Gran Canaria, Cuevas de Caballero, stone face and silver tansy

Panorama taken from the top of the Risco

We came to the place to check out if Tanacetum ptarmiciflorum, the silver lace plants, have started to bloom yet. They have not, but their silvery leaves are beautiful as ever.

The species is listed as endangered, and is endemic to Gran Canaria. The Red List points out five known location, mentioning that the earlier reported site at Cuevas de Caballero was not found during the 2009 survey. I am not sure if the location we came to see was the one they mispaced. Maybe, or maybe not, since one of the locations that are confirmed is vaguely described as "Tejeda" (village? municipality? o que?).

Tanacetum ptarmiciflorum, silver lace, silver feather. I myself like to call it silver tansy

Anyway, I guess I'd like to stress at this point that the plant is endangered and please don't pick up bunches or trample over them. They are joy to behold in any case. I do hope to catch the time of bloom, and then I'll add more pics.

And now for something completely different: the stone face :)

Caldera de Tejeda in April: Flowers

Erysimum albescens, "wallflower" endemic to Gran Canaria

It is extremely rare not to see at least something flowering in Las Cumbres, The Peaks of Gran Canaria. But I figure from two-year observation that the maximum of flowering falls onto beginning - mid April. This year I missed the moment, due to this and that, but when I finally got there there was still plenty of flowers for me to look at and photograph.

Once of Cruz de Tejeda, you don't have to go far to get to the place where on a small spot you will find everything on the photographs below - and more. I hesitate to enclose ALL the pics I took. Head towards Roque Nublo, (signposted Llanos de la Pez). About a kilometer away, you will see a house surrounded by a fence. There is usually a couple of big dogs there. One of them, the friendly while totally huge newfoundland dog, occasionally hangs out *outside* of the fence. Don't be alarmed, he is a gentle soul. The area around the house is relatively flat, rare thing in those parts. Poke around a little. There is a lot of yellow Teline broom and lilac crucifer Erysimum- complementary color combination, really striking. Less showy flowers and plants are found in plenty on the same spot.

I am always interested to find out the correct names of the plants (and not only plants), and I make my best effort identifying them. Sometimes I fail, of course. So if you know for sure what plants are called and spot a mistake, please yell me. 

Enjoy :)

Yarn Bombing, Calle Viera y Clavijo, Santa Cruz de Tenerife

We had quiet and uneventful Easter holidays on Tenerife. I didn't take a lot of pictures, except for some plants in the Botanical Garden and a whole street full of knitted trees in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. I am not sure who are the authors and how all that came about, but it looked cute. Have a look if you are interested.

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.

Cruz de Tejeda — Teror walk

So far Cruz de Tejeda is my favourite place to go on Gran Canaria. Somehow, even when the weather is terrible elsewhere, it changes by some miracle once I am on the pass, and there are views to die for in all directions. Only once did I catch the pass itself in clouds, but they were shifting and parting all the time, allowing the views down into the caldera, all the way to Teide on Tenerife and to the Gran Roques — Nublo and Bentayga.

Tejeda, Las Fiestas del Almendro en Flor – Almond Blossom Celebration

This Sunday me and the kids went to the Celebration of almond bloom in Tejeda. In the morning I was very much in two minds about going — the day started really gloomy in Las Palmas, with short but intense showers of rain. We procrastinated for a goodish while, but then figured that we could go to San Mateo, and re-think again there.

When we arrived to San Mateo the drizzle was constant and it was “freezing” by Canarian standards — one of the chemist shops was showing +11 on their clock, plus the roads to San Mateo were very busy because of the Sunday market so it took a long time to get there. Everything was looking grey and flat, with only outlines visible. I was all for going right back, but the kids, to my surprise, wanted to carry on — and I am very glad we did.

Cruz de Tejeda to Tejeda village

I want to describe a short, nice (and unexpected) walk that I took a few days ago.

It might be useful for somebody who, like me, usually relies on maps to find their way around.

This walk, although it has an official number (S-85), is not specified on my Kompass map. It could be because there are so many walks in the area, but still it’s a shame this one is missing. It is one of those walks that combines simplicity, shortness, spectacular views and even the public transport at both start and finish. Believe me, it is rare.

