On Saturday April 6th, La Palma will host an extreme bike race called Ultrabike. Actually, there are two races, a short one of 34 km and a long one of 110 km. Both routes go through gorgeous scenery in the south of the island, and both involve lots of climbing. For example, the high point of the long ride is 1,575 m above sea-level, but the total climbs add up…
Tuesday 17th is the fiesta of San Antonio Abad (St. Anthony the Abbot) in Fuencaliente, and at midday the priest holds a special, traditional service to bless the animals in the church square. I went a couple of years ago, out of curiosity. I didn’t know whether to expect pets or farm animals, but there was a charnming selection of both. At twelve promptly, the priest came out, gave a…
The oldest rocks on La Palma are 2,000,000 years old, which is very young for geology. But the youngest rocks are just 40 years old, and it’s their birthday this month. The Teneguía volcano erupted during October and November of 1971. My husband was a teenager at the time, and he remembers going to see it from the San Antonio volcano, and he remembers hearing the deep rumbles at…
Tourists sometimes go nuts trying to find the village of Breña Baja, or Fuencaliente. There’s a really simple reason why they can’t find them. They don’t exist. Breña Baja and Fuencaliente are municipalities, and their town halls are in the villages of San Jose and Los Canarios, respectively. It like driving all over the south east of England, looking for the town of Sussex. The map shows the 14 municipalities…
On Sunday I continued my walk around the island, from Montes de Luna to Los Canarios. Unlike previous sections, this part of the path doesn’t run through villages, criss-crossing the main road. It goes through the lonely middle of nowhere, and I wasn’t sure whether there’d be mobile coverage. Walking alone seemed like a bad idea. Not that there was any particular reason to expect an accident, just that twenty…
Thursday is the feast of St John the Baptist. On La Palma, they have the very sensible custom of holding the party on the night before the public holiday, so that everyone can sleep late the morning after. Since fiestas often go on until the early hours, sleeping in next morning is delicious. In Catholic countries, people celebrate the feast of St John with bonfires. (Any similarity to pagan midsummer…