Caldera de Taburiente La Palma

The terrain on La Palma is dominated by the eroded volcanic peak of the Caldera de Taburiente. It’s a must see when you are on the island and so on Thursday 23 November we hired a car and made our way up towards it. Towards it, because we had missed some important information; there are only 20 parking spaces at Mirador de La Cumbrecita (a high point on the edge of the caldera on the southeastern side of the national park) and you have to book one online.

View from the Mirador de La Cumbrecita down the valley towards our carpark at Campamento “El Riachuelo”    

Blissfully ignorant, we turned up at the vehicle checkpoint about 5 km short of where we wanted to be and were allowed no further. Fortunately, we could leave the car very close by at the Campamento “El Riachuelo”, the downside was that it was a round trip walk of an extra 10 km we hadn’t expected. We were, however, very fortunate. After striding out a couple of kilometres up the road, a hire car stopped and we were offered a lift; the German couple in the car had made the same mistake the previous year and knew that it was an extra climb that you could really do without. Their generosity saved us over half an hour on the way up which was very fortuitous for us because we saw far more of the caldera before the cloud came rolling in later.

Model of the Parque National de la Caldera de Taburiente. The red arrow shows the ravine  that we walked (and were driven) up to get to Mirador de La Cumbrecita

We actually stopped at the visitors’ centre on our way out of the park but I’ve included a photo of this fantastic model of the park from the visitors’ centre at the beginning of this blog because it shows so clearly the shape and scale of the caldera. The red arrow highlights the valley that we walked (and were driven) up to get to Mirador de La Cumbrecita. The caldera itself is about 8km in diameter.

Looking across the caldera at the cloud layer just above us obscuring the rim (2426 metres)   

From Mirador de La Cumbrecita we set off on a short 3km circular route and which gave us our first proper look at the caldera. It was first given this name in 1825 by Leopold von Buch, a German geologist, who viewed what he believed to be a volcanic crater with cloud spilling out over the rim like an overflowing caldron. The name has stuck as the standard description of a volcanic crater but the Caldera de Taburiente was actually formed by erosion. Volcanologists now generally agree that the volcanic peak collapsed in on itself and, over the millennia, erosion has washed out the debris through the open ravine, Barranco de las Angustias, on the western side, creating what is now known as the caldera.

View back up towards Mirador de La Cumbrecita (1287 metres) with cliffs and pinnacles (2087 metres) behind   

View toward Pico Bejenado (1845metres)
obscured in cloud    

At the time of our visit, several of the hiking routes were closed because of dangerous erosion of the paths. Many of the other routes are not recommended if it is raining because of the risk of rockfalls. Signs on another route gave specific instructions as to the climatic conditions to avoid if planning to walk the route so as to minimise the risk of getting cut off if there is a forest fire. It’s great hiking but clearly not without risk! [Ed: refreshingly, in a break from all the “ealth and safety, m’lud” cotton-wool wrapping you see in so many places, all the national park’s maps clearly state ‘your safety is our concern but your responsibility’. A great quote!]

In comparison, our route was tame and is probably the circuit taken by the majority of visitors. We followed the path down a gentle incline which gave us good views down into the caldera and back up to the saddle of Mirador de La Cumbrecita. After a gentle climb this led to a ridgeline viewing point projecting out into the caldera, Lomo de las Chozas. We could look back over our shoulders towards Pico Bejenado and had an unobscured view down to the bottom of the caldera.

View across and into the caldera from Lomo de las Chozas   

Unfortunately, the cloud layer was still just above us obscuring the peaks on the far side of the caldera’s rim. We found the whole scale of the views very difficult to judge. At Lomo de las Chozas we were part way up at about 1275 metres and were looking across the semi-circular caldera which is about 8 km across and around 2000 metres from top to bottom. It’s nature on a grand scale!

From Lomo de las Chozas we branched off onto a much smaller track which winds its way up and down around the slope to an area below Mirador de La Cumbrecita. Here there was another viewing point; Mirador de los Roques.

Views from Mirador de los Roques (1240m) 

Looking out from Mirador de los Roques we realised how lucky we had been to get the lift from the German couple up to Mirador de La Cumbrecita. In the 10 minutes that we were at the mirador we watched the cloud start to pour over the rim of the caldera and start to fill it up. If we had walked all of the way up from the carpark we’d have been too late to see any views out across the caldera.

The increase in cloud cover changed our plans somewhat. After completing the short circuit that we were on, we had been intending to take the steep path up towards Pico Bejenado and to get as far up that route as we could in the time available. There seemed little point in slogging up the hillside if there were to be no rewarding views down.

Setting off back down towards the carpark    

Instead, we returned to Mirador de La Cumbrecita and set off back down towards the carpark.

Ridgelines on either side of the valley down to the carpark   

On either side of us there were fabulous cliffs and tree-covered ridgelines towering above us. We also noticed that it was incredibly quiet.

Fire-resistant Canary Island pines   

Our route down took us through a dense pine wood almost entirely composed of the unusual Canary Island pine that we’d first seen on La Gomera. The trees are unusual because they are particularly adapted to cope with forest fires. If they do get hit by fire, the tree almost immediately starts to send out new branch shoots up the whole length of its truck. We could see where this had happened as the new foliage is quite a bright green and, being all over the trunks and branches, it gives the trees a tufty, almost fluffy, look. One of the information boards explained that because of this adaptation the trees can completely regenerate their foliage in just 2 years even after quite a significant forest fire.

We got back to the car at just after midday. Sitting down on a stone wall having a drink we hatched plan as to what to do next. Firstly, we’d look in at the Visitors’ Centre for the Parque National de la Caldera de Taburiente and then we would drive up to the northeast of the island to visit the Los Tiles Biosphere Reserve. It is described in our guidebook as ‘one of the most magical spots on the island, a must-explore place’, and we hoped that, being a little lower down, it wouldn’t be covered in cloud.

La Palma, Canary Islands