La Palma, Canary Islands
Today we began our two day visit to the Fortunate Isles. The Canary Islands have been known to Europeans since at least 40 B.C. from an account by King Juba II, ruler of Mauritania. This report was included in the writings of both Plutarch and Pliny the Elder, and for centuries, the islands were known as the Fortunate Isles. They are much closer to Africa than the other Atlantic Islands we will visit on this voyage and are the only ones to have been home to an aboriginal people, the Guanche, when Europeans first arrived.
We spent our time here today on an excursion to the west side of the island and the great caldera of Taburiente. This caldera, the primary physiographic feature of the island is 9 km across, 2 km deep and 28 km in circumference. On the north rim is the International Solar Observatory. During our visit, the rim was shrouded in clouds, but we took a very pleasant hike a short distance down into the caldera. After leaving Taburiente, we visited the village of Los Llanos for a sample of the local wine and cheese, and on our way back to the ship, we passed through the extensive lava field deposited during the 1949 San Juan eruption. La Palma is the most volcanically active of the Canary Islands and the most recent eruption, the last in a continuous series since the Spanish first settled here, took place on the south end of the island at Teneguia in 1971.
Today we began our two day visit to the Fortunate Isles. The Canary Islands have been known to Europeans since at least 40 B.C. from an account by King Juba II, ruler of Mauritania. This report was included in the writings of both Plutarch and Pliny the Elder, and for centuries, the islands were known as the Fortunate Isles. They are much closer to Africa than the other Atlantic Islands we will visit on this voyage and are the only ones to have been home to an aboriginal people, the Guanche, when Europeans first arrived.
We spent our time here today on an excursion to the west side of the island and the great caldera of Taburiente. This caldera, the primary physiographic feature of the island is 9 km across, 2 km deep and 28 km in circumference. On the north rim is the International Solar Observatory. During our visit, the rim was shrouded in clouds, but we took a very pleasant hike a short distance down into the caldera. After leaving Taburiente, we visited the village of Los Llanos for a sample of the local wine and cheese, and on our way back to the ship, we passed through the extensive lava field deposited during the 1949 San Juan eruption. La Palma is the most volcanically active of the Canary Islands and the most recent eruption, the last in a continuous series since the Spanish first settled here, took place on the south end of the island at Teneguia in 1971.
