Anaga | The Magical North East of Tenerife
Good morning and welcome back to the channel we are exactly halfway up the east coast of the island today clouds in front of me blue sky behind and after we've tucked into our coffees and sandwiches we're about to head off into a naga royal park which is a stunning luscious mountainous area around about a kilometer high completely different landscape to everywhere in the south of the island and it is the most lush area on the whole island and you almost won't believe it's tenerife and i thought i'd started off here and take monica to a brand new service station for us somewhere i went three days ago on a ride with a friend i just love them so much this is los rockets so we've each got a coffee a boccadio filled up with fuel behind and monica just should i quickly just shut up okay this is the services you've got this strangely brilliant architecture here with a restaurant there live music every weekend i've just filled up there bonneville parked here monica just about to tuck in there and this view out to the ocean with houses literally right below us and these houses are right on the corner of a bend here with the most glorious view if ever that day comes around if i get my feet on the ground maybe take all that money get a boat and sail down down where the blue blue waters flow yes this is a place i would go we might get ourselves lost we may never be found if ever that day comes around i will not make the same mistake as last time it feels like about eight degrees cooler here and we have just hit right here in fact just so you can see the final town of any significant size before we head into the mountains there this is las mercedes five kilometers that way behind it is the town of laguna but it just gives you a really nice idea of these tiny little towns in the north of the island beautiful simple little houses just the green and white as well there's always a theme here i'll flip around because i think there's some road works going on this is where we're heading the naga mountains there and you can see almost immediately the development stops once we get into the mountain set that'll get 1.1 kilometers high and we're going all the way around the side of this mountain here and then back around the other side so we're actually going to the other side of the mountain range but that ahead of us to those luscious forest is where we're going and this gives you such a great idea about the two halves of tenerife it is so lush here and we've got what looks like subsistence farming going on here probably the farms of a few of these houses but that is all proper lush farmlander i just love coming here so much we're 20 minutes away from a little spot that i found for lunch right up in the heart of the mountains it's a real local spot so for one i hope it's open and secondly i hope the sky is this blue because we should have a stunning view of the mountains oh this is the place we will go and we'll be thick as these run off you me cause boy we would so well we're now into a naga rural park and they say that these areas here especially in inaugural park are stained with the blood you can still hear the whales from the spanish conquistadors coming over and finally claiming tenerife as spanish in 1496 but prior to that there was a really bloody battle in a naga park inaugural park to claim tenerife as her own because the original people the granches and the spanish conquistadors that was a ferocious battle all around these hills and they say that 500 years ago or so when it was actually happening you really could hear the whales from mountainside to mountainside it was that that brutal a war around here but it's got a very eerie very mystical place a little bit like lagamera actually not quite as wet all the time but it very much feels like lagamera here and if you're a walking fan it's heaven here because there are a lot of walkers with a huge network of different paths to walk down eight degrees colder than where we were but you get lost in here in the best possible way it really is magical park is the oldest part of tenerife formed by a huge volcanic eruption seven to nine million years ago and fun fact and i'm hoping i remember this correctly a nagaro park is home to the largest number of endemic species anywhere in europe well i think i see a view through here should we go yes sorry monica if i smash you in the face with these oh wow a view all the way down i think of the capital wow that's stunning oh wow the mountain sides with the the valley in the middle reservoir there with that tiny mud track almost just meandering down to i'm sure that must be the capital santa cruz with the big passenger ferry port there how nice is that with the um the reservoir yeah that's beautiful and actually you can see monica and i know monica sometimes gets sick of me talking about this but you can see a few of the rough inlays of the old farming that would have happened over the past probably thousand years or so just on the right hand side there monica may cut that out because she gets sick of me talking about these old farms but it's true it's so interesting because it's such a harsh landscape the only way in farms by cutting chunks out of the side of the mountains extremely inefficient but that's what they used to have to do here before they could get stuff sent into the island fascinating i think in my head oh my god no more farms no more no no wait you went there my me so me wow i didn't know if we were going to find these these are the anaga i think they're called just a naga walls or naga moss moss walls and they are soaking soaking wet it's incredible they've just blown huge cliffs into the into the mountain side to build this road but the weird thing about this the road doesn't obviously lead to anywhere on google maps i don't know if we'll go down to the bottom but it's not obviously anywhere that it leads and this is and bear in mind this is i think we've lost track of time this is a tuesday 2 p.m this is a proper a proper spot where people like to take photos and there's no one apart from i think a cockrell or a dog barking about two miles in the distance there's absolutely no one here i thought we'd have to queue up to actually get some kind of photo or video but it's as quiet as you like you haven't seen a car going past anywhere you haven't seen a person it is there's a hiker walking past but trust me it's really quite amazing places i'll try and include as much as i can in the written