The Grand Circle 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 600m take the second path on left next to the tunnel for Barranco de la piletas as it passes under the LZ-1. Follow the track south west as it passes a couple of small holdings. Just after crossing Barranco de Mulión the track reaches a cross roads.
Turn Left here and follow the track up a gentle incline. Just before the first house on the right, there is a small path to the left. Just 50m and you can explore some old Aljibes (water collection cisterns). Note how buckets used to fill channels at the top to flow down into animal watering troughs.
Retrace your steps to the main track and continue past a second house on the left. After descending the small hill, take the left fork in the track heading south east. After about 1.5km, two low lying hills appear to the left and right of the trail. Depending on the time of year, this low lying section between the two hills may be covered in green scrub. On the hill to the right are some old farm house ruins. Take the left fork in the trail, past some abandoned ruins and old Aljibes. The path winds around the base of a couple of low hills and joins a larger track.
Turn left here heading north west, past more Aljibes and a goat farm and old Rofe extraction workings. The track climbs up onto the shoulders of Montaña de Tinamala. Follow the left hand route back to Guatiza Garage.
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.
At the top of the workings we see the irregular lines of hand cut blocks. Further down the face of the workings, we see the straighter lines of machine cut blocks.
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.
Grand Circle – Links To Other Guatiza Garage Walks
BMX Ravine and Los Cocoteros Circle.
Grand Circle – 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.