La Palma

From almost every spot there is a view of the wide blue sur­face of the ocean. The land, grad­u­at­ing from the Cum­bres (a moun­tain­ous ridge of vol­canic ori­gin, spread­ing from north to south), offers impres­sive scener­ies. Watch the spec­ta­cle of the pass­ing clouds mir­ror­ing in the face of the sea.

Pop­u­lar with hik­ers is the nation­al park “Caldera de Taburi­ente” in the north of the island. Inside the huge caldera, ris­ing up to 2500 metres – which is, accord­ing to recent find­ings, not the remains of a sin­gle and big crater, but of sev­er­al small­er craters – there are hik­ing trails of every lev­el of difficulty.

The vol­canic ori­gin of the Canary Islands most obvi­ous­ly takes shape on the island La Pal­ma: The more to the south, the younger the soil. The north of La Pal­ma is, like La Gomera, sev­er­al mil­lion years old, where­as on the south­ern head­land an active vol­cano is erupt­ing every 50 years, gen­er­at­ing new soil. The last time the Vol­cán de Teneguía was spit­ting fire in 1971. The first plant to con­quer the new soils is always the Canary Pine. Mighty trunks rise up to 30 metres. The roots are keep­ing the sed­i­ments and con­sti­tute the soil for fol­low­ing plants

The old­est part of La Pal­ma main­tains a rest of Europe’s old­est primeval for­est (from the ter­tiary). In “Los Tilos” gnarled lau­rel and tree heath are comb­ing humid­i­ty out the fog­gy trade winds – a real fairy tale for­est. (Of that kind, only the neigh­bour­ing island, La Gomera, can pro­vide a more impres­sive cloud forest.)

The high­est peak of the island is, with 2426 metres, the “Roque de los Mucha­chos” at the north­ern bor­der of the Caldera de Taburi­ente. The Isaac New­ton Group of Tele­scopes is sit­u­at­ed there, and, for the joy of the Palmer­ian kids, the area is snow-cov­ered from time to time in the win­ter. This place is notably beau­ti­ful dur­ing sun­rise or sunset…

…Ear­ly in the morn­ing on the Roque de los Mucha­chos – a thou­sand metres below the land is fad­ing under­neath a sea of clouds. The sun­rays are already prick­ing the skin, but yet not strong enough to ban­ish the clouds…