Monday 30 January 2023
The Orotava Valley is a huge, wide valley whose coastal end is filled with towns and villages, higher parts filled with farms, tiny lanes and fields, and highest parts filled with fuzzy green pine forests. The whole valley looks a bit like a huge scoop of the landscape of northern Tenerife just slumped down towards the north coast, leaving great ramparts of pine-clad cliffs on the north, east and west edges.
Driving up through the villages and farmland was evocative, something about the bare trees and blue sky made it feel like autumn in rural France. Then we were into pine forest and our hike for the day, a twisting trail at 1700m near the top of the eastern ramparts of the valley (called “Los Organos” as the cliffs from a distance look like organ pipes, if you squint a bit).
The walk was lovely, through pine forest and past cliffs and canyons with rosettes of jade green succulents plastered on the rocks, pretty much all to ourselves until near the end. At one high perched lookout (don’t look down!) we watched the clouds lift and drift and reveal the whole of El Teide in the distance, Tenerife’s 3.7km high central volcano. Pretty magical, as it seems to be wrapped in clouds most of the time. An hour or so later and we were also wrapped in clouds as they drifted in from all directions to fill the high Orotava Valley. Lower down the pines all had heavy beards of eerie pale green lichen, very evocative with wisps of mist swirling about.
This evening we finally had a proper dinner, at a restaurant around the corner. As a nice touch, their bread came with spreadable chorizo instead of oil or butter, and they set light to it so you had a magic lamp of blazing chorizo while it got warm enough to bring out extra flavour! Also useful because the restaurant was cold enough we had no desire to take our coats off for dinner.
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