Alleluia! We can walk again 🌝.

We did almost nothing yesterday and we were asleep by 9:30 😒. Much too early.

We left the hotel in La Laguna after breakfast and drove to La Caldera which was quite high up the mountain, or so we thought. We parked, almost the only car in a large empty car park and after a quick trip to the toilet of the only bar within 20km we headed off.

Although it had stopped raining, the sky was full of clouds and the mountains were almost invisible. Here’s mampa ready to go.

The path started climbing straight away which wasn’t a problem since mampa’s legs were working just fine. But we were amazed to find ourselves in the middle of a spaghetti forest. Almost every tree was covered in spaghetti. Spaghetti was hanging from the branches, lying in heaps on the floor and was simply everywhere.

We’ve never seen spaghetti trees before. Amazing 😀.

We walked up and up and up until we were high up in the forest. Because the weather was so poor there was no-one else on the mountain. It was lovely and peaceful.

The guide book that we were using said that we’d be able to see all the way to the sea but the next photo shows you what the sea looked like to us.

Not quite what the book says 😒.

But still very beautiful.

The forest was really quiet. We saw only two birds all day, no human voices, just the quiet drip, drip of raindrops falling from the tree canopy.

At the highest point the view was fantastic.

Apparently we should have been able to see a huge mountain in the distance and lots of lovely blue sky. Instead we saw clouds floating silently through the forest. Perhaps this was actually nicer than a view of a mountain. What do you think?

While you’re thinking here’s a picture of mampa 😍

There were lots of beautifully formed plants clinging to the mountainside.

As we started to drop down we came across a really narrow section of path perched high above the valley. The path was only wide enough for two feet to pass and the valley floor was about 100m immediately below us. It was so dangerous that some nice people had put a metal rope along the cliff face and a wooden barrier along the edge.

Mampa’s very brave so she had no trouble walking across.

Even though we were walking downhill quite steeply we were still in the clouds so the path ahead was still misty.

But soon afterwards we came out of the clouds and you can see mampa just coming around the top of the path but it’s much clearer now.

Soon we were close to the car and when we looked back we could see the clouds still sitting on top of the mountain where we’d just been.

The previous photo is a panorama where the phone joins together 5 or 6 separate photos to make a very big one. It shows exactly what we saw looking back up at the mountain.

This last photo is mampa having a well deserved glass of 🍷.

That’s it for today. We’ve arrived at our new hotel and are about to get a light dinner before going to bed nice and early in time for an early start and a really long walk tomorrow.

💕