Black Sands and Deep Ravines « Paws on the Road

The black beach really makes my dinos POP.

Dear reader,

This new island is a whole other kettle of fish. To begin with, it’s tiny. But there’s a giant volcano crater in the middle of it and all around the island looks like an accordion, as though the land was folded into scraggly pleats. Which looks cool on a satellite picture but is a pain in the behind when you have to drive from one place to the next. Believe me, I know… (Today the authorities were trying to pull a fast one over us. “Oh, let’s just stop here for lunch, it’s on the way home anyway.” Home my foot. It added another HOUR to our drive even though it was right next to our town on the map. This place is weird.)

Anyway, so this is La Palma.

This is just one of the regular ravines, not even the steepest one.

The view from our house. Not too shabby.

Strike a pose.

Today we went to see the massive crater that defines the island. It was a pretty big slog there, mostly because of the aforementioned folds in the landscape, but luckily Transportation loves us and came to sit in the back to entertain BabyPaw and me while Catering took over driving privileges. When we finally made it to the top the view was quite impressive, I have to admit it. Diplodocus liked it too.

See Diplodocus, down there these giant fire balls would get spit out of the earth.

The Caldera de Taburiente

We also checked out the beach and coast; all black, as you might imagine from that ginormous volcano crater in the middle of the island…

Just think guys, you might have been alive when this volcano was spewing. Isn't that neat?

See that small white speck at the top of the cliff? That's a banana plantation greenhouse. They are EVERYWHERE along the coast. Chances are you have eaten a banana from here at some point in your life.

As we trekked down the side of the cliff we kept seeing little doors in the walls, sometimes a small window too. At the very foot of the cliff we then saw these:

Seriously?! THIS is where you want to set up house??

Who is crazy enough to a) swim here and b) carry all their luggage and food down, I don’t know. We did meet one man who was hanging out in his cave “house”, much higher up though, near the parking lot where we stopped. Transportation talked to him and found out that he usually spends weekends there. He was bringing firewood down from his jeep. I bet it gets pretty frosty there at night so close to the water and with the wind from the Atlantic rushing in. He seemed to like it though. Crazy Germans…

But my favorite place remains the house where we’re staying. I can happily spend all day here, watch the sea, swim in the pool and let the folds and ravines stay where the sun don’t shine.

The clouds coming to eat up the land. Weather in the making, how cool is that?!