Santa Cruz de La Palma; Saturday, 25 February, 2023

I had a late breakfast before heading out of the hotel and catching the bus out to Santa Cruz to explore more of the islands capital

I spent quite a bit of time wandering around the city centre, stopping off at the church and town hall before making my way down to the Castillo de Santa Catalina, which was sadly closed as repair works were taking place.

I walked a bit further on and made it to the Naval Museum, housed in a full sized concrete model of the Santa Maria, one of the three boats that Columbus used when he made his discovery of The Caribbean in 1492. In fact as part of that expedition Columbus and his crew seized La Palma for the Spanish King, and the Island traces it’s establishment back to this event. The museum tells the history both of this event and of the role of the islands in the Spanish Empire. For a number of years La Palma was the third most important port in the Empire behind Seville and Antwerp.

Having taken in the Naval Museum I wandered the short distance back through the town centre to the former convent of San Francisco which today houses the island museum. This is an odd museum that houses a number of different, and not related in any way exhibitions.

There’s a room looking at more the naval history of the island, a room dedicated to historic tools and another room filled with taxidermized animals from the island. Finally in the upper parts of the museum there are several galleries.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the museum is actually the buildings that it’s located in, with the two floor cloisters, and the stunning views across the roofs of the buildings towards the mountains and rainforest towering right behind.

I spent quite a bit of time looking round the museum, running up close to it’s closing time at 2pm. I then quickly grabbed a spot of lunch in town before heading back to the bus stop to catch the bus back to Los Cancajos.

Back in Los Cancajos I went for a paddle in the sea, and quickly decided that the pools in the hotel were considerably more pleasant to swim in, and the concrete of the pool deck was considerably smoother and more comfortable to walk on than the black lava sand of the beach.

I headed back to the hotel for a swim and then dinner.