Feb. 20th 2005: Knee Deep (Barranco de las Angustias)
:-(
On the first two days low clouds forced us towards the coast so that the goal seemed far away and in fact I started to get a little nervous. There was lots of rain during the nights and during the days the humidity evaporated from the ground, only to create new heavy rain clouds. Moreover the apartment offered a view of Punta de los Roques to the south-west of the Caldera and Pico Bejenado to its south and at no time we were able to see the upper parts of these impressive mountains. Having crossed Barranco de las Angustias on our way to our Feb 19th destination we had decided, however to go for a try on the inside of the caldera as soon as possible.
The centre of the crater is called Playa de Taburiente and can be reached on two routes, both starting at a parking lot at Barranco de las Angustias, 5km from the city centre of Los Llanos. One of the routes climbs to Mirador de los Brecitos before lowering itself into the caldera centre. The other is a scramble through the narrow Barranco de las Angustias, supposed to be one of the most beautiful but demanding scrambles of the island. We decided to do them both, starting with the Barranco.
Those who can read sure do have advantages over those who don’t! The guidebook clearly stated that after rainy days Rio Taburiente, which flows through the Barranco, carries so much water that the scramble gets dangerous or outright impossible. And it had rained the previous day and night so the level of the river was accordingly high. Still we set out, doing the first crossing over a high irrigation channel bridge. The trail, however, forced us down into the Barranco and the next crossing was only 20m away. With the river carrying so much water, crossing barefoot didn’t seem an option and we left our boots on.
Ankle deep it was, just high enough to flood our boots from the shaft. And these Meindl Perfekt Boots are water tight, I can assure you! Once inside there is no way to get rid of the flood, only by pulling off the boots with a lot of sock and sole wringing on the side.
Three crossings (some knee deep) within 150m convinced us that the Barranco was not an option on this day and we returned - boots filled to the brim. All this, especially drying boots and feet took so much time, that Playa de Taburiente couldn’t be reached in any way that day and we refocused for Mirador de los Brecitos as the new destination. We reached it but by the time we did, the Caldera was shrouded in clouds with only a small circular patch of blue sky in the middle.
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