08 | April | 2025 | The Book of Barnabas

Caserío los Partidos, Tenerife. 8.19am.

Well, if that wasn’t the best sleep I’ve had in a week, I don’t know what a good sleep is. The four-hundred-year old stone walls of my room might not look like the cosiest setup, but it couldn’t be more enchanting: a log-burning stove in the corner, a skylight above the bed so you can see the stars from the comfort of your bed, and a warm shower… I’d have settled for less, especially after several hours’ hiking around the ash flow of Chinyero, but it was nothing short of heaven on my return.

Chinyero is the reason I’m here. This is the site of the last eruption in 1909, Chinyero being one of the vents of Teide, which looms over everything to the west. This is also Teide’s best side: from here, it is perfectly conical, like a child’s drawing of a volcano, and at this time of year you can still see the last traces of snow and ice in the deep gulleys running down its peak. Sure, the Roque Cinchado may have been a worthy candidate for one of the Top Ten sights of this trip, but what I really wanted to see here in Tenerife was the black sand forest: a natural marvel growing out of the destruction wrought by Teide over a hundred years ago. I was not to be disappointed.

It’s a two and a half hour circular hike from Caserío up into the ash fields, most of it very well signposted and all over well-trodden paths, though the hardened basalt and steep climbs make for slow going at times. I saw three or four cyclists and one other hiker far off, but compared to Teide National Park, it’s a much more personal experience of the mountain on this side of the island. Most of the hike takes place in the shade of the Corona Forestal, the crown of pine trees that ring the mountain (but especially its fertile north face). Some of the trees look like they still bear the scars and scorch marks of the fires that raged through here when Chinyero erupted, long ago.

Did you ever see Fantasia 2000 as a kid? This place reminds me of the Firebird sequence, which plays Stravinsky’s masterpiece as the backdrop to the eruption and rebirth of a volcano. It also gives off major Primeval and Walking with Dinosaurs vibes, which is true for at least one of those TV shows, as the final episode of the first season of Primeval was filmed on the almost identical ash fields of Gran Canaria. All three creations draw on an ancient force in an even older setting, and the black sands of Chinyero really do feel like a walk back in time – if not on the surface of another planet.

There are very few mammals native to Tenerife, as is often the case with island fauna, which usually specialises in creatures with fins or wings (or those that had wings, once upon a time). I saw a couple of rabbits during my hike, which accounts for the presence of buzzards in these forests, but besides that, the ash fields seem almost deserted, unless you listen closely. The island’s canaries were singing away in the treetops, along with a few goldcrests, treecreepers, chiffchaffs and the local Canarian race of great tits. I counted at least three woodpeckers drumming at different frequencies on the descent, though I only saw one. Best of all was a brief encounter with a blue chaffinch, a special bird found only on the islands of Tenerife and Gran Canaria and only above the tree line. Tracking it by its call, I tried imitating it to get its attention, and it came to have a look. I got pretty close, but it must have thought me a very strange chaffinch indeed.

Meanwhile, to the north, the island seems to fall away into the sea, disappearing beneath the clouds. We really are very high up here.

The views on the climb back down to Caserío are breathtaking, especially at the end of the day when the sun is beginning to sink into the Atlantic to the west. Stand at just the right spot and you can see the neighbouring islands of La Gomera and La Palma, flanking the Teno mountains on the westernmost point of Tenerife. I don’t know much about La Palma, but La Gomera harbours an otherworldly rainforest in its centre, the Garajonay National Park, full of gnarled and twisted trees and trailing beards of moss and lichen. If I should return, that would be near the top of my list.

I had a well-earned dinner and a glass of wine back at Caserío, the last of which very nearly knocked me out – perhaps that explains the long sleep. But I did hold on to my senses long enough to properly appreciate the other thing I came all the way out here to see (not just to Chinyero, but the Canaries as a whole): the night sky. The English fixation with security and LED lighting means it’s hard to get an unpolluted view of the stars anywhere in the country (outside of Northumberland, anyway), since we seem to delight in stringing glaring yellow street lamps along our roads like fairy lights, and filling our towns and cities with floodlights.

Out here, however, the lighting is less pervasive and restricted to the larger cities. And up here in the mountains, there’s almost no lighting at all, so the stargazing is spectacular.

I didn’t see any shooting stars this time, but I’d be willing to bet that this is an incredible place to be at the peak of the Perseid meteor shower in the summer. I did count a number of constellations I haven’t properly seen before, blinking dimly behind the belt of Orion: Leo, Cancer, mighty Hercules and the Corona Borealis. And, of course, the full body of Ursa Major, not just the twinkling torso of the Plough.

My SLR would have struggled, but the iPhone did a remarkable job in the twilight. It may not be able to perform a quality zoom to save its life, but it does handle low light incredibly well.

