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A week in La Palma, Dec 2016

jonathan

100+ Posts
Why La Palma? And where is it, anyway?

It’s one of the Canary Islands: Spanish territories, but about 800 miles south-west of the Spanish coast. The Canaries are a popular winter sun destination for northern Europeans (especially Brits and Germans): the easternmost islands in the group, Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, are only about 60 miles west of the Moroccan coast, and are popular beach destinations. La Palma, though, is on the western side of the archipelago: go due west from La Palma, and you won’t strike land until you get to the Florida coast, just level with Orlando.

This situation makes it closest to the effects of the ocean and the Gulf Stream: it’s the greenest of the islands, with fertile, volcanic soil and some pretty dramatic contrasts in altitude. No real beach resorts, but lots of good walking trails, mostly pretty well signposted.

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Inntravel

Inntravel are a small travel company based in North Yorkshire: we’ve used them before, several times, for cross-country skiing holidays in Austria, Italy and Finland. But their real area of specialism is walking holidays – both groups, and self-guided ones. This time, we booked one of their ‘Casas Canarias on La Isla Bonita’ holidays: 7 nights in a little cottage, car hire, and an excellent folder of self-guided walks, plus lots of background info on the island, its history, flora & fauna, food and customs. A Freytag & Berndt 1:30,000 walking map is also part of the pack.

Inntravel also book flights if you want them to: I had a useful phone chat with them, and went for the (twice-weekly) direct flight with easyJet, Gatwick – La Palma (around 4 hours flight time).
 
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Our cottage: Casa Fide

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Its location, overlooking the west coast, near the small town of Tijarafe, looked good: the Inntravel cottage descriptions are fairly brief but, as ever, some googling brought up several other sites listing the cottage (and a good range of reviews). An EasyJet flight delay (faulty plane: we found out about it shortly after check-in) meant that we arrived at La Palma 4 hours later than planned. With our original arrival time, we’d have had to kill some time before the pre-arranged cottage check-in at 5pm: as it was, we arrived at Tijarafe around 6, but we’d called Inntravel from Gatwick, and they’d got in touch with both the car hire people and the cottage owner to warn them.

The owner’s mother was there to meet us at the Cerveceria (on the main road, just by the little lane leading up to the cottage – sadly, closed for renovation for the week that we were there. A shame: its beers and tapas are well reviewed!), and gave us a brief guide to the cottage and its facilities. No damage deposit, or anything like that: check-out was simple: just close the door and leave the key in it!

It’s simply furnished, but pretty well equipped: as so often, the kitchen could do with some decent sharp knives, but did have a satisfactory selection of cooking pots & pans, an electric drip coffee maker, and a good stove & oven. A pretty good shower in the bathroom, and a good, comfy double bed in the bedroom. Lots of nice outdoor seating, as you can see from the photos on the Holiday La Palma site – but, in late December, the evenings were a bit too cool for sitting out, and we were generally out during the daytimes.
 
Local area

The straight-line distance from Tijarafe to Santa Cruz (the island’s capital: the airport is just south of the town) is only about 12 miles, but the mountainous interior means that the road distance is more like 30 miles (and, with all those bends, about 1hr 15 minutes’ driving time). Tijarafe is only 5 minutes by car from Casa Fide: two or three small supermarkets, a few bars, and a pizzeria (the supermarkets are fine; the pizzas a distinct disappointment if you’re used to decent Italian ones, but it was our first night, and we’d done all the travelling we wanted to…).

You can also walk from the cottage to the town – along the road, or (much more attractive, but less direct) along the GR130, Camino Real de la Costa, which dives down into the barranco (the local term for the ravines which are very much a feature of the landscape) and back up again.

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But you really need the car to get around (though there’s a pretty good, hourly, bus service along the main coastal road; we didn’t try it). The roads are certainly bendy, with plenty of spectacular views, but they are all pretty well maintained.
 
Los Llanos, Santa Cruz

On our first full day, we went into Los Llanos, the island’s second largest town; Inntravel supply a Town Walk for both this and Santa Cruz. At first glance, Los Llanos is a commercial centre (the islands biggest banana plantations cluster around the town) with uninteresting modern buidings on the main road. But the walk route takes you past lots of lovely 17th and 18th century buildings in the centre, up some pretty little back streets, and also recommends lunch at Don Escaldon (a recommendation which we followed, and would definitely endorse!). If, like me, you’d forgotten to pack some important items of walking gear, there are a couple of very good specialist shops here: Valle Verde is German-owned (90% of the hikers we saw on the trails were German), and were really helpful: interesting to see some German clothing brands which don’t make it into the UK stores.

Back street (not actually in Los Llanos, but Garafia: very similar little houses)
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Los Llanos also has a nice little covered market (mentioned in Inntravel’s walk notes): some very good fruit & veg, all grown on the island, plus local wines & cheeses – the latter are nearly all goat, and are highly rated, if you like goat cheeses… (P does, but I don’t)

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A couple of days later, we drove to Santa Cruz: the one day where rain was forecast for nearly the whole day, so a country hike wasn’t a good idea. Like Los Llanos, there’s some lovely old ‘colonial’ architecture in the centre – plus a harbour for cruise ships and, as luck would have it, one had docked that morning, so the streets were somewhat overrun by a lot of (mostly UK and US) visitors, who were dressed for rather hotter and drier weather than we were experiencing, and looked decidedly miserable… Thanks to Lonely Planet, we discovered a good lunch spot slightly off the main tourist tracks: Casa Luís (Calle Pedro Poggio 7): very cheap, very simple, very good.
 
