Originally, the final exam for the Starlight course was going to be the 26th of May, and that was when the project had to be handed in. So I booked flights to visit my friend in El Hierro for the long weekend afterwards, on the basis that I’d have earned a break by then. Then the course teachers found that it suited them better to move the exam to the…
Because La Palma is an island, the plants here evolved in isolation, and many of them are unique to the island, or to the Canaries. One of my favourites is the Tower of Jewels — Tajinaste in Spanish and in Latin, the Echium genus. It’s related to borage, and most species have a big spike with hundreds of tiny flowers. The most spectacular is Echium wildpretii, which really is…
Yesterday afternoon I should have bashed on with the Starlight Guide project and housework. Instead I took a couple of hours off and met my friend in Los Tilos. The bar there is popular with small birds (a kind of chaffinch, I think) and I couldn’t resist trying to get a photo. There was a catch, of course. Flexible though my new compact is, there’s a short delay between pressing…
Casa de los Romeros Las Nieves There are several things to see in the centre of Las Nieves, apart from the church. This house was built for pilgrims in 1653, on the site of an even older building. It’s been restored several times since then. There’s also a house (on my right as I took this photo) where they sell things like postcards, rosaries and religious medals. Canons on the…
The last practical activity on the Starlight Guide course was a trip to the observatory at the Roque de los Muchachos. The bus left Santa Cruz at 2:30 pm, and when we arrived we left our stuff in the dormitories that I didn’t even know they had up there (they converted one of the houses some time ago for groups like ours, four bunks to a room, bathroom shared between…