Vegetables on La Palma tend to be good, as long as they’re grown on the island, because anything local is fresh. And because the island is so full of micro-climates, the variety of fruit and vegetables grown here is astonishing. I haven’t found gooseberries here yet, and rhubarb is scarce, but I’ve found just about everything else. But the organic veg is the best of all. I wanted to hold…
Concepción is a headland on the boundary between Santa Cruz de la Palma and Breña Alta. The top is at 400m, and the sheer cliff down to the beach is about 300 ft (100 m ) high, which is about the size of a mature California redwood tree, or a Saturn V moon rocket. These days it’s got a tunnel drilled through it, but until 1917, the only way to…
Today for a change, we have an interview with another author. Hank Quense is, an American author of humorous and satiric fantasy and scifi stories. We’ll be discussing Fool’s Gold, his novel about the Rhinegold myth. Tell us a bit about yourself. I was born a long time ago, married my wife, she gave birth to two daughters. I left my day job to write stories, my daughters gave birth…
Replica of Columbus’s Santa Maria in Santa Cruz de la Palma Back when I worked for the observatory, we ocassionally gave visiting astronomers a lift up to the mountaintop. I always enjoyed detouring past the replica of Christopher Columbus’s ship, the Santa Maria, partly to see the visitor’s reaction. Astronomer: “What on earth is that!?” Me: It’s a concrete ship in the middle of the road. What’s it look like?”…
We hosted my friend Helen’s party last night, because they could sleep at our house, but we couldn’t sleep at theirs. So I cooked quiches and they bought sausage rolls, and we ordered a cake. I thought the cake sounded a bit expensive, but what the heck, it was a special occasion. When I collected it, I found out why. I’d asked for a cake for 5, but the phone…
Ferrets are a common pet here. They’re mostly used for hunting wild rabbits, which are plentiful. The trouble is that occasionally they escape. Since there are plenty of wild rabbits, they do rather well, so we also have a population of wild ferrets. In fact, it’s just been confirmed that La Palma is the island with the highest number of wild ferrets in the Canaries. The scientists say that, “the…