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Hoya del Morcillo

One of the barbecue grills


Hoya del Morcillo is a lovely picnic and barbecue area deep in the pine woods of El Pinar. Like most of these places, it's very popular with the locals. It has water taps, picnic tables, and proper barbecue grills, which makes it much easier to cook lunch without starting a forest fire.

The play area

There's a slide and climbing frame to amuse the kids while the food cooks, and plenty of space to kick a football around.

The climbing frame


There's also a camp site, and this rather fun map of the island made of branches. I couldn't fit it all in the photo: this is the south-west of El Hierro.

The map of the island

And this sign commemorates a balloon flight.

In recognition of the feat achieved by the aeronauts Jesus Gonzalez Green and Tomas Feliu who, following in the footsteps of Christopher Columbus in the first transoceanic balloon flight, departed from the island of El Hierro and arrived in Venezuela. 5th April 1992

The flight itself was in February 1992. They survived technical problems, a tropical storm, and lack of oxygen before they got into the trade winds, which blew them all the way to the Orinoco delta. The journey was a total of 5,000 km and 130 hours 19 minutes (and the previous world record was 1,075 km and 45 hours 13 minutes.)


The sign commemorating the balloon flight

Homage to the Bajada

The "Homage to the Bajada" statue.

I love this statue.

It stands about a kilometre outside Valverde, on the road down to the port and airport, which means most people are going to see it fairly soon after they arrive on the island. As the name suggests, it celebrates the Bajada, the big once-every-five-years fiesta where they take the statue of the island's patron saint to the capital for a month.

The back of the statue

I wrote a post about this while it was being built, and I was fascinated to see the finished statue. It meant so much more, now that I've seen the bajada dancers.

The biggest archway in the Canaries.

The artist, Rubén Armiche, clearly has a good idea of what appeals to kids aged from 4 to 94. This archway is only one of the ways into the statue. He calls it the biggest archway in the Canary Islands, because on a clear day it frames Mt. Teide. (Shame about the haze when I took the photo.)

Holes for peeking through.

There are actually two archways, side by side; one is adult size and the other kid-sized. Better yet, there are peek-holes between the two.

The scaffolding for the huge statue is made from things like old washing machines, which saves them going into landfill. And as you can see, some of the details on the outside are recycled too.

Detail of the statue. Yes, they're bottle tops!