Caldera de Bandama in winter

Gran Canaria received its share of long rains in the end of autumn - not as much as Tenerife, but sufficient for the local flora to wake up. It is not the time of most flowers yet, but the mountains look green and you can see the occasional splash of color here and there. Some of the early bulbs managed to finish flowering and wilt "when I wasn't looking", as I discovered in a local botanic garden. So now I am trying to go and check out what happens with the plants as often as I can.

La Palma: Mirador El Time to Puerto de Tazacorte

During our short visit to La Palma, we didn't do much walking - partly because it really was short, partly because our kids are still not that keen on walking any distances at all, especially where going up is involved. And there is an awful lot of ups on La Palma - balanced by the eventual downs, but still. So, when we found ourselves on the top of the extremely steep cliff called El Time, and I saw a pointer to Puerto de Tazacorte, saying "3.2 km", I thought "yeaaah! finally, let's go, it's down and it's really close!".

Pico de Bandama and Caldera de Bandama

OK, time to resume some walk descriptions after a long break.

We haven't done a lot of walking here on Gran Canaria yet - partially because we arrived in summer, and the heat stayed considerable. Partially is due to the way the land lays here - the island is a lot steeper and more developed than Fuerteventura, so you can't easily see where exactly you are going and you are much more likely to encounter some sort of obstacle on your path. Those could range from a barbed wire fence and overzealous guard dogs, to quite unexpected (and, perversely, unfenced) drops.

Flamenco photoshoots with Anna Villacampa Gómez

At last, after almost a year of thinking about it, I am writing about two flamenco-themed photosessions that we had on Fuerteventura with Anna Villacampa Gómez, a beautiful lady and a great dancer. As usual, we procrastinated for an awfully long time before arranging the shoot — and the arrangement was finally made only because of our imminent departure.

One of the photoshoots was in the dunes of Corralejo, and the other in the malpais on the road to Tetir, by dead fig tree shaped by the prevailing winds. The second location was suggested by Anna, while we’ve been planning to do the dunes for two years. A piece of red gauze was bought to fly in the wind, Anna choose her own favourite dresses and off we went.

She proved to be a great model. Despite the heat on both days, she was happy to pose and move and dance. The minimalistic background of the dunes worked like a charm, and the dead tree, although making pictures a lot busier, always provided some parallels to the graceful movements of the dance. I enjoyed both days immensely, and so I hope did Anna.

Pictures in no particular order. Enjoy :)

Barranco de las Penitas

In line with our moving plans, there are almost no place left on Fuerteventura where I really wanted to go and didn’t get yet.*

Last week we went for a walk in Barranco de las Penitas — one of the greenest places on the whole island. It’s a sort of continuation of the valley where the old capital of Fuerteventura, Betancuria, sits. The barranco (ravine) runs towards the west coast of the island, joining eventually with El Barranco de la Madre del Agua, to form even bigger Barranco del Ajuy, which flows into the ocean by (you’ve guessed it) Ajuy.

Morro Jable — Gran Valle — Cofete Pass — Villa Winter

A view towards Villa Winter from Degollada de Cofete (Cofete Pass)

Cofete is one of the places on Fuerteventura where I always wanted to go and somehow didn’t manage to do so. Even now I can only put a half-tick in that particular box (which is a bit nonsensical, same as the one-palmed clap). But I came close this time.

I have now so many people and organizations from Fuerteventura listed as contacts in Facebook that it brings me all sorts of useful info. On the page on Cabildo (sort of like the island’s council) I saw an announcement of the excursion to Cofete organized within a program called “Fuerteventura al Golpito”. They arrange excursions more or less every two weeks, provide a guide (or two, as it was in our case), and a free bus which picks people at Puerto del Rosario and Gran Tarajal. You have to phone and put your name on the list, and then they send you a message a couple of days in advance, stating the meeting place and time, plus in this case a change of route.

