La
Palma is showing up ahead of us....
and
in there is Santa Cruz de la Palma, the Capital of the Island.
At
first it looks like most other cities, but the closer you get, the
more friendly it looks,
sorrounded by green mountainsides.
You go
to La Palma by two means of transportation: The ferry and by airplane.
Why
to choose the one before the other? That all depends, of course...
In our case, we felt it was to much at one time to go all the way
from Norway
to Puntagorda on the other side of the Island with no stop.
We
got up at 4.30 AM in the morning, left the airport at 7 AM and arrived
in Tenerife at noon, local time. From there we could have taken
a bus
to the national airport up in the northern part of Tenerife, from
where
there are departures 3 to 4 times a day to La Palma. We might have
arrived in La Palma late in the afternoon, in time to catch a bus
to
Los Llanos on the other side of La Palma, and the last bus to Puntagorda
at 19.15.
Then we would have arrived at our house about 20.30 in the evening,
with everything around in darkness, in a place we had never been
before.
So, feeling this was too much in
one day, and that things would have to be speeded up
to catch up with all the planes and buses, we went outside the airport
on arrival to Tenerife, and sat down and had our lunch. About one
hour later, we got on the bus to Las Americas/Los Cristianos from
where
the ferry left for La Palma at 19.00 in the afternoon.
|
That brought us
to Santa Cruz de la Palma at 23.00 in the
night, and a taxi had us out to our hotel for some sleep. We
had our travel agent to book us in there before we
set off from home,and we felt that was a good idea.
The ocean on the other side of the street, and from the
restaurant we could watch the sunrise while having a
delicious breakfast. |
The next morning we spent two hours
looking at the city:
and found it to be the cleanest city
we have ever walked in!
The picture above shows the park just inside the harbour, and in
the background is the bus-terminal from where you can take a
bus to any point on the island.
Santa Cruz was not only a clean city,
but also a friendly looking one, well known
for the balconies which you find only here on La Palma. Once those
were forbidden
all over the Canary Islands, but the prohibition never reached La
Palma for some reason.
How
would you like to have your dinner right here?
The
first of those balconies appeared on the island during early Spanish
colonial days., under the influence of settlers from Lower Andalusia
in Spain.
In time, balcony styles changed as the influence of Portuguese settlers
began to spread. These different tastes have given rise to the wide
variety of
balconies to be seen today.
It
is interesting that this varied repertory of balconies later spread
to America where examples flourished in Peru, Cuba, Venezuela and
other countries under the name of 'colonial style'.
So
we left Santa Cruz de la Palma by bus to Los Llanos at 10.30,
just in time to catch another bus to our final destination from
there
at 12.30. But the sight we got from the rest of the city,
and its nearby communities such as Breña Alta, told us that
this
was an island that really lived up to its name: Isla Bonita
(the beautilful island).