Echium callithyrsum, blue candles of Gran Canaria, second go

Tajinaste azul

Last year I found these beautiful blue flowers for the first time, but I set out to look for them a bit too late. This year I wanted to make sure I catch them at the peak of flowering.

So as soon as I spotted some photos of them on facebook, I started to plan my next visit. The biggest colony of them is (still) at Tenteniguada, so I went there. It was cloudy in Las Palmas but as the bus approached the village, the sun came out. It was playing hide-and-seek all the time I was there. It seemed that donkey's belly, the cloud cover of the north, ended just about above Valsequillo.

Cruz de Tejeda — La Ventana del Nublo

Here it is. At least one version of "it"*

While winter lasts and walking conditions are favorable I try to do at least one hike a week. During the last two I tried to find an interesting rock formation, called La Ventana del Nublo (The Window to the Cloud Rock). The first time I failed, because I didn't allow myself enough time and had to go back before reaching it. Second time I succeeded, so here is a small report.

A week in Valencia

Infinitely impressive, if somewhat underused, City of Arts and Sciences

For New Year holidays we went to Valencia. We've never been before, and the only thing I knew before taking the trip is that they grow a lot of oranges there.

This post is just to show a few pics from this beautiful town.

They do grow a lot of oranges. And not only oranges. But orange trees were everywhere - on the small strips separating the lines on the streets, in front of the cathedral, at the bottom of the former river, and of course in the shops. 3 kilos for 1 euro! I like these prices, I do. The choice of things that grow on land and live in the waters was amazing - and I am saying this after we lived on the Canaries for a few years. It might well be that the choice of other foodstuff is equally impressive, but I didn't pay that much attention.

We left it a bit too late (as usual) with booking the stay, so we ended up in a apartment that was about 25 minutes walking distance from the old town. It was perfectly adequate and of course it gave us an excellent excuse to make the kids do their essential bit of daily walking. We were lucky with the weather, too. It was warm, just a bit under 20. We were told by the landlord that only the tourists were happy about the unseasonable warmth. The farmers complained about not having enough rain, the nearby skiing resorts about not having enough snow. Well, there is no pleasing some people. On this occasion we were the easy ones to please.

Vamos a la playa, Oh — ohoh ohoh! Playa de Cofete, Oh — ohoh ohoh!

Cofete! Finally :)

This weekend, 23—24 January, we came to Fuerteventura yet again. We used an excellent Bintazo offer by Binter Canarias *. And we came with a very specific aim in mind — to get to Cofete, a difficult-to-access beach on the windward side of the island. I saw it a couple of times before, but never visited the beach. Kirill never even saw it from the ground level.
Getting there takes some research. The road is quite bad, as you will see later. Soon after you pass the port of Morro Jable, the surfaced road changes to a dirt track, very winding and bumpy. Normal cars can go on it, and will reach the beach eventually, but you are not supposed to drive rental cars on dirt tracks. No one will stop you, but if anything goes wrong, you will pay through the nose. You can walk, but that will be heavy going. I estimate the distance between the car park (where the dirt track starts) and the beach to be about 8 km. Plus you have to go by Cofete pass, which is at about 300 meters above the sea level, so each way will feature 300 meters of both up and down. And there is no shade. Biking is possible, but also strenuous and quite dangerous.
Now that you are sufficiently scared, let me give you a solution to this conundrum.

Cruz de Tejeda — Teror, the route of the Crosses

As I suspected, when you start walking down from Cruz de Tejeda, you can see Roque Nublo. You just need a clear day for that

A few weeks ago I did another nice walk with the Mojo Picon Aventura. We already did the Cruz de Tejeda - Teror route a couple of times on our own, but that time we were promised "The Route of the Crosses", something new to me.
What it means is that you start at one of the many crosses that are placed at various points on the island, mostly at mountaintops, and you pass at least three more on your way to Teror, the first cross being Cruz de Tejeda and the last one Cruz de Hoya Alta. Apart from Cruz de Tejeda with its macabre designs, the crosses seem to be markers for high grounds and are not particularly interesting in themselves.

Fuerteventuuuuraaaa

Although I wasn’t tough enough to stay on Fuerteventura for more than two years, it keeps calling me back.
I went there in the beginning of November, to photograph the Kite Festival, to visit some familiar places, and to meet old friends. Pure nostalgia, it was.

Don’t really know what to write, apart from some short comments for the photos. Enjoy!

Barranco de la Mina, Gran Canaria

For Tamara’s birthday, we went for a short walk from (more or less) Las Lagunetas to Cruz de Tejeda. We often heard that Barranco de la Mina is one of very few — maybe just three? — barrancos where there always is running water. The previous attempt to reach it had to be cancelled thanks to roadworks. The advantage of this route is that it’s almost pure ascent. So my knees did not complain this time.

Elephant tree

Pico de la Bandera — San Pedro

View into the Valle de Agaete from the trail. There is a whole chain of reservoirs down there, some at alarmingly different levels from each other

This was our first but hopefully not last experience with Mojo Picón Aventura, a small company dedicated to outdoor activities on our beautiful island. Apart from their regular weekday activities such as canyoning (barranquismo), coasteering and kayaking, they also organise walks on weekends. So the last Saturday of September we joined one. It was advertised as a medium-difficulty 9-km route "Pico de la Bandera — Berrazales" which was supposed to take about 6 hours. The price was 10 euro per person; considering that we would spend the same or more on public transport if we wanted to do the same route on our own, it looked like a great value for money.

We had to come by 8:30 am to Auditorio Alfredo Kraus, which appears to be a popular meeting place for weekend outings. There were at least two other groups assembling there at the same time.

