There are two good reasons for setting off home:
1 - The weather forecast for the next week is not good, warnings of snow on the tops and rain below.
2 - The number of covid cases on the island has been 0 or 1 per day for the past week, Wednesdays results 10!
So we are now on our way home, we caught the 5.15 ferry this morning to Tenerife (pictured above in daylight a few days ago, at 5.15 it was pitch black). In Tenerife we sampled the local Canarian delicacy of a full English but resisted the temptation to wash it down with a pint of John Smiths (neither of these delicacies are available on La Palma). Then off to the airport where I am writing this, hopefully the rest of the journey will go to plan and we will be home late tonight.
.
As previously mentioned we went out to lunch on Wednesday to the poshest restaurant in Santa Cruz. The food was great although I could not help noticing a dead rat right outside the window where I was sitting. Not knowing what the rat died from was a worry (food poisoning?), we did avoid ordering ratatouille.
Before the meal we had our covid tests in the local clinic. Last time, when we were leaving the UK, it was a DIY job with a swab down the throat. This time the nurse administered a stick up the nose, not very nice at all.
Being a very boring old sod yesterday I spent an hour creating a table of all the walks we have done during the two months, how far they were and the number of feet of climbing and descent. I was a little disappointed to find we have only walked 130 miles but we did 26,000ft of climbing and 33,000ft of descent which seems impressive. I am not sure that will have burnt off enough calories to compensate for all the nice meals and bottles of wine so I might be on a diet when we get back.
We used two excellent guides Walk La Gomera and Walk La Palma. Between our two holidays in La Palma, plus the Unnecessary boys walking holiday I have almost done all 34 walks in the La Palma guide, which is becoming rather dog eared.
Before I summarise our thoughts on the holiday I thought I would bore you with a few observations of the islands.
Agriculture: A local told us it is possible to grow anything on the islands, you just have to get the height above sea level right. At sea level every bit of farm land is given over to growing bananas. They are an all year crop, each plant produces fruit once a year but this is not linked to the seasons, just when it first flowered.
Some of the fields are covered in tents made of hessian which we presume protects those plants which produce fruit in the winter or perhaps young plants.
Apparently the “banana burden” is a big issue on the island as the economy is far too dependent on the one crop, the government are trying to move the industry over to higher value fruits and flowers such as the proteas pictured (there was a huge field of them) but with little success.
There was some panic in early January when a swam of locusts came over from Africa, fortunately they did not settle, they could have wiped out the crop if they had taken hold.
A few hundred metres higher and the main crops are vines, some on wires as at home or in France but others are grown on the ground. We have sampled a great many of the local red wines and most are good as well as being cheap. Some of them have quite distinctive flavours.
Higher still and the crops are oranges, lemons, avocados, apples and almonds.
Every farm has a few goats and chickens as well as well tended plots with potatoes and other crops but none of the fields are large enough (or level enough) for large scale farming. As there are no cereal crops there is no straw so the farmers gather pine needles from the forests in huge quantities as bedding for the animals.
There are very few cows so all the milk in the shops is long life and shipped in from Spain. Not the best for our daily cuppa.
Water: Water is a critical resource on the islands, if you have a spring on your land you can pipe the water and sell it to the water company so all the hillsides are covered in a maze of pipes leading down to junction points, the picture shows a particularly neat one, most look chaotic. Each pipe has a meter to manage the billing. Of course every house and farm using water also have their own pipe and meter and large scale users like the banana plantations have their own reservoirs and private supplies. It takes 1,000 litres of water produce 1kg of bananas, La Palma produces 100,000 tons of bananas a year.,Answers on a postcard as to how many swimming pools of water are required.
The tap water tastes awful, everyone buys bottled water, my guess is the multiple sources makes quality control difficult so the water company just add lots of chemicals so no one dies of cholera.
One side effect of all of this water extraction is there are almost no streams or waterfalls (apart from exceptional storms as we witnessed a few weeks ago), water is too valuable to be allowed to evaporate or soak away.
Driving: We seem to have to spent a great deal of time driving, mostly in 3rd gear. The picture shows one of the only bits of fast road on the island with an impressive sculpture. During our 35 days in La Palma we drove 1,700km which probably represents 34 hours of driving, way too much but it is hard to see how to avoid it. We tried to mitigate the issue by spending two weeks on the other side of the island but once you have done the walks within a close proximity of your house then every walk starts with getting in the car. The roads, whilst in good condition, are not straight or flat, nothing on the islands is on the level, they don’t call La Palma the steepest island in the world for nothing.
Derelict houses: I have mentioned it before but there are a great many nice old houses on La Palma which have been empty for years and need restoring, this seemed less of an issue on La Gomera.
So did we have a good holiday? Yes we did.
It is the longest holiday we have ever had, 60 days, and in many respects one of the best. We did not have a plan and just booked accommodation in blocks of a week to ten days a few days in advance. This was easy as there were few tourists competing for accommodation although many of the larger places have closed down completely. We ate out most evenings, the food is very good value and generally of a high standard but most of all the walking and the spectacular scenery is what made the holiday special. We also had some great adventures – cycling faster than we have ever done before, wading through ice cold water in a tunnel, all good fun.
When people talk about “The Canaries” they usually refer to Tenerife or Grand Canaria; La Gomera and La Palma are completely different and hopefully will remain so.
We now have 10 days sitting at home with no exercise getting even fatter sorting out the 3000 photographs we have taken after which we can start to dream of our next adventure.