All about the island of La Palma, in the Canaries.
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Friday, 27 June 2008
On Top of the World
Looking east towards Tenerife.
The highest point of the island is the Roque de Los Muchachos, at 2,426m (8,000 ft) above sea level. Most days of the year, the view is spectacular. Even when it's raining at sea-level, the summit is nearly always above the clouds. In fact, you can often look down on a sea of clouds surrounding the island. Of course that's one reason why the observatory is up here.
North towards the observatory. Telescopes left to right: Herschel, Dutch Open, Mercator, Swedish Solar Tower, Newton and Kapteyn.
You also get a wonderful view into the Caldera de Taburiente. I believe the patch of bright green at the bottom here are fields near the water-manager's house, some 1,600 m (5,280 ft) below. South, along the central ridge.
The Roque is just inside the Caldera de Taburiente National Park, and part of the municipality of Garafía. When I came to La Palma, seventeen years ago, the place was as nature made it. But now that there's a road, they got enough visitors here to cause a serious problem with erosion. Now they've built paths out of local stone, and they've done a really good job of making it look natural, except for the occasional fence. It's best to keep tot he paths. If you slip on the lose gravel it's a long way down.
Roque de Los Muchachos means Rock of the Boys. The name comes from the stone pinnacles at the summit, which look vaguely like giant people.
The feast of San Juan (St. John the Baptist) is June 24th.
Many people light bonfires on St John's Eve. In the days before municipal rubbish collection, it was a practical way of having a clear out. But in Puntallana, there is a long-held folk belief that the bonfires keep away witches. Jumping over the fire is supposed to protect you from disease and the Evil Eye. It's also a great night for fortune telling, using earth, air, fire and water.
I'm sure hte people celebrating would insist that this is a Catholic festival, and nothing at all to do with the Wiccan Midsummer celebrations, which also feature bonfires.
A long time ago, a young goatherd in Puntallana fell in love. Nothing unusual about that of course, especially since the girl was very beautiful.
The trouble was that she didn't feel the same way. He was tall, handsome and athletic, but she hoped to marry someone richer. After all, a goatherd's wife worked fourteen hours a day and went hungry in the bad years.
But he wouldn't take "No," for an answer.
In the end she got so tired of his pestering that she said she'd marry him if he performed an impossible task.
Because the Palmeran Terrain is so steep and rough, the goatherds followed their flocks with the help of a long wooden pole. In fact, the pre-hispanic Awara used much the same technique and some shepherds and goatherds still do, although it's more often a local sport these days. Some of the leaps they make are spectacular.
So the girl told the goatherd that she'd marry him if he made three semi-circular leaps out over the edge of the cliff at La Galga. This was a very difficult technique, in a very dangerous place.
To her astonishment and dismay, he agreed!
The agreed day arrived, and of course at least half the village went along to watch.
"In the name of Jesus!" cried the young man, and swung out over the void.
Amazingly, he landed safely on firm ground, to everyone's relief.
"In the name of the Virgin!" he cried, and swung out again.
Again he landed safely.
"And in the name of my beloved!" he cried, and swung out for the third time.
Some say he was simply tired after the first two leaps. Some say that Heaven was offended that he put a rather vain young woman on the same standing as Jesus and the Blessed Virgin. Regardless, as he swung back towards safety, he missed his footing and dropped to his death on the rocks far below.
They also say that the girl went mad with grief and never married at all.
Today a statue marks the site of the tragedy. Take the road north from Santa Cruz, towards Los Sauces, and turn off at the village of La Galga, following the sign for San Bartolome. There are two viewpoints. The lower one, beside the church, has a fantastic view of a bridge over a ravine. But if you carry on the top of the mountain, you get a view of all Puntallana, plus the statue.
And here's a short video of the technique for getting down a steep hill, using the pole.
La Palma is home to one of the three most important astronomical observatories in the world. (The other two are Hawaii and the Atacama desert in Chile.) The observatory sits at the top of the island, at the Roque de los Muchachos.
It's a fascinating place to visit, but it's not normally open to tourists - they're too busy doing science.
You can visit the mountain top and see the buildings from the outside any day of the year. But please note:
Days only, not nights. The William Herschel Telescope could see a candle on the moon, and the MAGIC telescope is even more sensitive. They really don't like car headlights. Some years ago there was an incident some years ago where a bus shone its lights right at the Herschel's dome. Now there's a barrier across the road which is shut a little before sunset, and raised a little after dawn.
The road to the observatory is usually blocked for a few days each winter, by snow or landslides. Use your common sense. If the sign at the bottom of the mountain road says it's blocked, don't go up. I once rescued a couple of German tourists who'd spent the night in the car in the drainage ditch, after going past the sign, thinking that the weather couldn't be all that bad in the Canaries. It can. That night it was thick fog, 60 mph winds, and -5ºC. Thank God they didn't try to walk, because they'd have frozen to death for sure.
