Longstride

Today took us from La Gomera, to the town of Fuencaliente on La Palma, and we prepared for our seventh island.

Another travel day, another bullet point list.

• We got up and left our hotel before sunrise to be on our 8 am Fred Olson ferry. It’ll be a long travel day, since there are no direct ferries from La Gomera to La Palma. We first take a ferry to Los Cristianos on Tenerife. After a several hour layover, we’ll continue on to La Palma.

Sunrise in San Sebastián

• At the docks, someone was playing (quite loudly) what could most charitably be described as “whale songs”, but it may as well just have been disorganized screeching.
• This ferry does not appear to have an outdoor observation deck, so we could only see the outside through incredibly dirty windows.
• We returned to the port in Los Cristianos shortly before 9, and walked a short distance away to a beachfront restaurant for breakfast. It was considerably less busy than when we were here three days ago, but there were still a fair number of beach goers for a Sunday morning.
• We returned to the port terminal to get away from the crowds, and later, get lunch at its bar-restaurant. It’s considerably quieter and less hectic here.

Los Cristianos

• Our ferry to La Palma was a couple of minutes late leaving port. I mention this only because, so far, every other ferry has been super-punctual.
• Weather has been partially cloudy, with both Tenerife and La Gomera topped with clouds and somewhat obscured by haze.

La Gomera — La Gomera from the north.

• We arrived in Santa Cruz de La Palma, and had a short walk to and wait for the bus that would take us to Fuencaliente. The bus took us on an hour-long journey through curvy mountain roads. This did not help CareFree’s motion sensitivity from the two ferry rides already today.
• We checked in to our hostel. The owner told us that some of our trail (as well as the campground we’d planned on using) was closed because of the volcano last year. Though the volcano was no longer active, there were still areas of hot rock and gasses. We’d been under the impression this wouldn’t be a problem, especially since we had been unable to find anything specifically stating part of the trail was closed, so we have some research to do tonight.
• We went to one of the pizzerias in town, and ate entirely too much pizza. The pizza was great, but service somewhat slow.