Montaña de la Arena

We didn’t have much luck with the sun during this excursion. One of a few small pools of light on the landscape

Montaña de la Arena is a small dark mountain between Lajares and Villaverde/La Oliva. I passed it many times when doing a part of trans-Fuerteventura path GR 131. Once we tried to go up it with friends, but turned back when we discovered that the side of the mountain that we choose was one large scree. That was the side which looks at Lajares, northern face more of less.

When I saw the announcement of the excursion to the Montaña de la Arena on Facebook, I joined. I figured that maybe there is a good path up that I failed to spot myself.

Well, I was wrong. Where we went, there is no good path. There are bits when it looks sort of like one; but those are separated by stretches of pure picon, black volcanic gravel. You step up and slide down by the same amount, and you step up again, and you guessed the rest. It’s not an easy climb, and I don’t recommend to go where we went — southern face.

Montaña de Ecanfraga, take two

On Friday I had another go at Ecanfraga. This time I thought, “ok, I couldn’t go around it before, but I did go half way up. Now, I will try to go up”.

I almost succeeded, but only almost. My map doesn’t show the way up, so I have to choose how to go myself. The caldera of Ecanfraga has the usual horseshoe shape, maybe a little more angular than the others. I choose to go up by the side of the horseshoe that is closer to Villaverde. I came close, but the path disappeared completely about 30 meters from the top (that’s my estimate, and I am not very good at judging distances up). It was still possible to carry on up, the stones are solid and not slippery, but I was alone and chickened out somewhat.

Montaña de Ecanfraga

I was going to walk around Montaña de Ecanfraga, a big mountain close to Villaverde, ever since my excellent map arrived. Map shows two routes, one that goes around Montaña de Ecanfraga only, starting and finishing in a different bits of Villaverde, and a longer one, which makes a loop around Montaña de Caima too. My intention was to try the shorter one.

I was somewhat disappointed this time, because I couldn’t match the map to Googlemaps. Where the paper map shows a route, aerial photography shows nothing much. And there might be a good reason for that, because there was no clear visible path soon after I’ve turned off a dirt track into the malpais. Maybe the idea is that you can’t go very wrong there, with two mountains on either side of you for the orientation, and you can just pretty much go as you please, I don’t know. I intend to give it another try some day, but this time I decided to go up the mountain instead. Amazingly, there was a double tyre track going up. The distance between the tyres made me think quadbike, but I am not sure. The track went on an incline where no right-minded person will drive any vehicle at all in my opinion, either up or down. Walking is fine though, not too scree-ey, although on a steepish side of course. I found about a million different paths going up and down the mountain; I think most of them are made by goats, not by humans.

I include the route I took below.

Lajares to Villaverde

Our initial intention was to go from Lajares to La Oliva, but that is a litte bit longer and it was very hot today again, so we decided to opt for a slightly shorter route. I spent some time trying to match the very schematic route from here to the googlemaps. I sort of did, but was not completely sure that I would be able to identify it when in the countryside. I shouldn't have worried, the path is well sign-posted. Most of the route that we did is along trans-Fuerteventura footpath, relatively new collection of paths that cross the whole of Fuerteventura from Corralejo to the Point of Jandia. There are nine "Etapa"s, that is, the whole route is divided into nine stages, but one of them is on the Isla de Lobos, so there are eight of them on Fuerteventura proper. Corralejo-La Oliva is the second stage. There is approximately eight km from Lajares to Villaverde, and slightly more than nine to La Oliva