The city was founded by Alonso Fernández de Lugo on May 3, 1493. It was located between a river which is situated by a cave named Tedote (now Cueva de Carías, located north of the city). The city, originally called Villa del Apurón, served as a port that connected routes to the Americas, exporting goods from the island such as sugarcane. The city was sacked by pirates and was later reconstructed and fortified against future pirate attacks. Famous fortifications include the Castillo de Santa Catalina and Castillo de la Virgen. The economic crisis that affected the agriculture sector brought the greatest loss of population in the city's history, which limited its expansion and caused the population to stabilize and drop to 11,000. The population did not approach its original 18,000 again for the next hundred years.
-----Wikipedia
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| Santa Cruz de la Palma. A city once sacked by pirates is now visited by THE PIRATE |
We awoke today (not too early I might add) to the sound of rainfall. And we heard it off and on all day long, usually lasting for just a few minutes, a variable strength.
Today we tackled laundry, souvenir shopping, museum visits and, of course, Canarian cuisine.
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| The city has numerous gift shops specializing in Lava creations. Did we indulge? Only about $1000 worth! |
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| Our shopping spree (and believe me we both hate to shop, but got a good head start on Christmas 2018) was accompanied by this young lady playing (very well) a variant on the steel drum. |
After quite a few stellar future Christmas gift finds in numerous stores, we headed to lunch.
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| Once again Arepas ruled the day. |
When the economic crisis hit the Canaries in the 1960-1980s, many emigrated to Venezuela and Cuba and hence there are many restaurants with theme food from these locations. Paul has discovered an arepa--corn meal cake stuffed with anything you want-- is a great lunch option.
From here we tried to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art, but found it closed :(
So off we went to Museo Insular. This is described as a museum of La Palma island and is in fact the most bizarre collection of weird stuff on the planet. But it is quite interesting. It has artwork, old wooden tools, a telephone museum, taxidermy of every type, including a birding and shark exhibit, old maps of the last five centuries, and a plethora of deformed stuffed goats. I mean who has that treasure???
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The museum is housed in an old convent. |
If there were an award for eclectic museum collections, this one would rank high.
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| Part of the telephone exhibit which extols one man's 1905 dream to add the device to the island. Note the six line switchboard! |
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| A photography display covered 100 years of photos of children ages 1-15 ending in 1972 at a single family studio. |
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| Annually, there is a contest for astrophotography and this one came in 3rd. Frankly one and two didn't measure up. Beautiful stuff. |
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| Lotsa old wooden implements line the museum walls |
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| Dead stuffed animals are a big feature here. Note all the sharks on the right hand wall up high. |
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| Taxidermy of birds from far and wide |
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| Turtle-i- dermy |
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| Hello I'm stuffed |
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| Paul was scared of this supersized rabbit even though it was dead. |
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| Deformed goats of Palma. The right has one head and two bodies and the left has multiple legs. |
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| No, they aren't doing "the nasty." They are Siamese goat twins. |
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| Taxidermy ala fishies |
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| Hammerhead anyone? |
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| Mez luna. A weird fish. |
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| This room housed the winners of the annual Carmen Arozena contest. Carmen was an artist in the early 20th century who died an "untimely death" and has an annual contest commemorating her memory. |
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| If you ever wondered what Paul would look like in a convent, wonder no more. |
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| The contest room was pictured above, but this exhibit featured Ms Arozena's work. She was a native of La Palma and passed away "untimely" in 1963 |
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| Ms. Arozena's work: La Familia |
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| More Carmen Arozena. This is one of my faves. |
We enjoyed this unusual museum of weird thrown together this-and-that from the island of La Palma.
From here, it was naptime and then.... DINNER
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| La Placeta -- a lovely Canarian restaurant |
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| Jean Tone Ick |
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| We ended the night with a nice walk on the black sand beachfront |
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| Our walk home. |
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| Hello supermoon! |
This was a slower paced but highly enjoyed day. Tomorrow we are up early and off to our next adventure in El Hierro. In the meantime, La Palma has been great to me!
“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
―
Anton Chekhov
Paul's Ponderings: As noted, a slow day on La Palma, which was welcome. Intermittent rain and sun as weather for our day....
In general, this is a place we'd come back to with no problems. That said we'd likely stay in Los Lllanos on the more dry side of the island Santa Cruz is more of an old school European town being the oldest port on the island (which means Columbus era, etc) and it's quite charming. In the winter, it appears to be more cool and rainy than the western side though.
Overall, a great trip to La Palma. Bueno!
Tomorrow it's off to El HIerro, the smallest and most western island....stay tuned...
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