Hiking in the clouds

Breakfast of champions

So, Matt had an OK night's sleep but woke up feeling a bit rubbish.  I offered him a day off but he insisted on having a day out with us.  Today's plan was to do some hiking as Tenerife is well known for good walking trails, and I was getting a bit stir crazy being in a town for so long - it is official, I am a country bumpkin!

We had a leisurely breakfast and then headed to the bus station (a good long walk) to get the 345 to Aguamansa from where we picked up a trail to La Caldera a leisure area from which there were loads of trails in the mountains.  Considering Tenerife is well known for good trails, it was very very difficult to get any information on them, and even when we were on the bus we weren't really sure where to get off etc.  The bus was full of Germans and they were similarly confused.

The bus trip took about an hour to get up to the trails - it was probably only 10 miles, but very very steep and full of hairpin bends with coaches coming in the opposite direction.  Poor Matt was looking quite queasy by the time we got off.

Bearded trees

Anyway we got off once we saw an official walking sign and ended up walking an extra 1km to the start of all the trials - never mind it was a nice walk through the forest uphill along a carpet of pine needles.  Now in the literature we had been given we were told there was a restaurant to get food and beer, when we got there the restaurant was firmly closed.  Just as well we went to HiperDino in Puerto de la Cruz to buy some sandwiches 'just in case' before getting the bus, otherwise we would have got quite hungry.




After eating lunch in a picnic spot, we looked on a trail map and found a walk that was 2.9 km each way and decided on that, unfortunately there were no circuits.  Anyway the walk was nice enough, we were surrounded by thin pine trees, which had beards growing on them.  Not sure what the 'beards' were: leaves / roots, but they looked quite strange.  We were up in the clouds and every now and again, clouds would 'pour' in over us and obscure our views.  The terrain was very steep, although the path relatively flat, the rock shot straight up vertically from the path - it would have been nice to see how high it went, but the clouds were too low, in fact we didn't manage a good view point at all during the day, but we certainly enjoyed being in the hills.

On the trail

We returned to La Caldera and the bus stop around 3pm and got the next bus back to Puerto de la Cruz, it only took 39 minutes on the way down - shows how steep the roads were!  We got off by the pizza restaurant we went to yesterday and found ourselves a nice German cafe to stop at for tea and a bun.  We decided on a particularly lovely looking apple strudel as our 'bun' - it was delicious, Tom has added it to his list of favourites.

Tom with his volcanic rock

We got back to the hotel, Matt was straight back in the bath to ease his aching bones.  We had a quiet early evening and then headed into town for a short walk before heading into the buffet.  Rabbit stew and Valencia paella were the highlight for me today.  Then to reception so Matt could have his tea, and back to the hotel room for bed.  Matt was fading fast, faster than Tom!

Tomorrow, Tom and I are leaving Matt behind at the hotel and heading to the south of the island to experience one of the water parks...