A bumblebee on a tower of jewels (Echium wildpretii).

Tower of Jewels is one of the common names for Echium wildpretii. Some of the other are red bugloss, Tenerife bugloss or Mount Teide bugloss. The Spanish name is tajinaste grande or tajinaste rojo, although the ones on La Palma can be blue or mauve. The flowers are tinym, but the spikes can be anything up to 3 m high.

GTC visible between two Towers of Jewels (Echium wildpretii)

And they’re in flower on the peaks of La Palma. Gorgeous.

You can see pictures of related plants at http://lapalma-island.com/2011/05/tower-of-jewels/

Towers of Jewels (Echium wildpretii) in the Caldera de Taburiente at Los Andennes.

Calf at San Isidro far, Breña Alta

This weekend they’re holding the second biggest livestock fair on the island, at San Isidro, in Breña Alta. (The biggest is San Antonio del Monte, in June). People bring their animals, and there are prizes for the best milk cow, best bull, best goat, etc. Most of the animals are tied up in big field while they wait for the judging, and you can go around admiring them. (I hope someone brings them water later.)

It starts off with a procession which brings the statue of the saint from the church to the fairground at 9 am on Saturday. The priest blesses the animals at noon, and they have a competition to see which bulls can drag a heavy load the fastest at 4 pm. During the day there’s a drawing competition for the children, and a wheelbarrow race at 1 pm. At 9 pm on Saturday night they’ll be a dance in the village square.

Statue of St. Isidore, the farm labourer in its niche at the fairground

On Sunday, there’s a cycle race at noon and a horse race at 7:30 pm. And later, a procession takes the statue of the saint back to the church at about 8:30 pm, followed by a mystery play and fireworks.

Cattle at the fair of St. Isidore, Breña Alta

Acherontia atropos, the commonest of the Death’s-head Hawk moths, in the Caldera de Tabutiente

Look what I found on a walk in the Caldera. It’s huge for an insect – that body is about as big as my thumb.

It was fluttering along as though it had only just come out of its chrysalis and its wings weren’t quite working yet, so I managed to get several photos. I thought it was a moth because of the fluttering movements and the thick body, but when I showed the photo around, I was assured that it was a hornet.

I was pleased I hadn’t got any closer.

But when I looked at the full-size photos on the computer at home I realised that it couldn’t be a wasp. In spite of the very wasp-like colouring, there’s no sign of a wasp waist, and wasps have transparent wings.

It took a bit of hunting, because the photo in my insect book only shows this animal with the wings folded. The tops of the wings are a dark camouflage pattern. But it’s actually a Acherontia atropos, or Death’s-head Hawk moth. Wikipedia says that they spend the day camouflaged, and flash the bright colouring to deter predators. (Come to think of it, it was certainly flashing the bright colours at me.) At night they frequently raid beehives for the honey.

Acherontia atropos, the commonest of the Death’s-head Hawk moths, in the Caldera de Tabutiente

The full Transvulcania route in all its horror.

On Saturday, crazy people will be running an ultramarathon around La Palma. It’s the famous Transvulcania.

The main race starts at 6 am down at the lighthouse at the southern tip of the island. The runners will race up the central spine of the island to the picnic site at El Pilar, then Punta de Los Roques. The race continues anticlockwise around the Caldera rim, climbing up to the observatory at 2,426 m (7,900 ft) which the leaders should pass at about 11 am, down to El Time, then steeply down to Puerto Tazacorte at 12:30 and finally reaching the finishing line in Los Llanos at about 1 pm. That’s 83.3 km (51.8 miles) – nearly twice a normal marathon – with steep climbs, only 75% the normal oxygen at the highest point, and hot sun for the second half. (Although it now looks as though there won’t be a heatwave. Good.)

See what I mean about mad?

Slightly less crazy people will run 26 km, starting in the same place at 6:30 am and finishing at El Pilar. The winners should arrive there at about 8:30. I doubt that I could walk this.

There will be races for kids and teenagers at El Pilar at 11 am.

It’s too late to sign up for the race, but there’ll be another next year. The website is http://www.transvulcania.com/.

I’m not really in any position to comment on other people’s sanity, but the Transvulcania makes me want to lie on the sofa and eat chocolate.

Today is mother’s day in Spain. Or rather, everywhere in Spain but here.

And to the best of my knowledge, the first place in Spain to have an official Mother’s Day was Breña Baja. The local poet, Félix Duarte Pérez , left home for Venezuela at some horrendously young age (fifteen, I think). Not surprisingly, he missed his mother a good deal, and they sent each other lots of letters. When he finally came home at the age of 35, he persuaded the town hall to adopt the “American” idea of Mother’s Day, on the third Sunday in May.