Tomorrow is another day. Since I made it up to Chinyero a day early, I’ll take it easy. If I can, I’ll try to navigate round the south of the island to Santa Cruz for a change of scenery. I can’t say it’s the side of the island with the most appeal to me, being by far the more resort-heavy side, but that might make for something to write about in itself. But first, I have to find a bus to take me out of here – and that might be easier said than done! BB x

Parque de San Marcos, Icod de los Vinos. 12.37.

The bells of San Marcos are ringing for midday, a mournful two-tone chime that feels out of step with the rest of the world: the buzz of the artesanal market stalls, the constant roll of tyres over cobblestones, the cooing of collared doves and the merry twitter of Canarian chiffchaffs in the trees overhead. The guitarist sitting in the pagoda that looks out across the Atlantic has stopped his playing and looks on in contemplative silence. Three very trendy French tourists walk by, one wielding an iPhone, the other dragging on a vape. ‘Ouais, t’as raison, hein, on est en Afrique.’ A man walks by with his dog. Around its neck is a metal collar not dissimilar to the kind Cortés’ war dogs used to wear. And still the bells chime.

It’s an hour’s wait until my connecting bus to Erjos, so I’ve come here to sit in the shade and write. I’ve bought some supplies from the nearby Mercadona just in case they’re hard to come by – for the first (and only) time in this trip, there are no shops near my lodgings for the night. The Canarian bananas are riper than the kind we get back home – understandably, as they were grown all of fifty metres from the store itself – and the slice of tortilla I’ve obtained should do nicely for dinner this evening.

The guitarist has started up again: it’s Guantanamera this time. A German boy in dungarees and a white baseball cap and his mother watch as he plays an upbeat Latin tune. The boy was shy at first, but he seems captivated by the rhythm and is swaying along with a big smile. Judging by his mother’s reaction, he appears to have just learned how to clap. Thanks to the guitarist, he also just learned how to strum a chord and blow a kiss to the audience.

To the east of the park is the famous dragon tree, a bizarre and ancient tree endemic to the Atlantic islands that has supposedly stood in this spot for nearly a thousand years. Its leaves stick out at the ends of its myriad branches like frozen fireworks. The palm tree at its side, usually exotic in its own right, looks almost humdrum next to the dragon tree, which is as rare as it is odd-looking: you’d have to travel all the way to the island of Socotra off the coast of Yemen – the other side of Africa entirely – to find a similar kind of tree.

In the shadow of the park is Icod de los Vinos’ mariposario, a butterfly conservation centre. I’m not the biggest fan of zoos, but these sorts of places (where the butterflies are free to roam) are usually geared towards the captive breeding of endangered species, and with butterflies the world over starting to disappear, I fancied learning what I could about those native to the island.

Icod’s mariposario hosts a number of ‘celebrity’ butterflies: the electric-blue morpho, the wandering monarch, and the gigantic Atlas moth. They’re a lot better at drawing in tourists than the endangered Canarian large white, I guess, a species which this local enterprise is working to protect. They’re a long way from home, usually haunting the dense rainforests of the Amazon basin, but they seemed more at home here than they would in a similar butterfly park in the UK.

It was the prospect of seeing the morphos which drew me in, I think, but I stayed for the monarchs. These impressive creatures, with wings the colour of an Atlantic sunset, are a cultural symbol of Central America. If I’d gone to Mexico – my original plan for the Easter holidays – I’d have gone looking for them over there. Not that I’d have had any guarantees of seeing one, of course – but it would have been fun to try.

Higher up the mountainside stands another dragon tree, el Drago de San Antonio. Younger than the drago milenario (but only by a few hundred years), this one is chained in place like a wild beast. It’s also guarded: two security guards in green overalls sat in the shade nearby, smoking a cigarette and watching me as I wandered over to have a look. There’s a motive for their caution: the tree had been ‘attacked’ twice in the last fifty years, first by an ambitious landowner who wanted it cut down and more recently by vandals. To ensure its safety, cameras have been installed in the neighbouring walls and a guard posted during daylight hours – not to mention the chains. I can only imagine these last have been affixed to keep the tree in place should the dormant dragon within decide to take flight someday.

Well, I’ve made it to my digs for the night in Caserio los Partidos, high up in the hills above Erjos. The restaurant is open, but the lady who sorts the lodging isn’t here. I guess she’ll be back at some point this afternoon. I hope she comes soon – I can never truly relax until I’ve got rid of my rucksack. There’s no signal this high up the mountain, but that’s exactly why I came all the way up here – to really get away. I need it after the last two days in touristic Tenerife. It’s a beautiful place, once you get away from the coast and the cities, but this will probably be my only visit. It might be a Spanish territory, and the natives might be Spanish speakers, but it’s not Spain. I’m already nostalgic for the mainland.

Still no sign of the dueña. At least it’s given me time to catch up on my writing and stay out of the worst of the midday sun. See you on the other side. BB x