The first alarm goes off at 8:00. The second one goes off at 9:00. We get up and drag ourselves to the restaurant. Breakfast! Chocolate Müsli for Claudia (yuck!), instant coffee by Nestlé ¹, Toast instead of bread, but two different kinds of big lizards on the stone wall behind our table. We love lizards! Big brown ones, even bigger black ones. One of them even jumped from the wall onto an empty chair. We love big black jumping lizards! 😄
Town centre of Arafo We have the cheapest category of rental car, and therefore no automatic transmission. Claudia is driving. I don’t like to drive, and haven’t driven a car in years. At least she drives once in a while with her parent’s car. In order to get used to manual transmission I paid her a lesson with a driving teacher in Zürich before we left. No problems!
But in a new town, with small streets, tight corners, where you don’t know the way, and where the car is not a dazzling turbo something, things get a bit harder. And so we are confused, get lost, double-turn, miss the right exists, grow frustrated, look for shortcuts uphill until the damn road either ends or is so steep that we don’t dare continue. And by then the road is narrow. So narrow in fact that doing the U-turn is a pain.
This is how we spend our first few hours in Güimar and Arafo.
We also stop in Arafo, looking for the famous bakery suggested by our travel guide. It turns out that it is a very small totally normal looking bakery. Maybe it is special because most villages here don’t have one? We don’t like the look of the food and decide to buy something familiar looking. We call ’em *Prussiens* but they call ’em Palmeritas. Our new favorite snack!
We see lots of old men on the city square. Everything is calm. The weather is hot. The big old trees cast a welcome shade. We sit. We sip some water and eat *Palmeritas*. Time passes.
When we got up we had decided to go hiking in the national park of Teneriffe. Like on most islands, the centre of the island is a national park. This is where the forest is, if there is one at all.
Supermarket in Arafo In a local supermarket we buy some more water. And then we start driving uphill... ²
When we finally reached the ridge separating east from west, cloudy from sunny, cold from wet, we paused and looked around.
Weeds adapted to the dry ground
The winding road goes forever on...
The eastern side is dry and rocky
Another vulcano crater in the distance
Looking down the western side: Clouds! Notice El Teide in the distance.
We wanted to hike in the Orotava valley, but when we saw the clouds down on the western side, we decided to stay around the mountain, the Teide. We did a three hour hike starting from El Portillo: Arenas negras.
The first part had a trail through lots of bushes overgrowing it from time to time. It was always the same bush. Sometimes we saw big spiders in their nets. It was always the same spider. Black and yellow legs. Some red markings. We also saw lots of caterpillars. It was always the same caterpillar, feeding on always the same bush. I bet the spider its the butterfly.
It was weird. One bush. One spider. One caterpillar.
The caterpillar was nice. Green, hairy, red and yellow dots. No pictures, unfortunately.
Finding our way was often frustrating. Trying to evade the cobwebs, trying to avoid ticks, trying to find the trail again.
The trail started with a sign saying “Beware the bee hives!”
That was weird, too.
We reached the plateau: El Portillo
At first, a flat plain, with round bushes.
Erosion exposing the layers and layers of lava, ashes, and dirt.
he descent over the black lava slope: Arenas Negras.
Back in Güimar we went looking for some Tortilla. Basic food, but eatable. But we found no bar that we liked, and no bank that was open. And the ATM will cost us CHF 5 for every transaction. We bought a lot of food in another supermarket instead.
Later that evening we jumped in the pool back at the hotel. The sun was gone and it was cold. But after the long hike, we needed it.
#Canary #Islands
