Mockingly, Tenerife can be said to consist of
rubble and rocks. The terrain can be extremely steep and rough and when
the
Teide cannot be seen, one must have an old fashioned compass or a little GPS
receiver. But even then, it is possible to get lost - because there appears to
be no way out of the rough, pathless "nowhere". The landscape is fractal and
the
color of a muflon track doesn't differ from the surrounding by more than
five percent...And unless fearless, when the sun is setting, a scenario for
panic is almost unavoidable.
Yearly, there are victims, sometimes within
a few hundred yards of the road to "civilization". The combination of
dehydration and a rapidly decreasing temperature when the sun has set, is not
favorable for survival without certain precautions.
So when hiking, the most sensible advice would
be to hire a guide.
The next sensible thing is, not to go alone, to
take along water, warm cloths (even in summer), matches or a lighter and a
few rockets.. Warn someone at the hotel's help desk, to alert the rescue, when
not having returned to the hotel after a certain time.
I wouldn't have written the above, unless having
experienced it - but being fearless, a "way out" was found. For those
having a map, I went from the parador (the state-owned hotel near the base of
the Teide) to Arico - and had to cross a few ridges...
Just because a passage appeared to have been
closed by a mass of rubble. So a hike that had been going on four hours, was
extended by another four - and without a drop of water... When finally on the
path to Arico, it wasn't difficult to halt the driver of a jeep - water and
bananas were offered without having to ask. The Canarian driver wondered
how I could possibly have passed the ridges - and that is how I got the
nickname
"guanche extranjero" :)
That was in 1993, on the second day here...
After more than seven years, off-road hiking has become quite natural.
