El Camino del Cartero, The Postman’s path, Gran Canaria

La Aldea de San Nicolás to the left. To the right, a new road.

La Aldea de San Nicolás, or simply La Aldea, is the least accessible village of all on Gran Canaria. There are three roads leading to it — one from Mogan, another from Agaete, and another from the central part of the island, Artenara and Tejeda. All three of these roads are quite long on the island’s scale, narrow, curvy and difficult, and at least two of them close whenever it rains. Emergency services occasionally have to go to La Aldea by helicopter, which of course has its own limitations.

View towards La Aldea. The white flat things are tomato fields covered by translucent plastic

But this is nothing in comparison to what it was before the roads were made. La Aldea sits, almost literally, in the middle of nowhere — a wide valley between mountain ranges, facing west towards Tenerife. To get there on foot or even using beasts of burden was an arduous task. Considering that it always was, and still is, a relatively small village with not much to offer*, it was almost certainly not worth the effort unless you had some sort of business there.

And postmen, of course, had little choice. Their job was to deliver the letters and parcels, and if somebody had a fancy to send something to La Aldea, well, there was no escape.

View back towards the immense cliff Faneque. El Risco hidden behind the green hill on the right

The postman route, a hike linking a tiny hamlet, El Risco, in the Agaete municipality and La Aldea, is quite a popular route with local hikers, but people from outside seldom find it. It runs parallel to the coast, along the second mountain crest inland, probably because the cliffs along the coast are exceptionally steep. There are paths in the first crest too, one of them along La Cola del Dragon, the Dragon’s Tail, but I haven’t explored them yet.

Now a part of the first surfaced Agaete — La Aldea road has been replaced by the new one**, making a shortcut through a tunnel and along the bottom of the valley. The old road is still partially operational and used mostly to get to one of the viewpoints, to get to the Tirma estate or to get to the beautiful beach of Artenara.

Same walk, different weather. Teide is floating serenely on the sea of clouds

We did the Postman’s Path starting in El Risco. In retrospect, I think it would have been smarter to start in La Aldea. The problem with finishing a hike in La Aldea is that you, inevitably, end up walking long stretches of rocky descent totally exposed to the sun in the second half of the day, with the heat at its maximum. If you go in the opposite direction, you will be walking between pines at least some of the afternoon, plus the descent is shorter and sharper, and the overall orientation of El Risco allows it to catch less sun.

Small white house belonging to the Tirma estate can be seen sitting in the pass, top right.

You can, in theory, do this route using public transport, just be aware that the bus is very infrequent. Don’t get stuck in La Aldea, or in El Risco, for that matter.

A part closer to El Risco. The whole slope is full of grottoes, created after the lower layers of lava folds eroded away.

For me, one of the most interesting things about this path is the presence of the colorful strata, sometimes very obvious, sometimes less so, which accompanies you all the way. The strata is a result of the same volcanic event as the spectacular “spring of tiles”, La fuente de Los Azulejos, in Mogan, on the other side of La Aldea. In Los Azulejos per se the colors are more saturated and the layer structure is more visible, but it is still the same thing, just more thinly stretched.

Los Azulejos, for reference only

On the Postman’s path, what is mostly visible is the green-cyan part of the strata, although occasionally you see some outcrops of dark magenta or yellow. Closer to La Aldea we noticed quite a few cairns which make a play with the colors of the rocks, as if someone was collecting colorful stones along the route to make cairns of them. Generally, closer to La Aldea, there was quite a lot of creativity in the cairns, as if they had a competition of some sort there at some point.

This small pine tree is casting its shadow on light green colored rock

The hints of the colors of Los Azulejos can be seen in the rocks all the way along the route.

An example. Not quite as bright, but still.

Closer to the El Risco end of the walk, inside a narrow shallow ravine, grows a special tree, marked as “La Sabina” in the route below. It’s an old juniper of the Juniperus turbinata species. Apparently it was thought to be the Canary Islands’ own species, but genetic analysis shown otherwise. Undeterred, some patriotically minded people insist on adding subspecies qualifier “canariensis”.

While I recognize the tree’s landmark significance, I can’t say it is very impactful visually, because it sits at the bottom of a ravine and is surrounded by other large trees. The famous Sabina of El Hierro belongs to the same species, or the same subspecies, if you will, and that one is a lot more impressive. However, it is a nice shady spot to have a little break.

Another plant of note, at least for me, is the branched wormwood Artemisia ramosa. It grows in the La Aldea valley, when you’ve finished the steep part of the descent and are about to embark on the final trudge into La Aldea. This is the only place on Gran Canaria where I know it grows. Endemic to Gran Canaria and Tenerife, this wormwood has an unusual scent. The “normal” Canary wormwood, called “incienso”, i.e. incense, has a bittersweet scent; and the branched one has a distinct hint of lemon to it.

Artemisia ramosa, branched wormwood, incienso morisco

The route is approximately 16 km. It has more than a kilometer of accumulated ascent and descent, so it is definitely not an easy route. The nice thing about it though is that it first goes up and then down, without annoying undulating all the way along.

The Postman’s Path on wikiloc.

The route is easy to follow, if in doubt, look for cairns and signs. The cairns are in plenty, the signs more sparse, but there is no getting lost.

Better look at the old road between Agaete and La Aldea, weaving its way between the peaks.

* This might be about to change though. If the island’s council succeeds with their plan to create a national park which will include the Guigui and Inagua reserves, La Aldea will be the closest to the border of it.

** We were lucky, sort of, to go by bus from Agaete to La Aldea while the new road was still a distant prospect. It was bloody terrifying. On some bits of it you have an overhanging rock wall, covered in wire netting, on one side, and a vertical, in this case literally, drop to the ocean on the other.

Pictures of the Postman’s Route on Shutterstock — here.