Camping in Llanos de la Pez

Afternoon light is a lot more interesting than the morning one

Our little tent was bought and used only once some six years ago, on occasion of the Wells-next-the-Sea Carnival. Since then, it was gathering dust; we thought it was about a time to take it for a spin.

La Gomera, Degollada de Peraza — San Sebastián

We spent almost all summer in Gran Canaria. Which was nice, but, for a bit of change, we went to La Gomera for five days. We took the early flight on Sunday morning, and were relaxing for the rest of the day.

La Iglesia de la Asunción, San Sebastián de La Gomera

On Monday, we did essentially the same walk as Tamara and kids did in April. For Tuesday, we had more ambitious plan: to walk from Degollada de Peraza all way down to San Sebastián.

Cruz de Tejeda — Artenara, summer version

Up and away

I am sure I said it a few times already, but let me say it once again — Caldera de Tejeda on Gran Canaria is the most spectacular place I’ve ever been. Whatever the weather (and it is usually much better there than in Las Palmas anyway) it never fails to deliver. Some sort of magic at work for sure.

I already did this trail, back in March, but I did it in the opposite direction, starting from Artenara. This time I embarked on the walk from Cruz de Tejeda.

Cruz de Tejeda — Teror, summer version

Barranco de las Nieves, or maybe de las Laguentas, or maybe de la Mina. Go figure

My legs!!! Three days later, they're still hurting. That's the first and the last thing that comes to my mind when I think about this hike. But surely there has to be something else to remember, right?
Back in February, Tamara did this walk (and got lost) on her own. This time, I was helping. We still got lost, but in a slightly (?) different place. I know, I know, let me start from the beginning.

Circular walk from Caldera de Los Marteles to Mirador Pico de las Nieves and back

The main purpose of the walk was to see this

We went for an evening walk to Pico de las Nieves organised by Couchsurfing Gran Canaria. The plan was to start at Caldera de los Marteles, go up to Pico de las Nieves to enjoy the sunset and have some food/drink, and then go back to Caldera de los Marteles by different path. This is the first Couchsurfing event of this kind we've ever attended and it turned out to be great.

Gran Canaria, Barranco de Azuaje

A couple of weeks ago we went for a weekend break in Firgas, a small village inland from the north shore of Gran Canaria.

We were staying in a flat very close the center of the village (which is not hard considering the size of it).

It is a nice place, but be warned — precisely because it is close to the village center, Friday and Saturday nights are likely to be noisy, as people trample along the street outside your front windows to get to the bars and restaurants and then back again, talking as they tend to do (well they are Spanish, so they gotta). If it is just one or two of you, or even a family with one small kid you won’t have a problem though — the bedroom is towards the back of the flat. I had to use the sofa bed in the front room of the house, that’s why I could hear the street.

Tajinaste azul de Gran Canaria o de Tenteniguada, blue candles of Gran Canaria

This post is mostly a reminder to myself to repeat (and improve on) the experience next year. Read on if you are interested in flowers though.

Some while back, when the spring was only just starting, I noticed that some of the companies that advertize for guided tours were offering "Ruta de Tajinaste azul" (Route of Blue *Something*, where "something" was a word I'd never seen before.)

A little while later, I went for a walk around Teror and noticed some tall blue flowers on the slopes - not many, and a little bit too far off the path to go and investigate. I got interested and then connected those two things together - people going to look at something blue, and these tall blue flowers, very visible amongst the vegetation that tends to yellow.

Gran Canaria: Cruz de Tejeda - Degollada Becerra - Garanon - Preza de los Hornos - Roque Nublo

After the first successful attempt to get to The Landmark of Gran Canaria, Roque Nublo, I figured that there must be an easier way. After all, cars can get within one kilometer of it, and cars definitely can't handle the descents and ascents that I did.

La Gomera, Degollada de Peraza - Los Roques

We went to La Gomera for four days during this Easter Break (Semana Santa). (Now we've visited all the big Canary Islands except El Hierro).

Admittedly, four day are not enough to explore even La Gomera properly, but we had a  good go at it. Our kids are still not that keen on walking, so I had to plan only some very short and not too up-and-downy routes. Even so, a couple of times I had to leave them somewhere in the shade to wait for me and went ahead on my own.

Cruz de Tejeda - La Culata - Roque Nublo - La Culata walk

Little uneven-shaped Nublo asteroid, just for the heck of it :)

Roque Nublo is the most iconic sight of Gran Canaria (and don't tell me about the dunes, they are not a patch on the dunes on Fuerteventura). Since my favourite spot on the island is Cruz de Tejeda, I saw and photographed the Roque many a time, but I'd never been right next to the monolith until yesterday.

Artenara — Cruz de Tejeda walk

Artenara is one of the not-so-easily accessible villages on Gran Canaria. It is overlooking the Caldera de Tejeda, and is on a slightly higher level than Tejeda. There are even fewer buses, the one I caught was from Teror and I believe it is the only route — bus number 220.

We’d been through Artenara once before but it was literally that — going through with just a small pause at one of the miradores (I swear the village has more viewpoints per capita than anyplace else I’ve been before). My plan was to get there, to walk about the village, maybe have a lunch and head back.

Las Palmas carnival 2015

I was looking forward to my first carnival at Las Palmas and was not disappointed. While perhaps not as spectacular as the carnival of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the Las Palmas Carnival nicely combined both the show and street party, with audience participation levels very high. It is also very accessible - if you want to, you can see all the events for free, get a good view of all the participants - including the carnival queen and dames, or even ride on one of the floats in the main parade - there are places for hire, I didn't realize it before.