One of the best places to admire the Caldera de Taburiente is La Cumbrecita, a notch in the south-east wall of the crater. You get there by taking the main road between Santa Cruz and Los Llanos to the Caldera Visitors’ Centre (above El Paso). Because the car park at La Cumbrecita is small, you have to go into the visitors’ centre and book a place in the queue (tip,…
Teaser: “The Island” – La Palma Time Lapse Video from Christoph Malin on Vimeo. Enjoy Christoph Malin’s wonderful time-lapse video of La Palma. He very nearly does the place justice.
No writing, but I did survive the Caldera trip. It didn’t help that it was raining when we set off on Saturday morning. We held a discussion in Los Llanos bus station, and decided to go anyway, even though obviously we wouldn’t be stargazing or leaving via the river bed as planned. The mini buses had no trouble driving over the ford, and dropping us off at Los Brecitos. Then…
A couple of weeks ago, I promised more photos of the Caldera de Taburiente. At the top of the Caldera there’s a rock formation that from one angle looks distinctly like Napoleon Bonepart, or an indian. So it’s called Boniface or El Indio. This photo is taken from below the Roque de las Viñas, beside the vineyard. The best viewpoint has a lethal drop and no guard rail. It’s totally…
The heart of La Palma is the Caldera de Taburiente. Caldera is a technical geological term for the crater at the top of a volcano. In fact the term comes from La Palma: all the volcanic calderas in the world were named after ours. So it’s really a pity that, since then, the scientists have found out that the Caldera de Taburiete isn’t a caldera. It was actually formed by…
The people who lived on La Palma before the Spanish arrived in 1493 called the island Benahoare, and themselves Benahorita. (Or according to some people, Benawara and Benawaritas. They insist their spelling is correct. I find this odd, because to me the correct spelling would be the one the people themselves used, only they didn’t write.) The Benahorita probably arrived on La Palma somewhere between 1000 BC and 100 BC,…