The destination of our excursion, which started from Puerto de la Cruz in the north of Tenerife in Spain, was Masca.
Every guidebook or online site recommends Masca as ‘the most beautiful village in Tenerife’.
It really was an amazing place.
It sits at the foot of a sharp rock mountain within Teno massif, in the northwest of the island.
There was only one road with a few houses on both sides and that is it!
We naturally wondered why they made a village up here.
It seems that they do not know the exact history, but the most popular theory is that it used to be a hiding place for pirates.
The reason they think this is that if you go down to the sea from here, you will come across Masca Bay and in the past, it was the most popular place for pirates.
There is also a story that some witchcraft was practiced here.
It is surely a best place for fairy tales and fires your imagination.
It was really worth visiting all the way.
I was surprised to hear that until 1991, there were no roads and people could not reach here by car.
Now, the tourists arrive one after another by car or by minibus and we had a bit of traffic jam on the road around there.
The road to get here was full of dangerous hairpin curves, so they recommend to join a tour rather than driving on your own.
We went there by taxi driven by Marcos.
Currently, about 90 people live in Masca village, apparently.
The village church, dedicated to the Immaculate Conception and built in the 18th century, can hold only 8 people.
The good walkers would go down towards the sea from Masca Village, the hiking recommended by our guidebook.
It takes about 3 hours to get to the beach and most of the people would take a boat from there.
I read on some internet sites that there was a bad forest fire in 2007 around here and the people in Masca had to evacuate.
Probably many of the old houses were burned down and that was why we saw some fairly new houses here contrary to our expectation.
We had planned to go back to Puerto de la Cruz from here, but Marcos, the driver drew a map and told us that it was quicker to get to our next destination, San Miguel de Abona directly, so we went south from here.
[ Jan.2019 ]
