Ireland day 1237. Sunday 16 February 2025- Fuerteventura Day 06

Today’s summary	Awoke quite early so had breakfast in our self catering apartment and started our day’s walk straight from our accommodation at 9:30. An easy walk down the barranco then up a steep climb to Degollada de los Granadillos. Dropped down to Toto for sandwich lunch then finished at Pajara. Taxi back to Vega then early dinner in Don Antonio’s. A quiet evening again and an early night
Today’s weather	Warm dry and sunny. Light north easterly wind though strong at the degollada. Appx 20c

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The blue line shows where we walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): GR131 day 5 Vega to Pajara

Commentary

Today’s walk – at only 11km / 7mi was the shortest so far on our Fuerteventura trip. Although the previous days haven’t been particularly hard, it was nevertheless nice to have a somewhat easier day today, with no time pressure to get started early.

With it being relatively quiet in the places we’ve been staying, we have tended to call it a day and retire to bed quite early. Last night I think we were both asleep by 10pm – which is quite unheard of for me in normal circumstances. The advantage I have found of going to bed early is of course that you wake up early the next morning, which gives you plenty of time to get organised before you have to hit the road.

So we woke early and got ourselves breakfast in the apartment – using ingredients that the taxi driver had picked up for us in Betancuria as they delivered our bags to our current accommodation (this is all SOO easy!!). They had also got lunch ingredients, so after breakfast I made a couple of ham and tomato rolls to eat along the way (important as there were very few refreshment options along today’s section, and anyway it was Sunday, so even the supermercado in Pajara at the end of the walk was shut).

Anyway – enough of the preamble and down to business. Once we had set off at about 9:30 am, we were back on the GR131 almost immediately – it runs along the Barranco de Pedro Pena which is just at the bottom of the village of Vega where we are staying at the moment. It was an easy walk, mostly downhill on tracks paths and narrow roads, right round the end of the mountain spur which ran over to the east of our route.

Eventually the barranco fizzled out, and we started a steep but short climb up to the top of the Degollada de los granadillos. (By the way, granadillo[a]s are passionfruit and degollada in this context I think means “headland” – derived from the rather gruesome Spanish word meaning “decapitation”). At the top, we caught up with a large group of Canarian walkers who were out on a locally-organised nature hike. They were chattering enthusiastically and looked like they were having fun. But we being more reserved north Europeans took advantage of a pause in their wanderings to quickly pass and continue on our way.

Over the top of the degollada we entered a beautiful area of hillside covered in bright green tabaiba shrubs. It really did feel like you were in some sort of natural botanic garden and it was impressive. I guess this area for some reason must get slightly more rain than other areas, in order to sustain such a relative abundance of vegetation.

The route was easy to follow and well made, so we steamed down the valley, past another of the GR131 shelters, and on into Toto. With the words of “Africa” ringing in our ears, we sought out a shady church square to have our coffee and sandwiches whilst soaking up the peace and tranquillity.

From Toto down to the end of the day’s walk at Pajara (which is the Spanish word for “bird”) took well under an hour and we were there by 1:30pm. As our taxi pick up wasn’t until 2:30, we had plenty of time to take a look at this pretty village (all closed up for Sunday though) and chill out in yet another church square.

Tito the taxi man duly appeared at the appointed time and whisked us speedily back to Vega and our flat. We just had a few moments to make a call to friends in Scotland before it was time to head down to the friendly Don Antonio restaurant for a late lunch (or should that be early dinner).

So now we have another quiet evening ahead of us. The village has fallen deadly silent, apart from the wind powered water pump outside which squeaks periodically as it catches the breeze. It really does feel like we are marooned on the set of a 19th century spaghetti western movie. All that’s missing is the tumbleweed and, of course, Clint Eastwood riding in, 44 Magnum at the ready and trusty steed at his side.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Don Antonio’s restaurant in Vega. We dined there twice in the late afternoons, and really enjoyed it	Our nearest neighbour. All very atmospheric – though it could definitely do with a drop of oil

Checking out this curious sculpture in the Pedro Pena barranco. Apparently it’s called “Interlacement” and it was created by Ukrainian artist Olena Dodatko	At the top of the degollada

Val amongst the Tabaiba (Euphorbia balsamifera) shrubbery below the degollada de los granadillos	Pajara town square and Iglesia de Nuestra Senora de la Regla

Church square in Toto, where we paused for lunch. A beautiful spot