I’ve been showing an international group of journalists around La Palma for the tourist board. So I took them to all the most beautiful parts of the beautiful island, and we ate in the best restaurants, and we had good conversations and I got paid for it. But then I suppose that somebody has to do it. On Saturday we watched the sunset from the dome of the enormous…
..after you made other plans. Here’s what was supposed to happen today: I had a group of students to show around two telescopes. Since they were going up in a bus from Los Cancajos and the weather forecast was poor, I arranged to drive to Los Cancajos, leave my car there, and go up with them in the bus. This would avoid the usual confusion created by bad weather…
This morning when I finished work I went up to the Roque itself to relax and admire the view. Helen Loth kindly agreed to take a photo of me with my book and the telescopes. While we were doing that, Carmelo the raven came to say “Hello”. Well no, he really came to…
Last night was the famous sardine’s funeral in Los Sauces. As usual, there were lots of amazing costumes: some ingenious, some cheap and cheerful, some extravagant, many humourous. It’s traditional to serve fried sardines, and very tasty they are too. One group brought along this amazing fairy tale coach. They were inviting children to have their photo taken in it. Being a…
Spain stayed out of both world wars, so they don’t celebrate Remembrance Day in November. They have Peace Day instead, which schools celebrate on January 30th. In Primary school they wear something white, or mostly white (if the children remembered to tell Mummy), and usually they go into the village centre and sing a song. At high school, the teachers try to work a peace theme into the lesson. For…
Although La Palma has more water than the other Canary Islands, many farmers used to be desperately poor and frequently hungry. The only water for irrigation was rainwater, and obviously they had no control over how much they got. Then somebody suggested digging into the hillside to find water. (If anybody knows who, please tell me.) The idea is that much of the rainwater seeps into the ground, and runs…