Ever been on holiday, and felt everything went wrong?
That's just what happened to us the day we went to Los Llanos
to rent a car - to see the rest of the island.
There is a bus leaving every morning at 9 AM, and that one took
us from way out to the left of the picture below, down the steep
hillside to the left (you can't imagine how - neither can we)
and into the city of Los Llanos right in the center of the picture.
Area
view of Los Llanos de Aridane on the west-coast of La Palma.
Under the cloud is Caldera de Tamburiente, the great crater,
sorrounded by steep mountains ranging to 2.435 m asl.
Well into the town, we found four
different companies that rented
out cars. And can you guess - not an only one was available that
day.
Why not? "High season", they said.
"How's that at mid-winter", we asked.
We shoud have known. CARNEVAL of course!
So what to do then? Looking a bit closer into a booklet we found
there,
we decided to go visiting the Paradise Bird Park, which were not
too far away.
We found a taxi-driver and asked for the price, which he stipulated
to 3 Euros,
just to correct it as soon as he thought the whole matter through
- then to 5 Euros.
Not so bad, we thought, and then we could have dinner out there,
and relax a bit.
So we made him come back at 6 PM to collect us, enabling us to get
the
19.15 bus back to Puntagorda. (Last one that night...)
We got to the park, and besides
a lot of beautiful and rare birds, they
claimed to have 1.600 different plants and flowers.
Coracias
de Senegal (coracias abyssinica),
to be found across Central Africa.
And birds we found.
strange
birds - and rare birds
Here you
will also find the rare Albirtost Hornbill, whose European population
consists of 100 birds. They are a loan from the Zoo in Berlin for
their joint
breeding and preservation program. And several other rare birds,
of which
there are just a few left in the world, are amongst the birds you
will find here.
But what happened when we went up
to the small restaurant to have
our dinner for the day? Closed on thursdays..... It was, of course,
a thursday.
It
was here we could have enjoyed our dinner.....
So we asked the man in the ticket-office
if he could recommend some other
place to feed us. He could. One kilometer down to the right, and
there we
would find a restaurant called
"El Sombrero". Then we might come
back and spend the rest of the day watching birds and relaxing till
the taxi was about to arrive.
Off we went. Down the road in the hot sun. No restaurant?
Of course not - we went in the wrong direction. Back again, and
off to the other side. Long walk. (Wonder how long one kilometer
is
considered to be down there?).
We finally found it - and yes -
you guessed it.
"Cerrado" they call it - which means CLOSED on wednesdays
and
thursdays. And it was still thursday, and we were hungry.
They claim
to have 1.600 different species of flowers and plants here....
So back we went again, bought an
icecream and sat down to relax.
Lot of time to wait, but we managed. Couldn't just leave as long
as
we had an agreement with the taxidriver.
But obviously he did not have one
with us. So having waited till
10 minutes past 18.00 we just had to leave the area and find
the main-road again, to see if we could catch a taxi.
We did. And he would only charge us 7 Euros. But after having
asked him why you could get out there for only 4 Euros but had to
pay 7 to get back, he gave up, and accepted a 5 Euro-note.
We came home with the last bus,
and that was that.
PS: My wife did manage to catch
up with a delicious
dinner when we got back home....
