Better late than never, right? It’s now almost a year since I bought my new DSLR. The Pentax K 70 is supposed to be good for night photography, but I haven’t done nearly as much of it as I wanted. It seems like almost every night, either I’ve been exhausted, or I’ve had to get up early, or there’s been high clouds or Sahara dust. So I made an extra…
Corpus Christi is a Catholic fiesta to celebrate the body of Christ. In Mazo they celebrate by creating big archways and carpets decrated with petals, seeds and leaves. In San Jose they mostly make carpets with coloured sea salt. Rather obligingly, Mazo’s archways go up on Wednesday night and San Jose’s on Saturday night, so it’s much easier to get to both. Mazo is the more famous…
On Friday night San Jose had a drag queen fiesta, and my husband took the chance to dance on stage. He’s been out in carnival with this costume and got great feedback, but this was the first time he performed on stage. So now he has a stage name, “Libelula” which is Spanish for dragonfly. The other two artists performing were “Señorita Clarita” and “Alexandra López”. I thought they were all very good.
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…
If a beach is all you want for your holiday, then frankly you’re better off in Tenerife. But if a beach is part of the mix, then we have two main beach resorts, Los Cancajos and Puerto Naos. Our sand is like the Model T Ford – “Any colour you like, as long as it’s black”. When the sea mashes up black, volcanic rock, that’s what you get. However,…
Fiesta de La Cruz is a major festival in Santa Cruz de La Palma, Breña Alta, and Breña Baja. On the night of May 2nd (Saturday), practically all the roadside crosses in Santa Cruz, Breña Baja and Breña Alta will be decorated, most of them gorgeously. The people who worked on them sit close all night, usually making a party of it and setting off lots of fire-crackers. This…