21-12-18

Time to leave the north coast of Tenerife, so I check out from my quiet little room at Hotel Rural Orotava.

From the bus on the ride back up to where I left the trail yesterday, I can just see a glimpse of the neighbouring island – La Palma. No volcanic activity visible from this far; but I’m sure the population there is still suffering from the consequences.

Since this time I won’t make it to visit it, or the other two small islands out west (La Gomera and El Hierro), I hope I can come back sometime and continue my hike when the volcanic activity has stopped.

Then I start my hike, from El Portillo.

El Teide is already well visible – I’m basically walking around it today, and think I’ve taken a hundred pictures of it during the day 😉

It’s a nice (to boringly wide), flatish gravel road – which in a way is good, because I don’t need my eyes on the ground constantly, but can take in the stunning surroundings as I walk.

On my right hand side, sand flats (cañadas) alternate with moon landscape-like heaps of rocks…

…and on my left I follow the lower edge of the cliffs of this huge caldera (I have now learned from wikipedia that a caldera is, where the magma chamber has collapsed in on itself after emptying through a volcanic eruption, leaving a depression).

After a lunchbreak in the sun, I continue: there are just so many nice rock formations, in all different colours, with and without holes/caves, etc. – difficult to chose pictures (and they don’t do the landcape justice, I’m afraid).

And continuously, the view of El Teide, just changing slightly in angle and sunlight.

I take it slow today, taking lots of breaks, just enjoying the views and the sun, and not because of the heavy backpack 😉

Then towards the end it get’s even more dramatic – gorously eroded rock, and just perfect sunlight to make them shine. There is also several rock climbers, enjoying them more hands-on.

Then I arrive at the mountain hotel Parador de las Cañadas del Teide, which is the end point of today’s hike.

There is also a relatively ugly chapel in the middle of the even uglier huge car-park; but at least El Teide is still looking good in the evening light…

…and a well deserved cold cerveza 😀

About 17km high-altitude (flat-ish, but constantly above 2000m asl) hiking today.

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