The Los Cocoteros walk starts from Guatiza Garage and passes through the Hondura area. It is to the south and east of the LZ-1, looking down towards the coast. The whole area is quite flat, but hides a few little gems.
Drinks and snacks can of course be purchased from the garage. The small village of Guatiza has a few bars and restaurants for something a little more substantial.
Directions
Follow the LZ-1 out of Arrecife and take the first exit at the Tahiche round-a-bout. Continue along the LZ-1 past Costa Teguise and take the exit for Guatiza. On the round-a-bout, start to turn into the petrol station, but look to your right and take the dirt track. Park along here, but don’t obstruct the track.
Click on the image above to open a google map of the area in a new tab.
The Walk
Take the signposted path just past the garage, Los Cascajos. The path heads south behind the garage. The path passes old Rofe or Picon (volcanic sand) extraction areas. Which is spread over fields to trap moisture and suppress weeds.
At a junction in the path, bear right. You circle back to this point towards the end of the walk. You pass more Rofe workings as you approach a goat farm on the left. Just past the goat farm in a flat area on the right their are some old covered Aljibes (old water storage) to explore.
Continue along the track until you reach another fork. Take the left hand route and follow it down to the coast. We now bear left and join the coastal path all the way to Los Cocoteros.
After Playa de la Tía Vicenta, the path climbs slightly to the houses over looking Playa del Tío Joaquín. Continue on the path back down the hill, past the abandoned salt works and take the path on the left. You are now heading back towards the garage along the southern slopes of Montaña de Tinamala.
Detour 1
Before heading back to the garage, you can take a look at the operational salt works. Take the right hand dirt track as you descend from the houses over looking Playa del Tío Joaquín. This takes you round the old abandoned salt pans and on to the operational ones.
Detour 2
The path skirting the southern slopes of Montaña de Tinamala eventually brings you full circle. On the way back to the garage, look up to the right and visit the old quarry workings. Here they cut building blocks out of the volcanic cone. You can find evidence of this practice all over this area.
If you look at the top of the workings, you see where the building blocks were cut out by hand. Later, further down the face of the workings, the lines become more regular as machinery was introduced.
There is also evidence of well shafts being sunk, probably pre-dating the building stone extraction. If you look at the well shafts you can see the post holes used to support the miner as the well was originally dug. In the walls of the mine you can see where the latter building block extraction work intersected and destroyed the original and much older well shafts.
Los Cocoteros – Links To Other Guatiza Garage Walks
Los Cocoteros – History
To read more on the history of the area you can checkout the following sites:
The sites are in Spanish, so if it helps I have made an attempt to summarise a few topics of interest in the History section.