A walk of no particular destination

I, and my friend Jane, went on a walk of exploration today to try a new route, and what a fiasco that turned out to be. I had planned the route on Google Earth but of course what you can’t see are any banks, and there was a high bank followed by a ditch followed by a crash barrier to cross. The original route necessitated crossing a busy main road which is not ideal if you have a group of 30 walkers, so we set out to find an alternative, but there just isn't one. As we walked up the track that I thought had a route off it we found that way gated.  We continued up the track and every possible alternative route was blocked so at this point we gave up, and decided just to enjoy the wonderful surrounding country side.

The route that we were on was one that we have done a couple of times before and goes past the Donkey Safari Station on its way through the Avocado orchards to the Rio Pereilas valley. We reached the top of the valley side with its views over the Dolomite Quarry and Cerro Gordo. We took the very rocky path down and met a tarmaced path which we followed well past the usual path that we take for climbing back up the valley side, only to come to a dead end, well actually the gates to someone’s finca. We turned around and took the usual route back up the valley side. We then followed the usual course of the walk until we came to the old Helicopter landing area.

The most notable and worrying feature of the walk so far was the amount of Processionary caterpillars on the march, that we passed. The authorities are saying that they are particularly prevalent this year and that is borne out by what we were seeing. We really had to tread very carefully in places as there were several lines of them and other in heaps burrowing.

At the old helicopter landing area we decided to try the route that was marked but we had not tried before. This was a good choice for the views, even with the mist, were fantastic and given a clear day they would have been exceptional. After a while we decided that we had started on this path too late and turned around to retrace our steps. Again it was a question of keeping our eyes peeled to avoid the worrying amount of caterpillars. I can honestly say that I have never seen as many as we did today.

This really did justify not taking the dogs despite, BarnayWoo knowing that I was going walking and giving me pleading looks. The route down from the helicopter landing area was familiar but there are always things to see that you have missed on previous occasions.

The weather was exceptional for late February with temperatures in the low 20’s but with the persistent mist that has been with us for a couple of days bringing with is the red sand from the Sahara that seems to have covered everything.

The day wasn’t wasted, although we didn't complete the objective that we set out with, we had a fabulous walk through beautiful countryside and the possibility of another route.

I wasn't going to post a blog about this walk as it was just a routine ramble to look for new routes, but I thought the presence of so many of the deadly caterpillars made it worth a mention. I am very passionate about making people aware of these evil things as I lost my best friend to them 7 years ago!

My beautiful Lily who was taken from me by the caterpillar.