orchid garden and hillclimb

 

Two very different days, back to back. First up a visit to the Jardin Sitio Litre, the orchid garden at that address. Just round the corner from Apartmentos Casablanca, I had been looking forward to another look. Last time I enjoyed an early lunchtime beer and then giddily photographed exotic dragonflies dancing over a goldfish pond. I remembered it as old school quirky rather than a slick marketing exercise. The weather seemed a little dull for other activities so perhaps it was time for a call there. First some things on the way.

Speckled wood

This was the only shot I got of an unhelpful Clouded Yellow!

I didn’t know there were any on the island till then.

Collared dove

Ring necked parakeets

So Agatha Christie visited (Puerto de la Cruz and Sitro Litre) in 1927. This is quite a hard thing to celebrate in terms of tourist attraction. However the orchid gardeners had gone to some lengths with shop mannequins and a stagey corner of the garden to reproduce a snapshot of her meeting the enigmatic Mr Quin. There was lots of painted tiles, vintage crockery and nick-nacks around the place celebrating artists and just for decoration. There was little rhyme or reason but a lot of fun and colourful style. Also caged birds, and if you looked quite hard an area was given over to orchids. This area was deliberately shaded which implies they don’t do well in direct sunlight. Makes them tricky to photograph though.

Lots of birds flitting about through the leaves

or on tiles

Painting by Marianne North 

celebrated Victorian biologist and botanical painter

Lovebirds

Orchids

nick-nacks

There were no dragonflies and few butterflies this time; the sun wasn’t out quite enough. And too many people in the cafe to stop for a beer. But an interesting place that has a quirky eccentric feel and links with the local past that not many places in town have. Well worth a visit (closed Mondays) - choose a sunny day. (Good value for money: €5 or less)

Camino a candelaria

Apparently the locals climb this route once a year on 14th Aug. The Rother Guide says The beauty of the upper Orotava valley is revealed in all its splendour: through the vast pine forests above Aguamansa and across volcanic slopes shimmering in every shade of red. Oh well we best go see.

We caught a Titsa to Aguamansa and set off up the hill. The night before (while making sandwiches!) we had logged onto the Rother website and using the username and password in the guide book, got the gpx files of all the walking routes. Then, plugging my suunto into Mary’s laptop (it only does usb port not bluetooth or wifi)(so no iPad connection possible) and downloading the app, and remembering passwords, actually successfully shunted the gpx file into the suunto’s memory. And it worked! 100% did not expect that all to pan out with relative ease. 

Next day on the trail I put my watch to sat-nav mode and it showed us which way to go every time we came to a junction or fork. This made route finding easy and a joy, and took away any worry that we might be going the wrong way and heading into instant jaggy death canyon. 

There was about 90mins of this - 

Steady climb up through monotonous trees, mostly in shade

A distant view of the summit we were heading for

Hoofprint of the wolfman of Tenerife

On and on, up and up

A robin - my spirit guide!

It pooped on Mary’s sleeve.

Teide in the distance

Above photo shows the upper Orotava Valley. Unfortunately we got a couple of days of calima - a very fine orange dust which blows in from the Sahara and makes everything a bit hazy and less warm. In that panarama you would normally be able to see right down to Puerto de la Cruz and the coast however mostly it is covered by the haze.

At last - out of the interminable forest

About 6,000’ we got above the treeline and crossed the volcanic slopes shimmering in every shade of red. Well maybe 3 shades of red. Maybe they shimmer more in August. Mary had been doing pretty well up to now - had been marching up hill at a bold pace, but now she felt a little light-headed and like sitting down for a bit. 

I was keen to tick off the summit which was about 15mins away and seemed a shame not to top out since we had spent about 2hrs stomping up through trees to get this far. Mary felt a bit unwell and couldn’t even look to the ridge above where, bizarrely there seemed to be cars whizzing along. It was only afterwards that I realised we were probably experiencing a combination of the exertion, and mild altitude sickness. I felt a bit woolly headed but I also felt I was defo going to get to the top of this so-and-so hill. Mary said she was happy to sit at the big rock and wait till I returned. We had had stuff to eat and drink to see if that would sort it, but Mary was happier to just sit and wait. I ran up up the rest of the trail like a mountain goat.

Okay maybe like a fat, slow mountain goat that is feeling a little light headed and doesn’t want to fall on his camera. About 6,500’ there were snowy tracks but not proper deep snow. The weather was very strange; and similar to what we had experienced in Nepal at altitude: the sun was very warm but the air was cool, nearly frosty, and if you were in the shade it was cold. We had experienced this on the previous excursion up the hill and so I carried a larger back pack with our duvet jackets, and hats and gloves, which we didn’t need. But we wore jumpers all day.

Teide in the background, Mary in the foreground

Snowy tracks at 6,500’

So there WAS a road at very nearly the top of the hill. Carved into the volcanic desert and following the spine of the island over towards Teide. I passed folk who had stopped their cars at the layby and were taking selfies with Teide in the background. Which was a bit odd at 6,600’ having seen only 4 or 5 people all day hiking up the hill.

I was slightly disappointed by the lack of a mirador or viewpoint at the actual summit. It was sort of surrounded by pine trees and I couldn’t take a magnificent panorama of the desert road Teide the Orotava Valley and the bit I’d just climbed. All that was available was some views of Teide through the trees. I jogged back down to Mary and we set off down the hill. 

While there was stuff worth pointing the camera at it was not as wildlife busy as I’d hoped. There are supposed to be blue chaffinches or similar and I hoped once we got to the tree line there would be loads flying around, since we knew there were none further down the hill. In summary, I’m quite glad I don’t have to climb this hill every August. But it was fun doing it once. Also it ticked the box I’d wondered about ever since we stayed below this hill 2 years ago and watched the sun coming up behind it every morning at 9am. I wonder what’s up there? - Well now I know! And although every shade of red shimmering in the light it isn’t, it was worth an afternoon to pop up and see.

We had done the walk back to our hotel from La Caldera bus stop last time we went hillwalking. However the steepness of the route, plus wear and tear on Mary’s knee was maybe a bad idea. So we walked a bit and then when the pavement ran out we looked up bus times on Mary’s phone. Unfortunately as this was ongoing a bus flew by, too quick to hail. We walked a bit further and then eventually caught a bus. It was not a glorious end to an otherwsie fine day. But the beer and wine that evening with homecooked dinner tasted even finer than usual. The end.