La Palma — Lisa's (& Steve's) Travels

… the beautiful isle. That’s its nickname and it certainly fits. This is Santa Cruz de La Palma, the capital, and where we stayed -

The historic area of the city had some beautiful homes and balconies…

(sorry it’s tilted; there was construction along the street in front of them)

… while the island as a whole is mostly lush and green, and very mountainous -

That picture was from our hike to the top of La Nieve. We started in a pine forest…

… and ended above the clouds -

Before you go being too impressed, know that clouds seemed to come in every day over the coast, and are pretty low. The peak tops out at 7,325 ft, and we started about 1,000 ft lower. I liked looking at the “sea” of clouds -

There was a nice wall of different colors (that we could see at the top of our hike) across the Caldera de Taburiente…

… which is a massive volcanic crater in the center of the island, ringed by peaks and fabulous viewpoints.

We continued driving around the crater, near the top of the ridge, and stopping frequently to admire the colorful rock formations -

This was quite interesting, but we couldn’t go inside -

Around the next “corner” we found multiple observatories and the MAGIC telescopes …

… near the high point of the island, and this beautiful wall -

Now, shifting gears, we headed south to check out the Volcan San Antonio…

… and then headed up the west coast to survey the damage caused by the eruption of the Tajogaite volcano in 2021 -

They are still moving literal tons of rocks and ash from roadways and fields -

And the volcano is still smoking -

The next day we did an easy hike within the Caldera de Taburiente, luckily getting there early enough before the daily clouds poured in (as shown at the end of the video) -

(as before, click the link at the end of the post to open this in your browser to see the video)

Can you tell the direction of the prevailing winds from the angle of the trees? -