Everywhere else celebrates it on the first Sunday in May. And in Breña Baja, people traditionally wear flowers. If your mother’s still alive, you wear a red one, and if she’s died, you wear a white on.

From my point of view, there are advantages to this peculiar arrangement. My husband and son get reminded two weeks in advance, and by the time it’s mother’s day here, the prices of flowers and chocolate are back to normal.

Detail of a cross decorated with jewellry for Fiesta de La Cruz, Breña Baja

Fiesta de La Cruz is a major festival in Santa Cruz de La Palma, Breña Alta, and Breña Baja. On the night of May 2nd, practically all the roadside crosses in Santa Cruz, Breña Baja and Breña Alta will be decorated, most of them gorgeously. The people who worked on them sit close all night, usually making a party of it and setting off lots of fire-crackers. This is partly because the crosses are hung with jewellery.

For more details and photos, see my article on Fiesta de la Cruz

Cubo de la Galga is a very pretty walk along the bottom of the Galga ravine, between Puntallana and Los Sauces. By Palmeran standards, it’s an easy walk.

There is now a car park at the beginning of the walk, on the road at km 16. You’re unlikely to get lost for the first kilometre or so, because the path’s actually asphalted, never mind signposted. It’s a matter of taste, but this part was a bit too tamed for my taste, and I was glad when the asphalt stopped. In fact the path is currently so smooth you could actually walk for a couple of kilometers in stilettos, if stilettos are your thing. (I bought a pair of stilettos just before I came to La Palma. I’ve used them so little that twenty-two years later, they still don’t even need heeling.)

There are caves in the ravine walls. This one has a wall built across the mouth. at the time we wondered whether people had lived there at one time. Now I wonder whether it mightn’t be the “windows” in the water channel, the Canal de Estado.

The book is absolutely right that the place would be famous if it weren’t so close to Los Tilos. The path criss-crosses the stream bed (a trickle in April) and the ravine walls and trees tower over you.

This means that the roots are at eye-level.

When the signpost seemed to indicate that it was time to turn back, we carried on a little, up a much rougher path.

The path went under a little aqueduct.

Just above there is a flattish space, where we stopped to eat our sandwiches. Above that, the path divides. According to Charles Davis, you can make your way back to the road by another route, but we weren’t sure of the way and I had to get back for the babysitter. So I can’t tell you whether there are still fallen trees over the track.

Throughout the walk, there were lots of butterflies, mostly sitting still until the camera focused, and then fluttering off. But I got lucky eventually. This one is common in the western Canaries, but lives nowhere else.

Maculada de Canarias butterfly, Pararge xiphioides

One of the bookstalls in the Calle Real, Santa Cruz de La Palma

There will be kiosks selling books all along the Calle Real in Santa Cruz (the main street, parallel to the sea front). I’m happy to say that a couple of them have my own book.

The Cabildo (island government) will be leaving books scattered over the island for anyone to pick up and read, on condition that when they’ve finished, the reader has to leave them for someone else to find.

The storyteller Pepin will be in the Plaza de España. Santa Cruz de la Palma telling stories from around the world at 6 pm.

Also at 6 pm in the Plaza de Montserrat in Los Sauces, puppet theatre by Tal Cual Cual Troupe Tontón y FlisFlas “Para que sirve un libro”

José Arozena and Fráncisco López, Palmeran authors of the thriller “Cruz, la noche en que la Luna se escondió” will be signing books in the Calle real of Santa Cruz de La Palma at 6:30 pm.

And there will be two book presentations, both at 8 pm. In Palacio Salazar, Santa Cruz de La Palma, Joel Pérez and Carlos de León will present their graphic novel “Don Juan Tenorio, el burlador de Sevilla”. Meanwhile in the Casa de la Cultura in Los Llanos, Mariano Gambín will “La Casa Lercaro”.

I haven’t organised anything special for my own books, but you can still buy any (or all!) of them from the Dragon Tree website.

Pepin telling stories for World Book Day.

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, pointing south.

That was seventeen years ago. Since then, the tourist office has moved twice. They are now in this rather attractive building in Santa Cruz, outside the port entrance. As you can see, it’s in the middle of a dual carriageway, but there’s a zebra crossing just out of the frame to the right. All the staff speak good English, and I’ve always found them very helpful.

Opening hours:

Mon – Fri Saturday Sunday

9 am – 7:30 pm 9 am – 3 pm 9 am – 2 pm

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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.

The workshop is open every day except Thursdays, from 10 am to 2 pm.

They do ask you please not to bring rucksacks, pushchairs or dogs into the shop. Just think of a Great Dane puppy having fun with all those shelves crammed with fragile ornaments!

Their website is: http://www.artefuego.com/english.html And yes, they have pages in English.