The original route was estimated to be two hours longer than the one that we eventually did, and I am jolly glad of the change too. It was hard going as it was, we were back in Morro Jable in six hours instead of the estimated four, and we didn’t stop for very long anywhere. Even the stop at Villa Winter was rather brief.

The Villa Winter itself was rather disappointing, I must say. I don’t know what I expected really, but the place has this aura of mystery about it (hidden rooms! secret passages! a submarine can come up right to the basement! etc.) so I didn’t expect goats, rubbish in the inner courtyard and peeling walls. Maybe, if the owners allowed us into the basement, as they sometimes do apparently, I would be more impressed, but they didn’t, so I wasn’t.

The route was beautiful if somewhat hard. Shame that we didn’t have time to come down to the water level, but that would probably have delayed us a lot more, and the bus driver was apparently getting really impatient as he was counting on the shorter time.

El Barranco de los Enamorados — or so I think at least :)

Face of the barranco. Chess Pieces. Moai of Fuerteventura. Take your pick

I wanted to find this particular ravine, El Barranco de Los Enamorados (or de los Encantados), ever since I saw some amazing pictures of it in Facebook. It proved to be not that easy — my excellent KOMPASS map doesn’t have this name, and all the local maps I saw so far don’t have even the most basic stuff, let alone barrancos. I wanted to join one of the excursions that are organized by local walking groups — that didn’t happen somehow. I asked for the directions and got contradictory answers (it’s close to Lajares — no, actually, to La Oliva — no, it’s very close to the Playa de Esquinzo — it’s to the left — no, to the right — actually, just carry on straight...). I asked to point it out on a map; even that was a bit vague. So. I am inclined to think people talk about somewhat different places, but all of those places share one thing — amazing smooth water patterns on the sandstone.

Choosing the directions that pleased me by their simplicity (“just take the unused branch of Lajares roundabout and carry on straight, you can’t miss it”) I went there with a friend. We followed a huge barranco that starts close to Lajares roundabout; when we came to the place where it separated into three branches we started to walk the middle one. We soon met a small group of people, all looking local, and asked them for directions, just to make sure. The main guy took the words out of my mouth — “El Barranco de los Enamorados? No, you took a wrong turn, we are going that way, follow us and then I show you were to go”. (So much for “it’s straight, you can’t miss it”). We followed them to where they parked their 4x4; he told us that “from here it’s probably one more kilometer that way”. Off we went. Problem is, barrancos tend to branch off. That day we took a “wrong” branch — it was nice and had some interesting sandstone structures which were probably petrified plants — but we haven’t found what we were looking for.
So, we went again. This time we found all the stuff you can see on the pictures. I am still not that sure that we found “the” barranco, but I will give the route we followed, and point out at least one alternative I found. I can tell you without false modesty that my pictures are a lot better than what I saw before, but can’t tell if that is because we found a better place or it’s just because I haven’t seen other pictures that do the place justice.

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.

Pico de Zarza

While Europe is getting an unhealthy share of snow and cold, it’s getting hot and summery here on Fuerteventura. So I figured it’s time to do this walk before it becomes impossible, or at least very, very uncomfortable.

Pico de Zarza is the highest point of Fuerteventura, just over 800 meters high (just now I found a figure of 807, but it seems to me that I saw some other heights somewhere). When the sky is clear you can see all of Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria and Teide on Tenerife from there. The sky wasn’t that clear when we went, so we didn’t see the other islands. Still, the views are spectacular and the walk well worth doing.

Above is the view along the wild Cofete beach (btw, the only remaining point of the island that I really want to visit and haven’t visited yet).

From La Pared to Sotavento de Jandia

The urge to climb and then jump off the sharp rock is irresistible to some

Last Saturday we went for a long walk with my former Spanish class. The walk started around La Pared village on the west coast of Fuerteventura, ran along the shore for the goodish while, and then started to traverse the island. It ended up at main road FV-1, at the level of southern end of Playa de Sotavento de Jandia.

I liked the walk a lot, the coastal path is absolutely spectacular, but there are a few somewhat difficult points about it that I’d like to record.