The hiking

We went on two of Inntravel’s walking routes: neither of them very long (just under 5 miles each) but with a fair bit of downs and ups (each walk started from near the main road, descended around 1500 feet as you headed towards the coast, and then climbed back up again, via a different route).

The first one, starting at the Parque Cultural La Zarza, in the north of the island, took you down along the bottom of one of those barrancos, past pre-Hispanic rock carvings, and under the humid green canopy, all along a well-marked path. It was often uneven and sometimes slippery underfoot, so we were glad of our walking poles – but there was nothing really challenging (Inntravel rates it as ‘Grade 1-2’).

Start of the path down to the ravine
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The path climbs up out of the ravine after about 2 miles, and you return via some little paths and lanes, past attractive cottages and wildflower meadows. The whole walk took us a little under the 3 hours that Inntravel suggests.

Just a mile further along the road from La Zarza is Restaurante La Mata: recommended!

That walk was on Christmas Eve; on Christmas Day, we chose the Las Tricias route. This starts in the hamlet of Las Tricias (in the north west), and heads down a variety of little lanes, paths and tracks towards the ocean (unlike the Zarza walk, this route is out in the open for the descent, and has some fabulous ocean views).

The paths go past some very pretty cottages, with lush gardens (La Palma is sometimes called ‘the island of eternal spring’), and shortly before the half-way point, there’s a possible short detour to the ‘Bio Café Finca Aloe’ (‘vegetarian food, home-made cakes and breads, herbal teas and fresh juices, served on its panoramic terrace overlooking the barranco’ says Inntravel, and ‘Lugar muy hippie y singular’ according to a Google review – but, understandably, not open on Christmas Day!).

One other feature of the outward half of the route are the groves of Drago trees: native to the Canaries (and hardly anywhere else), these trees don’t often grow in groups, but the area just north of Las Tricias is a notable exception.

Solitary Drago tree
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One of the bigger ones
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The return path winds along the side of a small barranco, past the Buracas Caves (with more of those pre-Hispanic rock carvings), and then climbs steadily back to Las Tricias. Again, just under 3 hours in total.
 
The Caldera de Taburiente National Park

This is the natural feature of the island: not, strictly speaking, a true caldera (volcanic crater), but still crater-shaped, around 10km across at its widest point, and with the outer walls towering around 2000m above the base. There’s an excellent Visitor Centre just outside El Paso, on the main road which runs across the middle of the island: here, you can see maps, models, displays of flora & fauna – and also, importantly, book one of the limited car parking spaces at the Mirador de la Cumbrecita, a few km north of the visitor centre. The mirador gives you a truly spectacular view of the inside of the crater, and there are some good, short, walking routes signposted from the car park.

On a winter morning, clouds gather in the crater, so you can't really see the opposite edge here:
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There are much longer routes in and around the crater – if we visit the island again (and I’d like to), we’ll definitely try to fit one in.
 
Great trip report @jonathan ! Thanks for all the details. The cottage looks lovely and the island looks beautiful.

We went on two of Inntravel’s walking routes: neither of them very long (just under 5 miles each) but with a fair bit of downs and ups (each walk started from near the main road, descended around 1500 feet as you headed towards the coast, and then climbed back up again, via a different route).

This seems like a steep descent and ascent to do in 3 hours. Did it feel that way to you?
Were you close to both trails that you hiked?
Would it be good to stay in one of the towns and drive out to hikes (to be near more shops, restaurants and the sea) or is it better to stay where you stayed?
 
Well, there were some steep sections, both down and up, but it didn't feel too exhausting (and, just two days before we left for the trip, I spent a day and a half on the bed/sofa at home with flu!).

Interesting question about the accommodation. Philippa's immediate response was yes - it would be good not to have to get in the car for everything. I'm more in two minds: that hillside setting and ocean-sunset view was very lovely. From where we stayed (hamlet of El Jésus, just S of Tijarafe), Las Tricias was about a 30min drive, and Zarza 50.

Los Llanos would definitely be my town of choice: not far from the sea at Tazacorte, the TAburiente national park, and about 30 minutes more on those drives to the northern walks (no great distances, but none of the roads are exactly fast!)
 
Lovely report. I wouldn't want to drive 30 to 50 min for acafe but the cottage looks sweet. I seem to recall you've been to this area before or another part of the Canaries.
 
Thanks, Lisa! Many years ago, Philippa went on a walking holiday to La Gomera in the Canaries, but this was my first trip there. Actually, the cottage wasn't that isolated: Las Tricias & La Zarza were the hikes we chose to do: they were 30/50' away. But our next village (cafes, small shops) was just 5', and Los Llanos (big town) was about 30'.
 

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