Sine the MAGIC gamma ray telescope doesn't have a building, you get quite a good view from the outside. You can get fairly close by parking on one of the helipads (the bottom left as you go up the hill). From there, a footpath goes closer, and there's a display panel that explains how the telescope works.
The observatory is open to visitors for a few days a year. This year's dates haven't been decided yet. You reserve your place on the form at http://www.iac.es/orm/visitas/novedad/visitas.htm Each visit lasts about two hours, and you get a guided tour in English or Spanish (say which when you book!) round several telescopes. Be warned that the schedule sometimes slips, and you might have to wait around.
They also hold private visits, usually for schools or visiting astronomers. You can email your request to adminorm@iac.es. Ana, who reads the email, speaks English. To be honest, they're unlikely to organise a visit for the average tourist, but if there's a visit organised anyway, you might be able to tag along. Cross your fingers!
When I annouce that we're having green beans for dinner, our 11-year-old usually says, "Thank you, Mummy!"
I don't think I'd get that reaction with plain boiled beans. Of course, it helps of the beans are really fresh. These came from Puntagorda farmers' market.
Serves four polite people or three hungry ones as a main course.
Ingredients: About 700 g of green beans 150g bacon (in narrow strips) 2-3 cloves garlic 1 red pepper 1 small-medium leek or onion. 1 stock cube (vegetable, ham or chicken) Olive oil to fry. A large frying pan or wok.
Method: Chop the garlic finely. Chop the leek or onion and red pepper fairly coarsely. Fry garlic, leek, pepper and the bacon over a low heat while you top and tail the beans. Add the beans, stir and put on the lid.
Ignore for about 20 minutes (apart from occasional stirring) while you have a glass of wine and chat to your other half.
You see a lot of flags on La Palma. Most English visitors will recognise the flags of Spain and the European Union.
But the Canary Islands are an autonomous region within Spain, and they have their own flag too. You see it a lot, especially around May 30th, which is Canary Day.
And then each island has its own flag. Here's the flag of La Palma:
And as if that weren't enough, La Palma has 14 municipalities, of which twelve have their own flag.
Santa Cruz
Breña Baja
Los Llanos
El Paso
Barlovento
Breña Alta
Garafía
Mazo
Tijarafe
Puntagorda
Puntallana
Tazacorte
(The other two municipalities are San Andres y Sauces and Fuencaliente)
Puntagorda is a village and municipality in the north west of the island. Every Saturday and Sunday, they have a farmers' market and craft fair in the Mercadillo, which is at the north of the village, near the Fayal picnic area.
Like most farmers' markets, the vegetables are fresher and cheaper than most supermarkets. There are also stalls selling organic wholemeal bread, sugar cane juice (with or without rum) cakes and meat. One stall just sold papayas.
The craft section had silver jewelry, hand-made furniture, leatherwork, and artwork prints.
My father was a botanist, so he really looked forward to his first trip to La Palma. One of the plants he most hoped to find were burr marigolds - Bidens alba. But he later said he was trying not to hope too much in case he was disappointed.
That made me laugh, because they're an extremely common roadside weed. In fact they're a right nuisance for exactly the same reason that made them exciting to my father.
They have seeds that stick to your clothes. I mean really stick. A washing machine cycle won't shift the darn things. You have to pick them off one by one, and it's easy to get hundred of them. Small boys and dogs are particularly good collectors.
The local name for them is "Amorsecalo" which seems to be either a mangled version of "unrequited love" (because it's a pain, and hard to get rid of) or "Get it off, love", because you need help with the ones around the back.
Oh, and the butterfly is Colias crocea. The tops of the wings are prettier than the undersides, but they always settle like this, just to annoy photographers.
There's a new musical project in Santa Cruz de la Palma with backing from local government. On Saturdays, Sundays, and Public holidays, there's often free live music somewhere. So far six groups have joined the scheme, and almost every day, more businesses sign up.
This is a Cuban-style group called Chango, playing at the Kiosko de Eliseo halfway up the Avenida del Puente. They played from noon until about half-past two, and very good they were too.
The viewpoint (or mirador) at El Time is perched on the northern edge of the Angustias ravine. Coming from Los Llanos, you drive down and down and down, round some pretty steep bends. After you cross the river, almost at sea-level, you drive up and up and up and up and up, until you're seventeen hundred feet up (535 m). There's a small car park on each side of the road.
The view is spectacular, all the way from El Paso to the coast. Even better, there's a bar right on the edge. Weather permitting, you can admire the view while you sip your coffee and eat cake (rather good cake, too). There's a craft shop beside the bar. And you can admire the view without going into either, if you're not thirsty.
