..after you made other plans. Here’s what was supposed to happen today: I had a group of students to show around two telescopes. Since they were going up in a bus from Los Cancajos and the weather forecast was poor, I arranged to drive to Los Cancajos, leave my car there, and go up with them in the bus. This would avoid the usual confusion created by bad weather…
Although La Palma has more water than the other Canary Islands, many farmers used to be desperately poor and frequently hungry. The only water for irrigation was rainwater, and obviously they had no control over how much they got. Then somebody suggested digging into the hillside to find water. (If anybody knows who, please tell me.) The idea is that much of the rainwater seeps into the ground, and runs…
La Palma has a network of marked hiking trails. The LP 19, in Breña Alta runs up from San Pedro, past a series of springs, into the lower end of San Isidro, and back down to the main road. Like most of these paths, the scenery is beautiful and keeps changing. And this path included bonuses. Several of the springs feed laundry bowls. Since it’s easier to carry clothes than…
Cubo de la Galga is a very pretty walk along the bottom of the Galga ravine, between Puntallana and Los Sauces. By Palmeran standards, it’s an easy walk. There is now a car park at the beginning of the walk, on the road at km 16. You’re unlikely to get lost for the first kilometre or so, because the path’s actually asphalted, never mind signposted. It’s a matter of taste,…
One of my favourite bits of tourist feedback about La Palma island was the disgruntled Brit who described Los Tilos as: “Just a load of trees.” Well yes. And Beethoven’s Ninth is just a load of notes, and the Mona Lisa is just a load of paint. Los Tilos, in San Andres and Los Sauces, is home to one of the best surviving laurel forests in the world. The other…
La Palma has a network of well-marked footpaths, most of which are centuries old. As late as the 1960s, walking was still a major form of transport for the islanders, The whole network of hiking trails on the island comes to over 1,000 km, and between them they pass through just about every kind of scenery on the island: lava fields, pine forests, lush laurel forests, farmland and village centres….