We went hiking today. A little more than 7,5 kilometres with little elevation change (about 150m gain in total). The trail goes around 📍Caldera de la Rilla. Part of the 📍Timanfaya National Park, and within a stone throw of Montaña del Cuervo, the first cone formed during the 1730 eruption.
Caldera de la Rilla, Lanzarote, Spain - 74 Reviews, Map | AllTrails
Beautiful and pleasant circular hiking route around the Lanzarote town of La Vegueta, within the wonderful and impressive Los Volcanes Natural Park. The route begins on a path that leaves the LZ-56 road and continues through lava fields until it surrounds the Caldera de la Rilla. The trail is not excessively marked, so it is recommended to pay attention to the AllTrails track.
www.alltrails.com
The trail is not so much poorly marked but difficult to mark. The entire parkland is made up of volcanic soil. So dark rocks of different colours and not much else. Planting a pole to mark the trail is hard (you’ll have fun planting poles every couple hundred meters in rock). Kerns are easy to make but black rocks on black rocks is not the most contrasting thing. Also, the ground looks like a giant plow came through and transformed the entire landscape into piles of rocks. Finally, the mound itself being made of tiny rocks where a little vibration or the elements will hide anything you place on the ground there. All that to say: GPS required!
People would have called us crazy to go in middle of the afternoon, at the day’s warmest and sunniest without a single shadow to hide under. All of that with a constant warm and dry wind made even warmer by passing over kilometres of warm rocks. What most people don’t know is that we like the warmth. It made for a glorious hike for us northerners. It did provide us with a first-hand understanding of why all cultures on the island are grown behind low walls. Without them anything grown there would be closer to raisin than grapes.
The walk in the mostly desolate landscape showed us that a volcano does not only produce black volcanic rock. There’s a range of colours possible. We saw some greens, vivid reds, browns and blacks too.
Once done with the hike we stopped by 📍Playa Blanca to scout where we’ll be taking our ferry tomorrow. The original plan was to go for a swim but our schedule got a little too tight so we sat for a quick bite to eat with views of the beach before heading to the airport to drop off our car and head home from there.
Places
Caldera de la Rilla · 35560, Las Palmas, Spain
★★★★★ · Mountain peak
maps.app.goo.gl
Timanfaya National Park · Las Palmas, Spain
★★★★★ · National park
maps.app.goo.gl