First, logistically it’s not easy to organize on your own. It’s not circular, and if you want to go by car, you will have to go through a palaver of arranging at least one at the end of the walk, then ferrying people between the end and the start. We had it easy, as the center provided the bus that brought us to the start and picked us up at the end. I am not sure if the walk is doable by just public transport, but inclined to think that it isn’t.

Second point — most of the route runs along the sandstone ledge not much above the high water level, and under a tall wall of sandstone. There is no or very little mobile reception; so not a great idea to try the walk on your own even if you managed to somehow arrange the transport. Apart from our large group, we met very few people along the path.

Third point, linked to the previous — sandstone ledge runs out occasionally, or becomes quite steep. Nothing too bad, but — watch out and have somebody else watching out for you.

Apart from that, nothing much I can add. Enjoy the views :)

Gardens, gardens everywhere

Anybody who knows anything at all about me knows that I like flowers. And in Puerto de La Cruz there are at least two big gardens. So I went to both this time :)

One is "Jardín Sitio Litre", which is confusingly marked as "Orchid garden" in the little tourist map, private property attached to a largish house where the current owners live. The current name is the result of somewhat japanese-sounding transformation of the original "el Sitio Little", "Little's Place", after Archibald Little, the first owner of the estate. It's not big, well established, nicely laid out, with some space dedicated, yes, to orchids, a koi carp pond, fountain, small cafe etc.

Another one is the "real" botanical garden, know as Jardín de Aclimatación de la Orotava, Jardín Botánico or El Botánico. It's larger, but still nowhere as large as Cambridge botanical garden for instance, let alone Kew. Acclimatization bit in the name is there because it was used to acclimatize plants brought from different parts of the world.

Well. I liked the second one more. It's bigger, collection is more impressive, the entrance is just 2 euro for Canarian resident (dat's me) against 4.75 for the Orchid Garden. Plus, to be honest, I was lured to the Orchid garden by the name, hoping to see a lot of beautiful, well, orchids. I don't know if it is the season or what, but you will see more orchids in Scotsdales garden center. Maybe the garden holds more variety - I don't remember seeing Lady slipper orchids in Scotsdales, for instance. Maybe. Still, I was somewhat disappointed

Now, I wrote this sorry excuse for a text just to be able to post some flower pictures. So here they are :)

Santa Cruz de Tenerife Carnival Parade 2013

I've heard many times that the carnival in Santa Cruz de Tenerife is something worth watching. "Second biggest in the world", "immediately after one ends, everybody starts preparing for the next one", "amount of feathers and sequins like you won't believe", etc, etc...
Last year we were quite content with much more humble offering of Corralejo and Puerto del Rosario, but this year I figured I should go have a look at Tenerife.
Now, I am not an expert on carnivals. Carnivals that I saw in the UK are basically few days affairs, sometimes just one-day affair, when you have a procession and that's pretty much it. Here it is not the case - various events leading up to the main parade start a few weeks in advance. But I couldn't of course drop everything and go for a few weeks, so I restricted myself to just four days. That allowed me to see the two biggest parades on the island - one in Santa Cruz on the day of arrival, one in Puerto de la Cruz on the day of departure, with the Burial of the Sardine and drag "put your heels on" parade in Puerto fitted in between.

Tindaya

I was looking in the direction of Tindaya for quite some time, figuring out how to get there without a car. It’s possible, but tricky, as there are just three buses per day that go past the village. You can start from further, at La Oliva, but that involves walking some nine kilometers to the mountain before going up, and that somehow didn’t seem so very attractive.
Apart from that, there was always a nagging question that nobody could quite answer — do you need a permission to ascend Tindaya, it being a protected area, sacred mountain and all that.
So I was really happy when I got a call from my former Spanish teacher saying that there will be a group excursion for Tindya, that we have enough cars and that he sorted out the group permission with ayuntamiento (district council) *.

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.

Ajuy to Arco del Jurado

Last week my friend was staying with us. He is a lot less nervous driver than I and together we managed to visit some places on Fuerteventura where I’ve never been before (and probably won’t go again, considering how steep and narrow some roads are).