description because we found this difficult to find on google maps you do have to do a bit of research i don't often choose places to come and eat but good choice yeah it's so nice so casa santiago we will include all of the details in the written description i'll go inside later and show you what it's like because it's so character you'd have no idea from the outside it's a proper rustic old-school little canary and restaurant with this view here all the way down to santa cruz there and do you know what i can see a lemon tree a cropper that's a proper wild lemonade just down there where just there so you can see all the limes or lemons on that tree either either green lemons or lines basically but anyway there you go i don't know if i'll be able to get it but that is lemon tree that's the first one i think i've seen wild in tenerife but what a spot right up at the top here and you know what i've just realized monica see that side and see that side we are right right on the middle i think about a kilometer high balancing between both sides of uh of the east and west of the island like and you can see ocean on either side it's brilliant it's probably one of the few spots where you can genuinely see both sides i'll show you the other side before i go inside i'll show the other side and the view from the cliff this side because it is just as good from this side as that side incredible i'll zoom in as much as i can so there's a little coffee shop over on that side and just beautiful beautiful blue sky and ocean there with the rolling hills just with a few houses dotted along over on the hilltops over there and the road snakes run past the pine trees there into the mountains on that side and that is what casa santiago looks like from the outside okay so we've got two i think they say sopa de bit verdura bread and two cappuccinos but if you come to tenerife and you're ordering a cappuccino it is pretty much a lottery of what you actually get you could get a cappuccino you could get a cappuccino with a lot of cream on top and chocolate that we've got this time you could even get a latte or a flat white you basically have nowadays complete lottery so just order a cappuccino and be completely prepared that you get any one of probably four or five different coffees but i came here three days ago food's great brilliant value incredible views and right up at the top of a naga rural park this is a fantastic place for lunch spot i like this i say sorry she's got my a uh a cappuccino with with saha leche with soy milk whole purpose completely gone with with whipped cream on top of it when in rome that's the problem with cream so damn gorgeous foreign la like we've just left the main road and gone into some kind of garden of eden it's so beautiful it said basically it said no through road on the main road and we weren't sure whether we should go down but i'm always curious what's it like when you turn off the main road and how do the people in the mountains live and it really is glorious cacti in front of me here you've got their farming and look at how they farm just any available bit of mountain land they just carve out to make as many flat areas as possible down here you've got a huge flourishing lemon tree here a few farmhouses just dotted into the cliffsides and the sound of birds and dogs just echoing across the different ranges here and of course as always in this video santa cruz right down in the distance but here probably almost as far away as you can possibly get in tenerife from any of the touristy areas here it is fascinating to see how can i call them the mountain people is that weird it's fascinating to see how the mountain people live it's glorious also this is clearly a driveway to get to someone's house it's completely overgrown i don't i honestly don't think the fiat or bonneville would get up there it's always hard to see the steepness perception in video but this is i'm almost scared walking down it seriously so to give you an idea i am not joking of how steep it is yeah that's insane who would have guessed at the end of this dead end road there'd be a church as far as i can tell it was built in 1989 but it's right at the end of this long single-track winding road with houses dotted long once every one or two hundred meters or so this is probably servicing 30 35 houses or so tiny population but i've seen a few pictures religious things on the fronts of doors and stuff like that so this church is probably for all of the houses that we've seen dotted along some of the houses here in fact i can see a man in his house they're fascinating so if the camera can zoom in enough this collection of houses here they've actually i don't know dynamited the side of the mountain to actually build their houses into the cave this one on the left here with the red painting around it that's a proper cave house that a man's just walking around outside there and this little selection of houses have been built into the the stone as well and then monica if you can see these ones here look completely abandoned these these cave houses just on the side i don't know if anyone lives in those but really it is it is about as far away from anything as as we've seen it's really fascinating to see how the people live on these mountain sides and how you have to in this harsh environment adapt the kinds of houses that you actually build i mean this road here to get to these houses it's borderline scary it's so steep so hold on ah so oh i literally had to spend five minutes maneuvering that so it wouldn't roll down the hill jack it off sweatshirt off like a workout i don't know how adventure bike riders maneuver on such steep slopes like this it's hard enough on the bonneville right well to give you some reference we've now been in this kind of valley area for about four hours now it's so amazing it's just down this kind of inconspicuous little dead-end road off a main road that we would never usually have gone down it is beautiful and highly recommended if you're in tenerife just put nowhere on the maps and just have a drive around down each little country lane that you may think there's nothing down the end off but you get these little treats to give you some reference that is the church we were just at ocean in front of us which we need to get down to and we're an hour and a half away from home the battery's about to die on the camera so we'll head off now but thank you so much everyone for coming along and we will see you in the next one
2022-04-13 13:56
