Have You Seen The Netflix Show About La Palma?
Have you watched the new Netflix mini-series La Palma? It’s a show that is highly likely to put thousands of people off visiting this most beautiful of islands. .
Yes, there is a volcano threat, and that could cause a giant landslide into the ocean resulting in the biggest tsunami ever seen, but why let that put you off? It is one of the most dramatically scenic islands I have ever visited… Here’s a travel piece I wrote after staying there 20 long years ago…
Life on the edge: a La Palma volcano crater
The massive backbone of La Palma curves itself into a shape that makes it the world’s biggest question mark, which is highly apt because the Canarian island presents quite a mystery. It is simply this: how can it be that one of the most beautiful islands in the whole of what could loosely be described as Europe remains so unknown, unvisited and unspoilt?
Dramatic interior of La Palma
Why Visit La Palma? A Quiet Alternative to Tenerife
You only have to look a few miles across the ocean from its precipitous eastern flanks to see what happens when lovely islands become known, visited and spoilt. Tenerife has many wonderful attributes, but its big bow to mass tourism isn’t one of them.
“Go to La Palma, it is like Tenerife was 50 years ago,” said my contact at Thomson when I told her I wanted to go somewhere very scenic and reasonably quiet, with a little bit of sophistication and good living thrown in for good measure.
Communities below the volcano, La Palma
The Perfect Destination for Discerning Travellers
I made these demands for selfish reasons, but knowing my newspaper’s demographic like I do, I was aware that this is exactly the sort of holiday destination sought by a great majority of this newspaper’s readers.
La Palma hit the jackpot. In fact, I have no trouble in putting it way up there in my top ten worldwide holiday recommendations to readers.
La Palma village on the edge of a new-ish crater
What La Palma Is—and Isn’t
The list of what the place lacks is so short it would be far easier to deal with it first. If you like long nights out in noisy resorts heaving with well lubricated humanity, forget La Palma. It really is quiet.
If you like lolling about on endless white beaches, forget that too. La Palma is very short on sandy strands and the few it’s got are black as coal.
Best Hiking Holidays in La Palma: Dramatic Landscapes and Wild Interiors
Now for the positives. If you like beautiful places rich in dramatic and interesting landscapes, then you really would have to go a long way to beat La Palma. There are corners of its vast mountainous interior where you could easily pretend you were in some place like the wilds of Wyoming.
Most people who visit this island go for the scenery. It’s the only sunshine destination I’ve ever been to where nine out of ten fellow tourists climb off the plane armed with hiking boots and poles. Walking is by far La Palma’s biggest attraction.
One of the few coastal villages on La Palma
Guided Walking Tours in La Palma: An Authentic Adventure
Daily walking tours are offered at every hotel and the routes followed by the professional guides are as interesting as they are scenic and stunning.
Walking around the edge of a Caldera
The organised tour I joined explored the far north of the island where we passed intriguing hippy villages, mythical and amazing dragon trees, prehistoric cave drawings, precipitous gorges, old ladies selling hand-glazed almonds, young men selling hand-made ice cream, feral but friendly dogs and a truly amazing local farmers’ market which put many of ours to shame.
Farm terraces, La Palma
La Palma's Volcanic Origins and Geological Wonders
I used the word precipitous, but I will refrain from doing so for the rest of this article. Everything about La Palma is precipitous. It is a world on a slope - and a steep one at that. The island doesn’t boast a volcano - it is a volcano. Or a whole variety of volcanoes to be exact.
Deep ravines run through La Palma mountains
It is, by the way, the place that might one day - according to some geologists - be responsible for wiping out the eastern coastline of America with a vast tsunami. They reckon that half the island will slide into the Atlantic and cause the biggest wave in history.
Explore Caldera de Taburiente: A National Park Like No Other
The northern part of the island is dominated by the mighty Caldera de Taburiente, the largest erosion crater in the world measuring six miles across and more than 5,000 feet deep. The mountains that surround the crater climb to almost 8,000 feet and you can drive around much of this rocky altitudinous ring if you have the courage and inclination.
