La Isla Bonita

Hola amigos! Here we are in Espana - the lovely island of La Palma to be precise. Its quite green from what we can see from the port, like Madeira, and probably the last time we'll see decent vegetation before Oporto next week.

It was a bit of a rough night last night and we didn't sleep well. Plus this morning we had to reverse into Santa Cruz harbour, meaning at 7am we were juddered awake as we turned around. We didn't actually get up until 9.45 when we heard the Captain announce the emergency drill for the crew. We headed to breakfast and then took the short walk into Santa Cruz town centre.

We weren't expecting a lot here, and if we're honest we wished we'd booked onto one of the tours as one of them went up to the volcano, more specifically to the observatory (telescope), but we didn't want to sit on a coach for the whole day and pay >£50 each for 30 mins looking at the outside of a dome. As it turned out, we probably made the right choice to stay in Santa Cruz because, provided you left the main street, there was plenty to see and we spent 3 hours wandering around somewhere probably the size of Bletchley.

The main street (Calle O'Daly) is probably more than a mile long, cobbled and narrow and our ship was parked at one end, and at the other was a replica of Columbus' ship Santa Maria (made out of concrete but painted to look like wood - very strange). Along the way from our ship to Mr C's was the Plaza de Espana home to a cathedral and the town hall. A local youth wind band were playing outside the town hall.

Once we'd walked all the way along the Calle O'Daly, we walked along the parallel coast road back towards our ship and watched the (rather choppy) sea come over the promenade. We took a dive back on the the Calle O'Daly and found a small, free museum tucked in between some shops. We think this was called the Casa Salazar, and it was a military museum. Aside from the guns, cannonballs etc, there was an entire room dedicated to the pirate Sir Francis Drake. Seemingly they are very proud that the sea defences of La Palma kept Drake out of the island, humiliating him. The display had pictures of him among other pirates such as Blackbeard. All the English people found this hilarious.

In the museum foyer we noticed an advert for an astronomy exhibition at another museum in Santa Cruz, so off we headed back to the other end of the Calle O'Daly. This museum, the Museo Insular, was based in a former convent of some Franciscan monks, and there's still a big church attached. Although €4 each there were paintings by Spanish artists, an exhibition of traditional Spanish guitars - including one made from a hard hat and another from an armadillos shell, traditional crafts and some more ship stuff.

The astronomy exhibition turned out to only be a couple of boards in Spanish, but the courtyard inside was the place where the observatory was founded in 1985 by the planting of orange trees by the King & Queen of Spain, the presidents of Ireland & Germany and the Duke of Gloucester (who is he?). Very pretty and very very quiet. We only saw 4 other visitors in the hour we were there, which is a shame.

We headed back and had a coffee in a bar in the town and then were back to the ship by 2.45. We've had some nibbles at afternoon tea, and are now sat in the Spinnaker bar having a Longboat Fizz each. We're going to go and book on a trip on Gran Canaria for Monday as it looks like the port area where we dock is a bit devoid of anything interesting. Tomorrow is Tenerife and our trek into Teide's volcanic caldera, so we'll have an early night tonight (sea conditions permitting).

Buenos noches!