La Palma Island. Days 1 to 5 of the trip

Morning of September 13. Just like last time, we had packed our suitcases the evening before. This time we had even taken vacation days with a margin: one extra day before departure and one after returning, so we would have time to prepare and then rest and catch up on sleep. As usual we got ready early in the morning and drove to Sheremetyevo in our own car. We arrived at parking lot P12 and found it completely full. Neither the covered nor the open-air section had a single space left. Fine, so we asked where else we could park. They told us about Gallax parking. I had prepared for exactly this scenario and had already looked into that parking lot. Pilots and flight attendants use it, and it has a shuttle that frequently runs between the parking and the terminals. So we drove there, a man told us there was space, we went in, found a spot, parked, took out the suitcases, I registered the car, and then we went to Sheremetyevo on the shuttle. As always, we had plenty of time because we always arrive early just in case. We also wrap the suitcases at home and put red tape on them so they are easier to spot on the baggage belt. After that nothing unusual happened: check-in, boarding, takeoff. While we were waiting for the plane, Svetlana went to buy coffee at the airport. After that the card she used for payment stopped working, so it is always worth carrying spare bank cards.

While we were flying over Europe, I recognized the place in Austria where we had been back in 2017:

Then another plane flew quite close to us:

During the flight Sveta, as usual, watched movies on the screen built into the seat in front of her, while I read articles on my phone and listened to podcasts. And when lunch came, she handed me all the pastries that had come with her meal.

After landing we spent a very long time in the passport control line. Maybe two flights had arrived at the same time, but everyone around us seemed to be Russian-speaking. After passport control we picked up our suitcases, which had already been circling on the belt for a while, and went to pick up the car. Luckily we knew where to go. The rental process went without surprises.

I did not need long to get used to the car because I remembered everything. That was exactly why I had booked the same model again. With a new car every time you have to figure things out from scratch, and that takes both time and energy. We got in and drove off. Then another problem came up: the navigators on both phones took a long time to understand where we were. Maybe a rapid change of position on the globe makes them stop and wonder whether it is some kind of mistake. About twenty minutes later we were already at the gates of our first hotel. By the way, that guesthouse had been the last hotel of our March trip. And here came the catch: we pulled up and the gate was closed. I tried to enable mobile internet on DrimSim, but after so much time it too needed a while to understand where we were, just like our navigators. In the end I messaged the manager on WhatsApp, and the gate was opened for us by our old acquaintance. We started speaking Russian with him right away, and he recognized us immediately. It was the El Cerro de la Luna guesthouse. As we were rolling our suitcases to the room, the manager met his father-in-law, whom we had not seen back in March and whom he had told us often traveled to Dubna. We chatted a bit and went to check in. We also asked where their supermarket was. They pointed somewhere into the distance and said it might be closing soon, so we hurried off. In the end we ran around town looking for that supermarket. We had to leave the car some distance away, so we ended up carrying the groceries quite far. Once that was done, we went back to the room to prepare for the next day. I adjusted the car setup, unpacked things, and redistributed our belongings between the suitcases so that one contained things we almost never used and the other things we were constantly taking with us. After that we still had to buy ferry tickets and book a place on La Palma. We went to bed late.

Morning of September 14. We got up early while it was still dark because we had to be at the port by 7:45. We had a ferry to La Palma. The rule there is that if you arrive with a car, you have to be there one hour before departure, and departure itself was at 8:45. We arrived while it was still dark and there was hardly anyone around. I walked around the pier and asked where exactly we had to drive to board the Armas ferry. Once we figured that out, the long waiting began. The ferry, as far as I remember, was seriously delayed. Here is the beast itself. The entrance into the hold was through the bow:

After it docked, trucks and cars kept coming out of it for quite a while. It must have arrived from another island.

This is what the parking deck inside looked like:

It had several levels, and our car was on the second one. It had gotten there by the ramp that is already raised in the photo, on the right.

As soon as we boarded the ship and sailed off, I took out my laptop to look for accommodation for three nights. The conditions were these: somewhere near the center of the island, with a private kitchen and bathroom, parking, and a rating above 8.0. We seemed to find something suitable. The guesthouse was called Casitas Miramar.

Here we have already left La Gomera and are sailing toward La Palma:

Sitting out on that deck was not very pleasant because it smelled of ferry exhaust, a nauseating smell for me. So we did not stay there for long and moved inside. There were two cafes inside with almost no lines, and as usual we had something tasty there. The whole trip must have taken about five hours. We got tired.

As soon as we docked, we drove as far away from the ferry as possible. Here we climbed up a mountain by car:

We were on our way to the guesthouse. On the way we stopped at a place where you could reserve access to a beautiful trail that required a permit. The nice thing was that it was completely free. You could get the permit online for free as well. We booked it for the next day, from 8:30 to 11:30. After that there was very little distance left to our cottage. We arrived, parked, went through the gate, and found nobody inside. We came back out, I turned on the internet, and then received messages saying that we had to call them when we arrived. I thought that calling might be expensive, so I checked whether I could do it through DrimSim. It turned out I could. The price was quite low. A call lasting under a minute cost me 13 eurocents, around 10 rubles. If I had called from my MTS number, it would have cost me 75 rubles. And with DrimSim it is convenient because you can call straight from the phone using the DrimSim app. Jumping ahead, later I had to call another number, and that cost me only about one cent, roughly 50 kopecks per minute. Calls within Russia cost more.

So after that call we stood near the parking area and waited for the hostess. Five minutes later she came out through the gate. I still do not understand where she came from because we had been inside and there had been nobody there.

There were two cottages and a pool on the property, and the parking lot had space for two cars.

