Don’t. You can’t. And it’s dangerous to try.
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.
Almond blossom in Garafía
The north-west of the island is home to great many almond trees, and at this time of the year, they’re all blossoming.
Puntagorda covered with almond blossom in late January
The trees in El Paso and Garafía are beautiful, but the best display of all is at Puntagorda. In fact Puntagorda hosts an annual almond blossom fiesta. The date varies — the Town Hall sets it a couple of weeks in advance, to (hopefully) coincide with the best blossom. This year it’s planned for February 1st-3rd. I’ll be giving more details nearer the date.
Almond blossom, goats and a dragon tree in Puntagorda
Dragon tree at sunset, Buracas, Garafía
The north of La Palma is one of the best places to see dragon trees. These exotic-looking plants grow throughout the Canary Islands, and also in Cape Verde, the Azores, Maderia, and western Morocco, but on La Palma, they’re still reproducing naturally.
The Canary Islands used to have a large, flightless bird, something like a Dodo. This bird ate dragon tree fruits, so the seeds evolved to have a hard protective covering to survive the bird’s digestive tract. Now that the bird is extinct, this covering makes it had for the seed to germinate. In other places they put the seeds in an acid bath for a few hours (much like the inside of a bird) to remove the hard coating before planting the seed.
The Latin name is Dracaena draco. Although they grow anything up to 12 metres tall, botanically, dragon trees aren’t trees. They don’t have annual rings, for one thing. Actually, they’re classified in the same order (Asparagales) as garlic and asparagus, although they look nothing like each other. In fact, young dragon trees look like giant loo brushes and mature ones look like broccoli on steroids.
Because they don’t have annual rings, it’s hard to tell their age. The trunk branches every time they flower, which isn’t every year. So you can tell how often a trees has flowered, and make an educated guess at its age that way. The tree in the photo has flowered just twice. The oldest ones seem to be about 650 years old.
The resin is reddish. In ancient Roman times, people used to dry it and sell it to alchemists as dragon blood. It must have fetched a packet.
One of the best places to see them is at Buracas, below the village of Las Tricias in Garafía which is where I took the sunset photo. The photo below is of another lovely group at La Tosca, in Barlovento, which you can see from a viewpoint on the main road from Barlovento village to Gallegos. And there’s the famous twin dragon treesin Breña Alta.
Dragon trees at La Tosca, Barlovento
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 to the 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.
And these are the “boys” themselves.
White horse parading at San Antonio del Monte
This weekend will see the biggest livestock fair on the island, in Garafía.
Ram with curly horns on show at San Antonio del Monte fair
San Antonio del Monte used to be a village, but the villagers moved away. About the only thing that’s left is the church of St. Anthony and the feast day, with it’s massive fair. Apart from the animals, there’s a craft fair, and of course lots of stalls selling cheap toys, food and drink.
The chapel at San Antonio del Monte
It’s a pretty enough little church, and for most of the weekend it will be crowded with people visiting the saint and touching his belt.
Touching the statue's belt for a blessing
On Sunday, after the special mass, the statues are taken out to the fairground in a procession, and the priest blesses the animals.
The traditional blessing for the animals
The weather can be baking hot, but as you can see from the photos, sometimes the clouds blow in. It’s a good idea to take both sunscreen and jumpers.
After the procession and blessing, they have live music and dancing.
Couple dancing at the fiesta
The Roque de Los Muchachos at night by Manel Soria
Manel Soria, who gave a talk on night photography at FotoNature 2012 now has amazing photos of La Palma on his website at www.frikosal.net
The photo above was taken in the observatory, looking north. From left to right you can see the empty dome of the Swedish 60 cm telescope, MAGIC II (on the horizon, some distance below), the Superwasp Follow-up Telescope (closer), the Liverpool telescope (peeking from behind the ridge), the Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope (at the back) and SuperWASP below the JKT.
The photo below looks south over the Caldera to the southern sky. Because La Palma is closer to the equator, we get to see some stars in the southern hemisphere, which you never see from Britain. This photo includes Alpha Centauri which is the next nearest star after our own sun. You can also see two stars of the southern cross, just peeking over the ridge: Mimosa and Gamma Crucis.
Both these photos are reproduced with written permission from the photographer. For any other use, please contact him at frikosal [AT] gmail[DOT]com.
Stars over Los Llanos from the Roque by Manel Soria
White horse parading at San Antonio del Monte
This weekend will see the biggest livestock fair on the island, in Garafía.
Ram with curly horns on show at San Antonio del Monte fair
San Antonio del Monte used to be a village, but the villagers moved away. About the only thing that’s left is the church of St. Anthony and the feast day, with it’s massive fair. Apart from the animals, there’s a craft fair, and of course lots of stalls selling cheap toys, food and drink.
The chapel at San Antonio del Monte
It’s a pretty enough little church, and for most of the weekend it will be crowded with people visiting the saint and touching his belt.
Touching the statue's belt for a blessing
On Sunday, after the special mass, the statues are taken out to the fairground in a procession, and the priest blesses the animals.
The traditional blessing for the animals
The weather can be baking hot, but as you can see from the photos, sometimes the clouds blow in. It’s a good idea to take both sunscreen and jumpers.
After the procession and blessing, they have live music and dancing.
Couple dancing at the fiesta
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 (in blue) , with their administrative seats (in pink). Where
there’s no name in pink, the municipalities are named after their chief villages, which makes things simpler. Just to keep things interesting, one, San Andrés y Sauces, is named after the two biggest villages. The town hall is in Los Sauces, which is much bigger and on the main road.
That’s easy to find.
Carmelo the raven on my car at the observatory, Garafía.
Common Ravens live all over Europe, Asia and North America, but we have a different sub-species here. Some biologists group our raven in with the North African sub-species (Corvus corax tingitanus) and others think the Canaries have their own sub-species (Corvus corax canariensis).
Like other members of the rook-and-crow family, they’ll eat whatever’s available: carrion, insects, cereal grains, berries, fruit, small animals, and food waste. And they’re pretty intelligent about getting it. At least two individual ravens at the Roque have learned to provide a photo opportunity in exchange for some food.
Carmelo outside the Galileo telescope, Garafía.
Carmelo hangs around the car park at the Roque itself, although I’ve met him at the Galileo telescope and observatory heliport. He’s got a ring around one ankle. The other raven doesn’t have an ankle ring, and I mostly see him near the Los Andennes viewpoint, and I call him Nevermore, after the poem “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe. (“Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.’ “)
Nevermore, the raven (Corvus corax canariensis) at Los Andennes viewpoint, Garafía.
Some of the roadworks in Barlovento
For a couple of years now, we’ve had major roadworks on the road from Los Sauces to Barlovento and beyond into Garafia. They’re straightening out as many of the bends as possible, which often means building a big wall and filling in behind it. It’s going to be great when they finish, but it does mean that in many places the traffic is one way, so that you have to stop at traffic lights. One friend counted 14 traffic lights between her home in Franceses and her job in Los Sauces, which add an average of about 15 minutes to the journey.
Worse, since June they close the road completely for several hours at a time.
From Monday to Friday, the road is closed from:
9:45 – 11:15
11:45 – 13:15
16:00 – 19:00
And on Saturdays from:
9:15 – 11:15
11:45 – 13:15
So Sunday is a really good day to see the north!
If you get stuck just south of the road closures, Los Tilos and San Andres are particularly nice. If you’re stuck north of them with a swimsuit, I recommend La Fajana swimming pools and the village of Barlovento.
