Tag: Canary Islands

La Palma to Gran Canaria

Saturday we took a plane from the island of La Palma to the island of Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands. It was about a one hour flight. Here’s a link to my La Palma video.

Leaving La Palma

We took the bus into Las Palmas de Gran Canaria where we are staying.

The view from our room

The big Carnival parade on Gran Canaria was Saturday night. Our hotel is right next to the parade route.

We stood in one place for a couple of hours watching the people with beautiful elaborate costumes go by. Then came a series of buses and semi trucks with rolling bars and lots of people on and following each one.

We watched a while, then walked around some, then went up to the restaurant at the top of our hotel to have dinner. The parade started around 6 and when we were eating at 10:30 it was still going on!

Cheese board to share as part of our dinner
The Carnival parade from the restaurant at the top of our hotel

La Gomera to La Palma

We took an 8 pm ferry Thursday night from the island of La Gomera to the Island of La Palma in the Canaries. With so late a departure we had all day to enjoy La Gomera. It was the clearest day we have had since we arrived. We could easily see Tenerife with the Teide Volcano across the channel.

Tenerife and Teide Volcano from La Gomera

We drove to Playa Santiago, the next town along the coast and had coffee overlooking the beach I tested the water and it seemed relatively warm.

Coffee in Playa Santiago
Playa Santiago

We stopped at a viewpoint on our way back to San Sebastián. We could see how the trade wind clouds coming from the north east get stopped by the mountains. The sign at the viewpoint said that it is estimated that the volume of water provided by these clouds is five times what the area gets from rain.

Trade wind clouds are stopped by the mountains.

We knew we would arrive at the Parador on La Palma after the dining room closed. The person at the front desk in La Gomero called La Palma and they said they would give us dinner in our room. We didn’t get to the Parador in La Palma until about 11pm but then we had a great dinner.

Dinner at the Parador in La Palma

Here is a link to the video I made of our time in La Gomera

La Gomera

As you may know I have a YouTube channel. I post trip videos on the channel every few days. I’m going to try to remember to link to my videos here when I post them. I posted my video of Tenerife yesterday.

We arrived on the island of La Gomera in the Canary Islands yesterday. Today we drove around the island. La Gomera is the second smallest of the Canary Islands. Its area is only about 142 square miles. The terrain is rugged with spectacular ravines.

It was interesting to see how the vegetation changed as we drove around the island. on the south side where we are staying it is very dry and desert like. On the north side of the island the vegetation is much greener and denser because of moisture from the trade wind clouds.

We stopped a couple of times to hike in the Garajonay National Park in the center of the island.

We saw this plant on each hike. I thought it should be called a dandelion tree. But I was wrong. It is a Hawk’s Beard Bush!

Hawk’s Beard Bush

We ate dinner at the Parador again.

Watercress soup
Roast goat

Tenerife to La Gomera

When we walked back to the hotel last night after dinner about ten o’clock things were pretty quiet. There were only a few people on the streets. The party must have started after we went to bed. This morning we left the hotel at about 6:15 and the streets were packed. The crowds were beginning to head to the bus station as were we.

Partiers heading home after being up all night

We took a bus from Santa Cruz to Los Cristianos on the south end of Tenerife where we got on a ferry to La Gomera.

The ferry that took us from Tenerife to La Gomera.

At the ferry terminal in La Gomera we rented a car and drove to the La Gomera Parador overlooking the harbor.

The ferry terminal on La Gomera. Our Parador is on the cliff above it.

We took it easy for the rest of the day enjoying the balcony of our room and exploring the Parador.

Courtyard at La Gomera Parador.
Relaxing on the balcony of our room.

We ate dinner at the Parador.

Squid
Cold melon soup with ham.
Prawns.