This road that leads to this walk, I am happy to say, is not one of those. I did drive to Ajuy myself before, and it’s not too bad at all. But I was not even aware that there is this stone arch just a short walk away from the village.

Fortunately, recently I bought a large-scale map of Fuerteventura by Kompass. It has a lot more information on walks that I was ever able to find before. So when we made a vague plan to go “somewhere there, maybe Ajuy”, I had a look at the surrounding area and found “Naturdenkmal Arco del Jurado” (yes, the map is mostly in German). Quick search on Google produced some images that looked good, so off we went.

The walk is very easy, no ups and downs of any significance. If you find yourself climbing up or down, stop and look for alternative route, there surely will be one.

El Cotillo and sunset fishing

Today, me and Yuri went to El Cotillo in the evening to catch a sunset. Corralejo looks to the east, and I am not an early riser normally, so there is a very little chance of catching either in the two “sun just above the horizon” moments. El Cotillo is perfect for sunsets.

The bus driver who took us there looked at the tripod and repeated several times that the last bus back is at eight, at eight, get it? Am I got? I found it rather sweet that he was so anxious for us not to miss the last bus. Somewhat intrusive perhaps, but that’s all cultural, your business is everybody’s business it seems.

dunes by day and by night

Yet another report from the dunes.
The cracked and apparently dry surface above is the bottom of a former large pool of rainwater, sort of temporary pond. We saw it containing some water just a few days ago; and it was a surprise to me to find all the water gone when we went that way on Saturday.
However, when I went down there, I found that the water didn't go very far yet, there was a layer of very slippery mud just under the surface, maybe two centimeters deep of so. Judging by the marks, I was not the first person to slip there; fortunately, I didn't fall, but my (almost) new walking shoes had to get their first wash afterwards.

Lajares to La Oliva

Essentially the same route as here, but this time I did the slightly longer version that ends up in La Oliva, following the trans-Fuerteventura footpath GR-131 in its Etapa 2 exactly. It was cooler today and I was alone (no complaining kids in tow), so it worked out nicely.

Another significant difference with the earlier walk was that now there is so much more green. It makes me happy to look at the green patches and the flowers. The flowers above and below are Chrysanthemum coronarium, garland chrysanthemum, and now there are groups of them here and there. I had to go down on my knees to shift the perspective and make this patch look bigger, but I do hope that eventually we will have more and I won’t need to do that. I might do it still, but it woud be nice not to have to.

You can see Montaña Colorada in the background of both of those pictures.

Flowers finally :)

I was waiting and checking, waiting and checking, and the flowers finally appeared. It’s not what you may call a field of flowers, but you can see patches of those small white ones on the edge of the dunes, in that place I went to check on the greenery last time.

Of course, I didn’t know what they were. And once again, I was impressed by the power of Facebook. I sent a message here and received my answer the same day. I don’t know who maintains this FB page (author of the book, maybe), but whoever it is, thank you once again.

It’s Androcymbium psammophilum, a “vulnerable species” due to restricted habitat, only found on Fuerteventura and Lanzarote. The number of plants that appear each year differs greatly and depends on the amount of rainfall. I feel absurdly proud that I spotted them :)

References
http://www.floradecanarias.com/androcymbium_psammophilum.html
http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/162355/0

Green is appearing

Today I decided to go and check out the dunes after the big rain of last week.

Now, the authorities (and I can’t even tell which ones, to be honest) in their eternal wisdom closed the dunes for pedestrian access about a month ago. That is, they erected, for want of a better word, some signs all around the edge of the natural park, about fifty meters apart from each other. Signs say that there is no access the the dunes. The same signs also say that you can’t light fires there and can’t pick up flowers or bother the wildlife. Last two bans seem a bit excessive, because if you obey the first one you won’t be able to do either of the followings two, but there you go. I guess to simply say “no access” appears too harsh or unfair or something.

There are two signs that are different from the others. They say that you can, in fact, enter the dunes (presumably in those two places), but you have to stay on the path. Problem is, there is no single definite path, at least no marked one, so once you are in, you can move with a crazy randomness of a happy butterfly.

You can probably tell that I don’t like those signs and the ban itself, can’t you?

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