The house itself was great. Inside there was a large kitchen combined with a living room. The bedroom was slightly elevated, and you had to climb a few steps to get to it. Next to it there was our own bathroom with a shower and sink. You could easily live in that place for more than a month, it had everything you needed. The manager did not speak English, so she showed us everything with gestures and left. Then we carried our things in, got ready, and went off to explore the island while there was still sunlight.

Here we drove past banana plantations:

Here you can see how they grow:

We visited a few marked points nearby. At one of them we watched the sunset:

In the evening we ran around outside trying to catch the WiFi signal, closer to the second cottage. The router was probably there. The good part was that the second cottage remained empty the whole time we stayed.

I often went out onto the terrace by the house. The sea view from there was great, and the moon was shining brightly in the sky.

Before going to sleep, Sveta started grumbling. She disliked everything: the bed arrangement, since the beds stood apart, the mirror facing the bed, and the fact that something might fly in through the open window. Then at night she woke up because something was running around on the roof.

Morning of September 15. We got up early because we had to make it to the trail we had booked the day before. It was a trail along the rim of an old volcanic crater on the southern side of the island. We had breakfast and drove there. In the end we arrived even earlier than required. Just to be safe, we waited for the inspector, showed the permit, and then continued. I never understood whether it had actually been necessary to wait.

When we got there, there was nobody around. While we were getting ready, another young German couple arrived, and it turned out that we had already crossed paths with them somewhere the day before or the day before that. We walked to this point:

We kept going, and the Germans kept trailing behind us, but they never managed to overtake us.

Here is a photo of the crater. And interestingly enough, tomorrow we would be on that mountain on the opposite side, where the observatory stands:

After walking around, we got back into the car and drove toward the southern part of the island:

Here is the southern crater. It is small:

Then we headed to the salt pans:

We tried to drive around the southern part of the island and realized that, as usual, the navigator had dragged us onto a difficult but short road. Fine, we kept going. Eventually we ended up in a place full of cars. Apparently people started hiking from there. We stood there in the forest while Sveta ate the chicken burger and drank the coffee we had bought earlier, and then we thought, why not us too? We locked the car and went for a hike as well. We decided to walk to our marked point, which looked as if it was not very far away. We climbed along a forest trail and eventually reached a spot where a sign said it was dangerous to go any farther. We decided not to ask for trouble and turned back. Down below we got into the car and drove home. On the way we ran into a beautiful view:

That was a distant view of the place we had visited earlier that morning.

Back at the house we nibbled on dried pasta. We barely had any food because it was Sunday and all the shops were closed, so we had not been able to buy anything.

Morning of September 16. As usual we tried to get up early, but apparently did not quite manage it. We got ready and drove to the northern part of La Palma. Here was our first marked stop:

On the way we stopped by Spar and bought a watermelon and a few other things. I really like eating Prince cookies with chocolate filling when traveling in Europe. They are so good it is hard to stop. We bought some of those too. Then we continued and visited a place with interesting glass platforms jutting out over the cliff:

Then we headed toward the observatory and came across this mirror-like thing:

And here is the observatory itself:

We drove all the way to the top. There was a parking lot for about 15 to 20 cars, and we got lucky because a spot opened up just as we arrived:

We walked along the trail to the cliff. This was the view there:

This place was opposite the one where we had been yesterday morning. And the mountain in the distance was the southern part of La Palma, where we had been the day before in the afternoon. Everything looks close, but because of the mountain roads it still takes a very long time to drive anywhere. After the walk we got back into the car and had tea with bread, cheese and cookies.

We continued. The next point was some beach with black sand. It was just a beach, nothing special:

But the road to it was beautiful. A wall hung over it:

That whole day we were messaging and calling the manager of our house because we wanted to book one extra day, but Booking would not let us do it. In the end the payment only went through by evening.

Morning of September 17. We woke up. According to the original plan, we should actually have left La Palma at 5 a.m. that day, but we decided to leave the next day instead. There was a much more convenient 3 p.m. sailing rather than a 5 a.m. one. That route was operated by Fred Olsen. The price was about the same as Armas, but Fred Olsen had free wifi. On Armas, as we later understood, you only get the wifi password after buying something in the cafe and asking for it.

So we had a snack and then drove around the same loop as the day before. Only when we reached the fork where one road went to the observatory and the other continued farther along the new road, we chose the second option.

First we visited a semi-natural pool. At first we thought we would just have a look, but once we got there and touched the water, we decided to swim. There were proper changing cabins, and they were free. We changed and went in. I was the first to enter:

Getting into the water was cold, but I managed it. There were several pools there, and I tried swimming in two of them. One of them felt more like open water, though there was still a rocky barrier protecting it from the waves. After swimming we moved on. On the way there was another pool. We just looked at it and did not swim because our swimwear and towels were already wet. This is what it looked like:

Farther along the road we stopped and ran into a banana grove:

Then we drove to a waterfall. I decided not to go all the way up to it because it was damp there, but Sveta did:

After that we drove around on the mountain slopes, but the weather there was not great:

We drove home, and there the weather was excellent with bright sunshine. As I understood it, the eastern part of La Palma is in the clouds more often.

Back at the house we decided not to cook anything and instead go eat at some restaurant. I checked TripAdvisor for nearby places, and off we went. I found a restaurant mostly frequented by Germans. In general, La Palma seems to be visited mainly by Germans. I had read somewhere that this was because there is a direct flight from Berlin to the island. Dinner cost us 27 euros. Afterward we walked around the town and then stopped by a huge supermarket with two floors inside. We bought some pastries there and went home to eat them.

In the evening I suggested lying on the sun loungers by a palm tree under the night sky. I even took a photo of the view, but it does not convey what we were actually seeing: