If there is a place full of mystery in the island of Tenerifethat without a doubt, is the Barranco de Badajoz. Located in the municipality of Guimaris a wild place visited by athletes dedicated to the speleology, hikers and countless onlookers who arrive at least as far as the place where an old gallery from which water was extracted remains closed; Between kicking and kicking, hundreds of people end up arriving throughout the year in this magical place, either when the sun still shines high in the sky or when it sets and the abrupt terrain takes on other meanings. who want hiking You should know that the route has a total distance of about six kilometers, round trip and its level is not very complicated, but there are narrow steps and the end of the road reaches a mound of stones on a wall, which to get around them you have to ” climb” – some speleologists have left their nails there. The ravine is included in the Las Siete Lomas Protected Landscape, classified as Canary Islands Natural Area.
The Cave of the Canizo
It is a ravine that was populated by the Guanches -what they called him Chamoco Ravine– before the conquest by the Castilla’s crown and in some of its caves, such as the famous Cueva del Cañizo, is where the aura of mystery almost begins in this canyon that begins to open in Las Cañadas del Teide and comes to an end in the middle of the Güímar valley.
At almost 100 meters high this Cueva del Cañizo owes its name to twelve rods of cane that are placed in the upper part of the roof and that can be seen from the bed of the ravine. The difficult access to this place has not allowed for in-depth studies. The reeds could well have been used to dry foods such as meat or cheese. Little is known about it, although there are stories that point to it as a summer stay of the Mencey Acaymo and after his son añaterve. Perhaps it was so, or as pointed out Francisco Remedios Acosta The cave could have been used by the Guanches to carry out ritual practices: “It consists of placing wooden crossbars (hurdles) at the top of the cave. The corpse would be placed on top of the wood so that it would be disembodied by the birds (guirres), in this way the body of the deceased was transported to the afterlife” . In the XIX century, Sabine of Berthelot mention the “gymnastic combat” of the aborigines and among those duels one stands out: “Of all the feats, the most audacious consisted of climbing the almost inaccessible escarpments, to plant huge wooden poles on them, which they left fixed on the cliff as honorable memories”. La Cueva del cañizo is so difficult to access that it is only possible to access it by rappelling down from the top of the ravine wall, and even then it is quite complicated.
The water galleries
Since the 19th century, various galleries have been excavated to look for the water filtered in the rocks. This much-needed commodity on the island is essential for supplying the crops located in the midlands and on the coast of the municipality of Güímar. In total seven galleries were excavated: Izaña, Acaymo, El Almagre, Chamoco, Aceviño, Our Lady of Help, El Cañizo. A total of more than 14,930 meters have been excavated in these galleries, not counting the length of the Izaña gallery, of which its exact length is not known today.
Acaymo’s gallery, also known as the Black Cave, can be found under the so-called child’s face, and has a length of 1,975 meters. The Almagre gallery It is the first of those found on the right side of the Barranco de Badajoz and its length is 2,900 meters. In front of this gallery, on the other side of the ravine, we can see an alluvial fan inside which we find the Chamoco’s gallery, which is the most hidden gallery in this ravine and with its 4,086 meters in length, it would be the longest, although the extension of the Izaña gallery is unknown. The Aceviño gallery has a length of 2,275 meters on both sides of its entrance there are buildings that served as accommodation for the workers as well as to house the machines and the necessary material to carry out their work. The gallery of Our Lady of Help It measures 1,879 meters. The gallery of El Canizo It owes its name to the Cueva del Cañizo that is located right in front. With a length of 1,815 meters, it is the shortest gallery in the Barranco de Badajoz. It was closed due to a terrible danger in which several accidents occurred since, in addition to the gases or landslides, it has a well in the middle of the road in which it would not be difficult to fall. The Izana’s gallery Excavation began in 1912 and it is the oldest of all. Its exact length is unknown since after finishing the official excavations, others were carried out – let’s say that they were legal – and the work extended over several branches. It has suffered several landslides, such as those produced after the heavy rains of 2002, so it is risky to venture inside to record its extension.
The Abysses of the Badajoz Ravine
Legend has it that one fine day the gallery workers abandoned their work tools, their homes and, without looking back, fled the place. Why? What was the fact that drove them away from their work, the only means they had to survive?
Not a few have been the investigators of the mystery who have tried to solve these questions. The elders of the place say that in 1912, dhe miners who were struggling unsuccessfully to find a viable gallery, collapsed a wall where they came face to face with two wonderful beings of light. Thus, one of the legends tells that these beings invited them to accompany them and indicated an ideal place to dig. Another version, on the contrary, affirms that fear took hold of them and they escaped from there to look for the Civil Guard and denounce what had happened to them. However, there are no documents that corroborate that they fled and went to the barracks of the meritorious woman to denounce; The reality is that, since the flight, no one has dared to live in the Barranco de Badajoz.
Although the galleries were abandoned, water is still being extracted and stories of mysteries continue to bubble around this place. And light is the common denominator because the beings of light have been succeeded by spheres of white light that take over the cold of the night and that despite this makes the environment pleasant, warm.
A door to another dimension
The Barranco de Badajoz also has a “door to another dimension“. It is at least what some avid expeditioners of the mystery recounted and who assured that “some winged beings were coming to welcome them”. There is a photograph of that experience by Teyo Bermejo (1991), who “without knowing what or who was shooting his camera, captured a snapshot of a supposed creepy being. Years later, Bermejo returned to the ravine to get more images: on that occasion he managed to portray the well-known white light spheres that danced among the vegetation of the ravine.
Those who have dared to spend a night in the bowels of the Badajoz Ravine, most of them skeptical, usually confirm the next day that they have not spent the evening alone: they hear murmurs of men and women who converse unintelligibly, voices coming out of the walls of the ravine and that seem to remove the stones from the interior of the Earth itself.
The girl with the pears
the legend of the Pear Girl It is one of the most popular and at the same time it is also the one that has undergone the most transformations over time. According to the references, this legend arose at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, specifically between 1890 and 1910. And it reads as follows: “Some parents sent their daughter to the Barranco de Badajoz in search of fruit, but the girl disappeared. The area was thoroughly searched by the residents of Güímar, but the girl did not appear. At least it didn’t immediately. To the surprise of her parents, the girl knocked on the door of her house several decades later, her parents had aged, but she did not. In front of the door of the house there she was, with the same aspect that she had the same day that she disappeared.
What the girl told after her appearance was that she had gone to the ravine to get the fruit that her parents had told her to pick, but exhausted she fell asleep at the foot of a pear tree, where she was later woken up by a very tall being dressed in white. Far from being frightened, that being inspired confidence in him and he agreed to accompany him as he had asked. The girl she followed that strange being into a cave where there were some stairs down which they descended. At the end of the descent they found themselves in a garden where there were more beings like the one that had guided her there, all dressed in white. For the girl, she only tarried for a few minutes with them until her strange companion led her back out of the cave and said goodbye to her. For her, only a short period of time had passed, but for her parents, 20 years had passed.
