The Barranco de los Cernícalos is a ravine in the east of Gran Canaria with something almost no other valley on the island has: a stream that runs all year. Water flows down it in midsummer, through a shaded corridor of Canarian willow, over mossy boulders, to a small waterfall at the head of the walk. It lies between Telde and Valsequillo, half an hour from the motorway and a world away from the dunes.
The walk is an out-and-back of roughly eight kilometres in total with a gentle climb, on a clear path, taking most people between three and four hours with stops. There is no entry fee, no ticket office and no coach park. What there is, if you go on a weekday, is the sound of running water on an island where that is genuinely rare.
Cernícalo is Spanish for kestrel, and the name is literal: the common kestrel breeds on the rock walls of the gorge and hunts along it. Look up at the crags rather than at your feet from time to time and you have a fair chance of seeing one hovering, wings shivering, over the slopes above the willows.
Why running water is such a big deal
Gran Canaria has hundreds of barrancos and almost all of them are dry. The islands have no rivers in the sense a British walker understands the word — rainfall is low, it arrives in short bursts, and the volcanic ground is porous, so water disappears underground within hours. The ravines that carved the island were cut by flash floods, not by streams.
The Barranco de los Cernícalos is one of a small handful of exceptions. Water percolates through the rock of the island's interior and emerges here from springs partway up the valley, running in a permanent trickle that swells after rain. That permanence is what makes the ecosystem possible. Centuries of well-digging, galleries and pumping across the island drained most of the other candidates, which is part of the long story told in our piece on where the islands' water actually comes from. This gorge survived largely because it was steep enough to be inconvenient.
The willow wood
The stream supports a strip of sauce canario, the Canarian willow (Salix canariensis), growing in a dense green tunnel along the watercourse. This is the best-preserved willow woodland on Gran Canaria, and one of the most important in the archipelago — the reason the gorge sits inside a protected area rather than being just a nice walk.
It is a strange thing to encounter. You come in through dry, hot, prickly-pear country with the smell of scrub and stone, and then the path drops into shade and the temperature falls and there is moss on the rocks and ferns in the crevices and a willow canopy over your head. The understorey has the plants that go with permanent water: reeds, brambles, mint, and in places the endemic Canary buttercup. It is a fragment of something the islands had much more of before people arrived. Our notes on the islands' plant life put it in context, and the same logic — water makes an island of a different climate — explains the laurel forests of the wetter northern ridges.
The kestrels, and what else is up there
The common kestrel is the bird of prey most visitors to the Canaries actually see, and this valley is named for a concentration of them. They nest in holes and ledges in the rock walls and hunt the open slopes above the tree line, hovering into the wind with the tail fanned. Early morning and the hour or two before dusk are the best times.
The gorge also holds Berthelot's pipit, blackcaps, chiffchaffs, the Canary Islands chaffinch on the higher ground, and — if you are patient and quiet near the water — the wild canary itself, which is a rather drab streaky green bird and nothing like the yellow thing in the cage. Buzzards and, less often, sparrowhawks work the ridges. Anyone travelling with binoculars should read our guide to birdwatching in the Canaries first, because the endemics take a bit of knowing.
There is no reliable published count of breeding pairs in the valley and we are not going to invent one. The name reflects a long-standing local association rather than a scientific census, and on a bad day you may see none at all.
The waterfall at the top
The walk finishes at a waterfall known locally as the Salto de Mora, where the stream drops down a mossy rock face into a small pool in a natural amphitheatre. It is not a Niagara — the height is modest and the flow varies enormously with the season — but the setting, wet green rock in a dry brown island, is the reward for the walk up.
Go in late winter or spring, a few days after rain, and it runs properly. Go in September after a long dry summer and it may be a dribble down a wall. Neither version is a wasted trip, but if the waterfall is your main reason for going, time it. The pool is small, cold and not really for swimming; the rocks around it are slick with algae and people injure themselves on them every year.
