Roque Nublo, new rules of access

Rare occasion of water puddles on a little plateau on which The Rock stands

It was more than ten years ago when I first walked up to the iconic Roque Nublo, an imposing monolith overlooking Caldera de Tejeda in a most regal way. I wrote it up then, but it’s definitely time for un update.

What changed? As far as the geology is concerned, nothing, Roque Nublo is still very much there and shows no signs of deterioration. On the other hand, I am reasonably sure the deep crack in El Fraile, The Monk, grew deeper and wider over these years, so maybe he will fall apart pretty soon. In geological terms, of course.

El Fraile on far left. Under this angle it’s not that obvious, but when you look at him from Cruz de Tejeda, for example, you can clearly see a monk going up towards the Roque, long hooded robe and all

The access rules changed somewhat. It was obvious that the little plateau around Roque Nublo was pretty much always overcrowded. The island council decided to regulate it somehow. I was rather worried they’ll add a wall all around it or something, but, fortunately, the regulations per se are minimal.

So, what are the changes. The official parking at La Goleta, which is just a kilometer and a half away from Roque Nublo, is gone. There are two new bus stops, of which later. When you come to the start of the walk, there is a little wooden hut, and during the daytime hours, at the beginning of the path itself you will be met by somebody asking for a permit. You can’t drive almost up to the Roque, and then have yourself a little stroll up, as people used to do.

I have a few thousand pictured showing Roque Nublo, let’s see some of them

The permits are free, but the number of them are limited. At the moment you get them from here — https://reservasroquenublo.com/reservar

As far as I can see, there are 50 permissions issued per each hour, and the hours when you need them are from ten in the morning to five in the afternoon. If you get there before or after those hours, you can go right up.

A view from the top of the island, Pico de Las Nieves, on one of the rare occasions when there is snow on Teide

Some hours are more popular than the others, so occasionally there will be nothing available. If this happens I suggest you still get the permit for the slot nearest to the desired one and then try to negotiate with the guy or gal who checks them. They might let you pass, it’ll depend on the number of people already there. When I got a permit for our little group, I miscalculated the time it takes to walk to the checkpoint and we turned up quite a bit earlier. The guy clicked his tongue disapprovingly, said: “We are in Spain, you are not supposed to turn up earlier. Later, yes, but earlier? Tsk, tsk”, and let us in.

The view from Roque Nublo towards La Aldea de San Nicolas and Teide on Tenerife

Now, how to get to the start of the walk. The local interurban bus company Global added a circular bus service that starts from Tejeda and goes both ways, clockwise and counterclockwise, passing by the start of the walk. Unfortunately, they did something rather odd with the shedule. Instead of creating a brand new line, they decided to join those routes to the schedule of bus number 18, which connected, very infrequently, Maspalomas with Tejeda. Now you have several bus routes running under the same number, making the schedule extremely confusing. If you wish, you can try to solve thise little puzzle here, but somebody had mercy and put the summary of buses running past Roque Nublo on the same page where you apply for the permits https://reservasroquenublo.com/assets/docs/guaguas.pdf

Beautiful cloudfall, isn’t it. As seen from one of the longer paths

And finally, do you really need a permit? Yes and no. There is just one checkpoint, and if you intend to go follow S-70 trail in daytime, you do need one. If you go out of hours, no. If you take a different approach, and come from the south, starting at Chimirique cliff, you won’t need one. Same from Cruz de Timagada. In seems that the whole point of permits was to restrict the flow of lazy car tourism. Not everybody is ready for a good several kilometers hike, but even unfit people in flip flops can do 3 kilometers at their own pace.

Surprisingly, lax though they are, the new rules seem to have had the desired effect. People on holidays tend to be easily discouraged by necessity to plan ahead, work out schedules, apply for permits etc. So, that fraction of the visitors dissapeared. Then there are people who are prepared to plan ahead etc, but, faced with unavailability of the permits, will give up, because they either don’t know of or are physically unable to do the longer hikes. So, these fell off too. When we were there, the area was decidedly emptier than in the pre-permit era.

So, overall it worked out rather well.