A word of warning, though: the toilets are down steps. This isn't a problem for most people, but four years ago I had a broken shoulder and broken ankle at the same time, and I needed a lot of help to get down there. It's times like that when you really appreciate your friends!
The Sanctuary of Anguish (Santuario de Las Angustias)
The Church of Our Lady's anguish lies near the bottom of Las Angustias Ravine, where the river Taburiente runs out of the Caldera. (Well, they take a lot of the water for irrigation, so in the middle of summer it trickles. That still makes it the only year-round river in the Canaries). To find it, take the road from Los Llanos to Tijarafe. Just north of the bridge over the river, take the side road towards Puerto Tazacorte. The church is on the left, about 200 yards from the junction.
Inside view
The inside of the church is beautiful. The main statue in the altarpiece is Mary holding her dead son, by a Flemish artist from the 16th century. That's where the name of the church comes from. She's flanked by St Michael (16th century) and St Ambrose (17h or 18th century). But personally, the bit I find really striking is the painted ceiling.
That amazing ceiling
Beautiful carving is surprisingly common in churches on La Palma. It mostly dates from the days when the island got rich supplying sailing ships for the trip to America. This church has two other claims to fame. The first is that for some reason, it's traditional for older couples to marry here. I mean couples over about fifty, who won't be having children short of a miracle. The other is the collection of votive wax offerings on either side of the altar. Some were left by Canarian emigrates about to leave for Cuba or Venezuela. Others were left in gratitude for a cure, and to my English eyes, these look almost surreal. So if you prayed for a baby and finally got one, you'd leave a little waxwork baby. If your prayer for arthritis-free hands was granted, you'd leave a waxwork hand. There are at least two wax hearts, and at the top right, there's a breast. I can only imagine that somebody survived cancer.
This is a gecko. They like to live in warm buildings or on sunny walls outside, and this one lives in my house. I think he must have got too close to one of my cats because his tail's regrowing. You see, if they're in serious danger of being eaten, their tails come off and provide a wriggling decoy while the gecko runs away.
He spent most of yesterday on this smooth vertical wall. They can walk across ceilings too, like Spiderman. I think he might have been asleep, since he never moved, although it's hard to tell because they don't have eyelids. I rather like to have him around, because they eat insects, including mosquitoes. When they hunt, they stalk the insect slowly until they get close enough, then the tongue flicks out and grabs the unfortunate bug, and that's that.
The really surprising thing about them is their call. It sounds like the chuckle of a mad axe-murderer, which is quite alarming when you're alone in the house and you haven't a clue what it is.
Galaxy M51 taken with the Isaac Newton Telescope and Wide Field Camera by Simon Driver.
There's a really simple reason why the Royal Greenwich Observatory moved their telescopes here. It's one of the three best places in the world for astronomy.
The observatory was founded in 1675 by Charles II of England - hence the "royal" for £520 (£20 over budget!). It was the first purpose-built scientific research facility in Britain.
At the time, Greenwich was a great place to build it - away from the air pollution of London, but near enough for His Majesty to pop over when he felt like it.
And then London grew and grew and swallowed Greenwich whole, and the smog got worse and worse. And streetlights became common, so the whole sky glowed. The observatory moved to Herstmonceux Castle on the south coast of Britain. This solved the problem with London, but they still had the British weather to contend with. Meanwhile, air travel was getting cheaper. When they were ready to build the next generation of telescopes, it made sense to look for a really good site.
A modern telescope could see the equivalent of a candle on the moon, so obviously they want to be well away from city lights. Even more obviously, they want to be somewhere that doesn't get many cloudy nights.
Much less obviously, they want to be somewhere the stars don't twinkle. This happens when the air's turbulent. It's pretty, but it really messes up your view.
There are three places in the world which are great on all three counts, and La Palma is one of them. (The other two are the peak of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and the Atacama Desert in Chile.)
The problem is to keep it that way.
When the observatory moved here, they asked for, and got, an agreement to limit things like street lights. Los Llanos has a street with lamps which remind me of 1950's hairdryers - the sort that go all around your head.
Recently the island government committed to spending over a million euros to update the streetlights to reduce the light pollution even further.
The result of all this is that La Palma is a great place for amateur astronomers, too. Even in a resort, people notice how many more stars you see here, compared to almost any English town or city. Here's another picture of M51 taken by my friends in Franceses with an 80mm amateur telescope on their first night's astronomy since they moved here. Of course there's a lot of skill involved too. But they used to live in Streatham, and no amount of skill would produce that kind of result there.
Friday is Canary Day. It's a big thing here, and the celebrations have started already.
On Wednesday evening they had bouncy castles in the port car park. This was shortly followed by a foam machine. The kids loved it. My son was so delighted that he dived in with all his clothes on. I'd have been seriously tempted to join in except that I had my expensive camera with me. So I had to stay upwind of the fun.