The route, step by step
The usual start is at Lomo Magullo, a village above Telde, where a signed track heads into the valley. The path follows the barranco floor upstream, crossing and recrossing the water on stepping stones, climbing gradually through the willow corridor and finishing at the falls. You then come back the same way.
- Distance: roughly 8 km there and back, with something in the order of 300 metres of ascent.
- Time: three to four hours at a normal pace, plus however long you sit by the water.
- Difficulty: easy to moderate. The gradient is gentle; the surface is not. Expect wet rock, loose stones, stream crossings and a few scrambly steps near the top.
- Shade: good in the gorge itself, none at all on the approach.
- Facilities: none on the route. Nearest shops and bars are in Lomo Magullo and Valsequillo.
Footwear is the thing people get wrong. Trainers are fine on the lower track and treacherous on the wet boulders higher up — boots or proper approach shoes with grip, and expect to get your feet wet at least once. Walking poles help on the crossings.
A barranco is a drainage channel, and this one drains a large catchment. Do not walk it during or immediately after heavy rain, and take a red or orange weather warning seriously: flash floods in Canarian ravines rise fast and have killed walkers. If the stream is running brown, turn round.
Getting there
The trailhead sits in the municipality of Telde, reached from the GC-1 motorway and then up through the town towards Lomo Magullo and Valsequillo — the same inland road that carries on south towards Agüimes. Driving takes around half an hour from Las Palmas and around forty-five minutes to an hour from the southern resorts. Park considerately in the village — this is somebody's street, not a car park.
Public transport is possible but awkward: buses run from Telde up towards the villages, but the frequency is village frequency rather than resort frequency, and the timings do not suit an early start. If you are relying on them, check the island bus network the evening before, and have a plan for what happens if you miss the return. A hire car makes this walk a great deal easier, and hiring on Gran Canaria is cheap enough that it is worth doing for a single day of walking.
The one thing locals know
Go on a weekday, or go early. This is not a tourist walk — it is a Gran Canarian walk, and on a fine Sunday the lower section fills with island families, dogs, children in the stream and picnics on every flat rock. It is a genuinely lovely thing to see and an absolutely terrible day to go looking for kestrels or quiet.
Arrive before nine on a Tuesday and you may well have the willow tunnel to yourself, with the light coming through the leaves and nothing audible but water and birds. That contrast — one of the busiest local walks on the island and one of the emptiest, depending entirely on which morning you choose — is the single most useful piece of advice anyone can give you about the place.
Carry your rubbish out, including fruit peel, and do not build cairns or dam the stream for photographs. The willow wood is protected precisely because there is so little of it left, and the damage here is done by well-meaning visitors rather than by anyone malicious.
What to pair it with
It works well as a morning walk followed by an afternoon somewhere else. Telde's old quarter of San Juan, down the hill, has a fine church and a quiet colonial centre that most visitors drive straight past. Further south, the Barranco de Guayadeque offers the opposite kind of ravine — dry, enormous, honeycombed with cave houses and cave restaurants — and the two together make a good day of Gran Canaria's eastern valleys.
If the walking has given you an appetite for more, the island's interior has far bigger days out on offer, from the ridge under Roque Nublo to the pine forest at Tamadaba; our guide to hiking on Gran Canaria ranks them by effort. For a swim afterwards, the eastern coast has Melenara and its line of fish restaurants fifteen minutes down the hill.
The bottom line
The Barranco de los Cernícalos is not spectacular in the way that Roque Nublo or the Maspalomas dunes are spectacular. It is a modest, shady, four-hour walk up a green crack in a dry island, ending at a small waterfall. Nobody will put it on a postcard.
It is also one of the most quietly memorable things on Gran Canaria, precisely because it is so unexpected: you do not fly to the Canaries expecting willow trees and running water. Take boots, take water, go on a weekday morning after a wet week, and you will understand why the people who live in Telde keep fairly quiet about it.