Vinos and Santiago del Teide, TF436 to Masca; bus 325 to Santiago del Teide, 355 to Masca)
Paved path, then stepped, then bouldery and rubbly gorge path, downhill all the way. Only for the sure-footed. Water, hat, suncream; walking stick/poles are helpful. Allow 3-4 hours.
From Masca beach, ferries to Los Gigantes (tel 922-86-19-18 or 922-86-07-26; www.losgigantes.com/nashira.htm); frequent bus returns to Masca, or taxi (£10 approx.)
Puerto de la Cruz, Bollullo Beach, and Café Vista Paraiso in Cuesta de la Villa
Lovely coast walk, ending with steep climb up rubbly hillside; best in afternoon/evening with sun behind you. Allow 2½-3 hours; or you can walk back from Bollullo Beach.
From Cuesta de la Villa, bus 101 returns to Puerto de la Cruz.
See Landscapes of Tenerife, Walk 1
La Caldera walks
(From Puerto de la Cruz by car – TF5, TF21 via Orotava, forest road to La Caldera signed on left just after Aguamansa; bus 345)
Many circular walks through the forests are waymarked from this popular picnic place which boasts a bar-restaurant, barbecue ovens, a children’s playground, toilets and picnic tables.
See Landscapes of Tenerife, Walks 3, 5, 6, 7 for more strenuous suggestions.
Fact File
Tour Company:
Thomson (tel 0870-165-0079; www.thomson.co.uk) offer a week at the very friendly and comfortable Riu Garoé Hotel in Puerto de la Cruz, handily placed for the best walking.
Tenerife bus travel: TITSA bus company (tel 922-53-13-00; www.titsa.com)
Local information: Puerto de la Cruz TIC, Plaza de Europa (tel 922-38-60-00; http://www.abouttenerife.com/tenerife/towns-puerto.asp)
Spanish Tourist Office: 2nd Floor, 79 New Cavendish Street, London W1W 6XB (tel 0207-486-8077; www.tourspain.es)