The BMX Ravine 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
Head along the dirt track parallel to the LZ-1, away from the petrol station. After about 500m take the path on left and bear left again into a small gully which empties into the Barranco de la piletas. The path skirts round the head of the Barranco and climbs up onto the top of an old Rofe extraction site.
The youngsters of the area have turned it into a BMX playground, with ramps, half pipes and jumps. Follow the path down towards the main dirt track where Barranco de la piletas and Barranco de la Espoleta join forces. Just past the goat farm in a flat area on the right their are some old covered Aljibes (old water storage). Continue along the track until you reach fork and take the right hand route. You circle back to this point towards the end of the walk.
Follow this path until you reach another set of Aljibes. As you pass the Aljibes the track branches. Follow the left hand route down towards the coast. This track eventually leads into the small village of Los Ancones. We however take the track on the left which leads onto the coastal path.
With the sea on our right shoulder, follow the coastal path past Punta del Banquete, where you cross Barranco Mulion. When you reach Ensenada del Banco, pick up the track on the left, leading away from the coast.
This path brings you back to the fork mentioned earlier in the walk. Just before the fork there is an interesting abandoned farm house and Aljibe to explore. We now retrace our steps past the goat farm, keeping to the main track. Look out for the old Aljibes and Picon workings to the right hand side of the road.
At the top of a small incline on the shoulders of Montaña de Tinamala, bear left back towards the petrol station and the start of the walk.
Detour
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.
BMX Ravine – Links To Other Guatiza Garage Walks
Los Cocoteros and Grand Circle.
BMX Ravine – 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.