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?” Astronomer: “Concrete!?” One astronomer even begged us to stop, so…
Casa Lujan is much more fun than you’d expect from the brochures, which describe it as an “ethnographic museum”. But it’s not a collection of stuff in dusty display cases. It’s an 18th century house, with whole rooms restored to show how the comfortably-off lived between about 1920 and 1960. Even better, there are people “living” in the house. And rather than…
A new adventure playground has opened quite close to the barbecue site at El Pilar in Breña Alta, up in the pine forest. It’s called ACROPARK, and they have three different circuits for different ages and daring, from the kids’ circuit with 13 activities, where you’re never more than a metre off the ground, to the senior one with 20 activities, where you get as much as 7 m up….
One of the best archaeological sites on La Palma is La Zarza and La Zarzita, in Garafía. You have to walk, but it’s a beautiful stroll through woods of heather and bayberry trees. Yes, heather is a tree here – see the top photo. The whole walk takes about an hour, and first bit of the path is the steepest. It’s clearly signposted. You reach La Zarza first. Here there…
The Red House, Mazo La Palma’s embroidery museum is upstairs in the Red House in Mazo. (I’ll write about that in my next post.) Downstairs is a museum about the fiesta of Corpus Christi in Mazo. If you’re on La Palma for June 3rd next year, for goodness’ sake go and see it. If not, I strongly recommend the museum. Some of the things used to make the Corpus Christi…
La Palma has a long history of silk production, going back to the 16th century. In fact, at one time, silk was made in all the Canary Islands, but since the 19th century, El Paso, in the centre of La Palma, is the only place which still produces it. They use an old fashioned, labour-intensive technique, the only place in Europe which still does so. You can see most of…