Lajares-Corralejo

After my last walk around Calderon Hondo, when writing up the post, I noticed how close I was from the system of volcanoes that includes Bayuyo, which is, in its turn, right next to Corralejo. So I figured that a walk from Corralejo to Lajares (or vice versa) is probably reasonably easy, and this Sunday we decided to give it a go. We ended up going from Lajares to Corralejo; maybe next time we'll go another way round.


I took surprisingly few pictures this time, perhaps because it was overcast. Most pictures ended up being about the cute little critters as the one above - Atlantoxerus getulus, Barbary Ground Squirrels. To be honest, they look like rats somewhat, especially when you see them inside villages or on wastelands, but this colony live in Calderon Hondo, and when they all come to beg for food, their cuteness factor magically increases manifold. We didn't think about bringing any food specially for them, so we ended up giving them the only apple we brought with us. Below is a little video  of them.




As far as I understood from the pointers, the "official" route Lajares - Corralejo is 13.5 km and runs mostly along the dirt track. We decided that we'd go to Calderon Hondo by the footpath, and then cut across the malpais to that track. There are unpaved paths in addition to paved ones, and you could see where you want to be from the lip of the calderon, so there is no problem changing the route as you feel fit. When I drew our route in googlemaps (see below), the calculated distance was just 10 km; maybe because google calculates distance as crows fly, not taking into account ups and downs; or maybe we really took a shortcut.

Picture above wasn't taken yesterday, but you can see the road we took, snaking along the foot of the mountains. The back spot roughly in the middle of the picture is the mouth of a natural cave, formed when the dome of an old lava bubble fell in.

Path to the Montana Colorada, old eroded moutain in the beginning of the path.

Our conclusions from this experience is that it is very doable, but might be best left for winter months; we were lucky with the weather, it was overcast and very windy, so didn't feel too hot, but in a more "normal" summer day it might work out a lot harder. The  village of Lajares is nice, with a few cafes and restaurants along the short main street and is good for a snack or a meal before or after the walk.

Here is the route we took.


View walk from Lajares to Corralejo in a larger map
inland Fuerteventura on shutterstock