Walks: Anaga, Cruz Del Carmen to Punta Del Hidalgo

Walk: Cruz Del Carmen to Punta Del Hidalgo
Total distance: 10.84km (11km)
Terrain: mountains, steep rocky paths, muddy paths

Here’s a short audio clip

https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1715180608/size=large/bgcol=333333/linkcol=0f91ff/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=1467453428/transparent=true/

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tracked using open gps tracker, an excellent tool.
I have been meaning to finish this stretch of the mountain trails for some time and did it the other day, the bus goes from La Laguna to Cruz Del Carmen and there are a variety of trails to go on from there but this is the one I wanted to do, I completed a different section of it a couple of months ago down to Los Batanes.

It started off in muddy and foggy cool temperate conditions at Cruz del Carmen and it is beautiful in the mountains when it’s like this, slippery as all get out though so inevitably you will end up.. I ended up going over a couple of times, all art of the deal and who cares.

It’s a fairly easy and pleasant stroll ( bar the mud) for a couple of miles then the trail puts you on a very sheer rocky downward path and some degree of clambering and hanging on must occur but there’s a little waterfall and a bit of a creek there and of course it is beautiful, still muddy and foggy at this stage.

It gets pretty interesting geologically and there are some crumbly red rocks, well, more like a substrata and it’s something I think the Guanches used in their ceramics for colour and for painting in general, I collected a tiny amount to experiment with.

The lovely red clay, I only collected a small amount that was already lying on the ground having fallen, tiny bit.

The first stretch takes you to Chinamada, there are houses there that are built into the rock caves but the facades resemble regular houses now.

 

After Chinamada the path gets a bit more treacherous and tricky, steeper also I think, maybe it just feels like it but you can see the incline from the screengrab above.

a mild mannered stretch of path

It’s fantastic to walk and see the caves all start to appear and look at how the volcano formed these mountains,, all in all it’s a magnificent walk and I walked with a German couple a little way and had lunch with them at the Resturante de cueva in Chinamada, there were a few other people on the trail but mostly I had it to myself and being in the mountains alone is a thing of beauty. Well, I say alone.. there are goats and chooks and stuff but you know. By the end my knees were feeling pretty rough due to the loose rocks, twists and turns and general downhillness of it all but it’s so incredible I will do it again.

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