Caldera de Taburiente
Roque de los Muchachos Observatory: Stargazing in La Palma
Roque de los Muchachos Observatory
The reason the road exists, by the way, is because the summit is home to the world-famous Roque de los Muchachos Observatory where so many galactic observations of great note have been taken in the past few decades.
Road to Roque de los Muchachos Observatory
Hiking the Barranco de las Angustias: A Trail Into the Heart of the Island
The one place you can’t reach by car is the enormous, forested, gorge-riddled, crater far below. Only the deep Barranco de las Angustias canyon leads into the inner area of the caldera and the only way for you to get in is to hike along one of the numerous marked trails.
Barranco de las Angustias
Cloud Forests and Canarian Pines: The Island’s Unique Ecosystem
Even my teenager daughter, who is usually awed only by views of shopping malls, was rendered speechless as we walked along one of the higher trails to reach a vertigo-inducing viewpoint.
Cloud forests, La Palma
And like everywhere else in La Palma above a certain altitude, the place is scented with the heady, fresh aroma of pine – it is, indeed, the most forested island in the archipelago.
Microclimates and Mist: Discover the Magic of La Palma's Pine Forests
On hot days (and there are a lot of hot days on La Palma) you can be toiling across bare and broiling mountainsides only to enter one of these forests and find it raining a cool and refreshing vapour that falls not from the sky but from the trees.
Pines cling to the steeps Caldera slopes
Winter Sun Destination Close to the UK
Hot days… The mere thought is magical enough on a miserable January day here in the UK. The temperature down in the Canaries at this time of the year is perfect for human consumption, and it’s the closest winter sun destination to the wet and windy England.
Typical window terraces in La Palma buildings
Where to Stay in La Palma: A Taste of Low-Key Luxury
Many travel companies offer packages to this island and I am glad to report they are doing it in the low-key kind of way La Palma deserves.
Hacienda San Jorge Apartments, Los Cancajos: Tropical Comfort
To call Los Cancajos a resort is a bit of an over-statement – it’s merely a collection of a dozen or so hotels dotted around a few shops and restaurants, but it does boast a sandy beach (albeit of black volcanic sand) and it is just a ten-minute bus ride from the charming, friendly and picturesque island capital of Santa Cruz.
Boutique Hotels in La Palma: The Hacienda Experience
The comfortable apartments are situated in colonial-style two storey buildings around a tropical garden, which itself is centred around a vast swimming pool. So proud is the hotel of these gardens it arranges daily botanical tours so you can admire the attractive little jungle at close hand.
Santa Cruz de La Palma: Shopping and History in the Island Capital
Not in Santa Cruz, it wasn’t. My daughter was over the moon because the place is stuffed full of the sophisticated designer label shops that mean the world to her and absolutely nothing to me.
Discover Santa Cruz's Architecture and Colonial Charm
Intricate wooden balconies hang over just about every street down in the old part of town and many of these are festooned with a wealth of hanging baskets.
History and Heritage: The Indigenous People and Spanish Arrival
Before the Spaniards turned up it was divided into a dozen or so kingdoms inhabited by a kind of Neolithic indigenous people called the Benahoare.
Local Delicacies and La Palma Wine Culture
Madeira, not far north, is still famous for the strong wine of that name but long ago northern Europe’s favourite tipple was “malmsey”, and it came from La Palma. The island wines are still well worth quaffing today.
Banana Plantations and Volcanic Landscapes in the South
But it is bananas that La Palma goes bananas about nowadays, which takes us to the remote south west coast of the island. These yellow plantains rule the coastal roost in vast man-made plateaus built into the moonscapes of lava.
La Palma Princess Hotel: Relaxation in a Volcanic Paradise
It is the island’s only bow to large-scale tourism - and one hopes the government keep things that way – but I have to admit we hugely enjoyed luxuriating in its many acres.
Final Word: La Palma is for Explorers, Not Tourists
But La Palma is not really about that. It is an island that offers the ultimate in scenic adventure – much though I loved lazing by the pool, I adored the hard work of exploring its wondrous peaks much, much more.