Tomorrow most schools will have a party for the second half of the morning. They'll serve traditional food and play traditional folk music. Some will have Canarian sports. And the real celebration is still to come.
There are lots of good viewpoints on La Palma, but one of my favourites is Los Andennes, where you get an amazing view into the Caldera.
The viewpoint is between km 32 and 33 on the road from Santa Cruz to the Roque de los Muchachos, and there's parking for several cars. Most days of the year, you're well above the clouds, often looking down on them. Soemtimes the Caldera is full of cloud, which is impressive in its way, but not nearly as good as the times when the crater is full of fluffy little clouds and you can see between them all the way to the bottom, some 4,000 ft below.
To your right, you can see Robert's Wall which has a legend attached to it.
Like a lot of places, San José in Breña Baja celebrates Corpus Christi (the body of Christ) on the Sunday ten weeks after Easter Sunday. Traditionally, they make carpets out of coloured salt, like this one from 2006. (You can see more at http://sheilacrosby.com/fiestas.php .)
Corpus Christi (the body of Christ) is a big festival in Mazo. They decorate the streets with spectacular archways and carpets covered with flowers and seeds.
The main feast day is ten weeks after Maundy Thursday, so this year it's very early. (In 2009 it will be on the 11th of June).
People collect the materials and work on the pieces pretty much all year, but it all comes together on a Wednesday night, so Thursday morning is the best time to see the archways.
If you can't see them then, they stay up until Sunday. The church of San Blas, at the bottom of the hill, gets decorated too. It's a rather unusual church in that it has three naves.
And the flowers inside are wonderful. If you get there, check out the ceiling over the altar, too.
This is the 50th anniversary of the fiesta in its current form.
The carpets beneath the archways are made using things rather like wrought iron gates, as stencils. They lay the "gate" down on the sand, fill the sections with petals or whatever, squirt with water-with-a-bit-of-glue-in-it, and lift the gate up again.
And anyway, you're on holiday, aren't you? Relax, take it slow, and enjoy the spectacular scenery. After all, that lovely scenery is the reason for the twisty roads.
And if you get stuck behind an old man driving at 30 km/h, count yourself lucky. I seem to get constantly stuck behind one who drives at 25 km/h.
The Corn Poppy, Field Poppy, Flanders Poppy, or Red Poppy is easily the commonest. This is the poppy that mostly grows wild in fields.
Eschscholzia Californica , the California Poppy.
The next commonest comes from California, which has a similar climate.
Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy.
And then there's the opium poppies, which are presumably garden escapes.
Argemone mexicana Mexican prickly poppy. And finally the prickly yellow poppies, which are an invasive species that come from Mexico. These aren't nearly as easy to find.
This is the Palmeran Violet, Viola palmensis. It only grows on La Palma, above 1,900 m. (There's a similar violet on Tenerife, but it has smaller flowers). It used to be rare, but the island government has a program of replanting areas. You can find them beside the road from Santa Cruz to the Roque de los Muchachos well above the tree line.
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 away, leaving the harder basalt sticking out like a wall.]
The story is that Roberto was madly in love with a girl who lived the other side of the wall, and he couldn't get through. Eventually the devil appeared to him and promised to carry Roberto's body through in exchange for Roberto's soul.
Roberto was daft enough to agree.
With a great flash of light, the devil blasted a hole through the dyke and left Roberto's dead body on the far side. He'd already taken the soul.
If a beach is all you're after, then frankly you're better off in Tenerife. But if a beach is part of the mix, then we have two main beach resorts, 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, black sand warms up in the sun faster than yellow sand, which is decidedly nice for winter holidays.
Cancajos is on the east of the island, which is comparatively cool, cloudy and wet. (But I do mean "comparatively". It's still a much nicer climate than, say, Manchester.) That also makes the surrounding countryside much greener.
The beach
If you like to swim a long way off shore, the east side of the island is safer, because the ocean currents push you back towards the shore, rather than out to sea. If you're a less confident swimmer and like to stay closer in, the two artificial islands break up the Atlantic rollers. This makes it a great beach for kids.
And for small children, there's a large natural rock pool, perhaps fifteen feet across, with almost no waves at all. The depth depends on the tides, but the bottom is sand and slopes gently.
Amenities Lots of shops, cafés, and restaurants, some of them very close to the beach. Tourist Information office. A climbing frame shaped like a ship on the beach. A few free fresh-water showers, plus changing rooms available for a small fee.
Local Colour There's a very pleasant walk along the top of small cliffs, to the south of the main beach, smooth and flat enough for a push-chair.
Transfer to and from the airport is only about ten minutes. You will hear the planes. They're not very loud, but it could bother light sleepers.
Transport Buses to the airport and Santa Cruz every half hour. Several hire car firms have offices in the shopping centre. 4 km walk to Santa Cruz (the island's capital).
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