Masca

Masca is one of Tenerife's most beautiful traditional mountain villages. Set in a hugely impressive barranca (gorge, ravine) that plunges down to the sea, the views are simply stunning. You reach it by taking a notoriously hairy single track mountain road that has only fairly recently been tarmaced, and the village used to be splendidly remote. Now that the road has been improved they get a lot more visitors there, and tourism has taken over from agriculture as their main sourse of revenue.


The first time we visited Masca we had lunch in a restaurant perched on the terraced mountain side, with quite simply the most awesome view.

That restaurant, and five other properties, was tragically destroyed in the forest fires that raged on Tenerife this summer.

We decided to revisit the village to see the damage for ourselves, and to lend our support by at least spending some more euros there.

The first thing you notice is the charred, blacked palm trees ...


But the great thing is how everyone has rallied round to help re-build the village.

Here there are teams of volunteers from all over Europe working for free to restore the place, and that says a lot about the way people feel about this marvelous traditional Canarian village.