Walks in West and North of Tenerife

I’ve been over and back to Tenerife for the last 10 years and I’ve never ventured far from the usual haunts. Last month I walked up through the ‘middle’ of the island and I went back last week to do some walking in the North and West of the island.    

It blew me away. The walks were well marked, the weather was great, the public transport was very good and the scenery was fantastic.

Tuesday

Garachico to San José de Los Llanos to Erjos - This was an early start for me as I had to get 3 buses to reach Garachico. You’re climbing for 3/4 hours and there was a bit of frost on the ground near La Montañeta. I missed a marker near Arenas Negras and was a bit lost for 10 minutes but I traced my way back to the previous marker. The book walk was to San José de Los Llanos but I decided to walk to extra 4kms to Erjos as the Icod/Adeje bus passes through it.

21kms
Start 08:08 Finish 13:26
1,400m Ascending
400m Descending

Garachico

Arenas Negras

                                                     
Wednesday

Santiago del Teide to Erjos (via Montana del Estrecho) to Masca - Got the same bus from Adeje to Santiago as previous day and the first part of the walk is in a horseshoe out near Chinyero. Much of the walk from Erjos towards Las Portelas is on a forest track but when it opens up, boy!! is it worth it. Final destination was Masca, which *is* as beautiful as they say.  

30kms
Start 08:37 Finish 14:35
975m Ascending
1,165m Descending 

Erjos

On Route to Masca

Thursday

Punta del Hidalgo (via El Batán) to Cruz del Carmen (via Chinamada) to Punta del Hidalgo - In the walk book I had, both of these walks started in Cruz del Carmen (highest point). Finding the start was tricky from the bus, and I was fortunate to see the marker. I found the 12km up via El Batán tough going in the heat but was glad I did both walks in a loop. It’s always worth it when you get to the ‘top’.
 
22Kms
Start 09:11 Finish 15:20
1,250m Ascending
1,250m Descending

El Batán

From Cruz del Carmen

Saturday

Iguesta de San Andrés to Chamorga to Faro de Anaga to Almáciga - This was the most eventful walk. I met lots of other walkers, probably because it was a Saturday and the natives were out in force. Also met three lads carrying bags of cement and other building/repair materials in relay along the coastal walk, not far from El Draguillo. I didn’t see any ‘warning’ sign at Faro de Anaga that the coastal path was officially closed but it seemed a tad overgrown and there was good bit of rock debris. Beautiful walk though.

25Kms
Start 09:15 Finish 15:15
1,165m Ascending
1,225m Descending   

Faro de Anaga

Roque de las Bodegas

NB : The times will depend on your own pace but I was walking at a very brisk pace.

GR 131 - Arona to La Esperanza

Last week I travelled to Tenerife with the intention of doing 3 stages of the GR131 and another walk in the West of the island. The plan was to do Arona - Vilaflor and Vilaflor - El Portillo on the GR131 and Santiago del Teide - Buenavista del Norte (via Masca).

It didn’t work out that way. I decided to start in Vilaflor on Tuesday and head for El Portillo. This route would take in 2 stages of the GR131 by bypassing the 3.7km walk to/from Parador after dropping down from Degollada de Guajara.

I was sitting on the steps outside the visitors centre in El Portillo at 12:05. The bus wasn’t due until 15:15 so I decided to continue on to La Caldera.

As I had taken a big chunk out of the middle section of the GR131 on Tuesday I decided at that stage that I would just finish it on the remaining two days for walking. So, on Thursday, I again started in Vilaflor and walked ‘down’ to Arona and on Saturday I travelled to La Caldera to walk ‘up’ to La Esperanza.

The entire route is very well marked but I did stray from the track on 3 occasions. On two occasions I was about 50m/100m away from a marker and on one occasion I got totally distracted and ended up on the TF24 (about 14km from La Esperanza) and had to drop back down to the path. I did have Paddy Dillon’s book with me and found it very useful for additional information/markers.

I absolutely loved this walk. On one occasion (between Parador and El Portillo) I had to put on my gloves but, other than that the weather was great.

Bus starts from Los Cristianos (base) were 5:50 X 2 (to Vilaflor) and 6:10 (to La Caldera). Three different buses were required to get from La Caldera to Los Cristianos (& vice versa) and from La Esperanza to Los Cristianos. Travel times on buses, for longer journeys, were 2 to 2.5 hours.

Tuesday - 40km in 8 hours 15 minutes

Thursday - 20km in 3 hours 45 minutes

Saturday - 30km in 6 hours

Pace - Very Brisk ;-)

Rationalisation in the Life & Pensions Industry in Ireland

Last week Zurich Life announced (quietly) that it plans to close the Cork and Galway branches and is looking for about 70 voluntary redundancies. The company cites the continuous decline in the health of the Life & Pensions industry, since it peaked in 2007.

What’s surprising, is that it has taken 5 years to come to this conclusion and that there have not been similar occurrences with some of the other players in the market.

You see, I’d consider Zurich Life to be one of the better players in terms i) the product range they have to offer to the end consumer ii) their service and iii) a unique ability to listen to what type of product I want and try to deliver it.

There are two existing players that have basically single (okay) product offerings and I don’t know if their parents are going to plough money into the small Irish market at this time. Why would they? It’s a mess.

There are two others that I would find it very difficult to place business with based on past experience with service and crappy products. Standard Life wouldn’t be one of these.

The biggest operator is owned by the State and has just swallowed up Quinn Life. There’s a few boutique players flogging deposit based tracker bonds to death. Bank Of Ireland are ‘trying’ to sell New Ireland.

The only speculative conclusion that I can come to is that: now that Zurich Life have made a move some of the others will follow by letting folk go to reduce costs in an attempt to enhance profitability. Life & Pension companies in Ireland don’t like to be ‘first’ with crappy news so I’d expect a few of the others to come forward any day now and tell us how terrible things actually are in the industry.