When I first came to La Palma, the tourist office was in temporary accommodation in the third floor of an office building, with absolutely nothing at street-level to indicate where it was. Basically, you had to ask a local to find it. Obviously this left something to be desired, so they put up two signs: one at the south end of town pointing north, and one at the north end,…
Artefuego glassblowing studio is at the back of Plaza Sotomayor, where they hold the Argual flea market every Sunday. It’s a good idea to combine the two, because they hold public demonstrations on Sundays between 10 am and 2 pm. They combine fragments of lava into their creations, and to the best of their knowledge, they’re the only people in the world to do so. This makes every piece unique….
La Palma has lots and lots of wildflowers at this time of year. We even have five different poppies on La Palma. The Corn Poppy, Field Poppy, Flanders Poppy, or Red Poppy is easily the commonest. This is the poppy that mostly grows wild in fields. The next commonest comes from California, which has a similar climate. And then there’s the opium poppies, which are presumably garden escapes. And finally…
Well actually, it’s the salt of the sea. Almost all salt on La Palma is sea salt, made at the southernmost tip of the island. You can visit the salt pans by taking a number 203 bus from the centre of Los Canarios to the lighthouse (Faro in Spanish). There’s a bus every two hours for most of the day. It’s a simple process. The salt water is pumped into…
If you want to get really close to nature and have really cheap accommodation, you can’t do better than one of the camping sites on the island. They’re open all year round, but be aware that it can be cold in winter, and it’s quite likely to rain. You have to pay before you put the tent up, but you don’t have to book in advance except for the Caldera….
This photo was taken from the viewpoint at Los Andennes, where you get a spectacular view into the Caldera. From here you can see a dyke called La Pared de Roberto (Robert’s Wall). It’s about four metres high (13ft). [Volcanic dykes are formed when moulten lava fills a crack in the rock and solidifies slowly into very hard rock called basalt. Later on the softer, surrounding rock is eroded…