Longstride

Today took us from La Palma to our eighth and final Canary Island, El Hierro.

Another summary list for another travel day.

• There were no direct ferries from La Palma to El Hierro. Also, the ferries to El Hierro were expensive, and late in the day. Thus, it was actually cheaper (and much, much faster) to fly from La Palma back to Tenerife, and from there, to El Hierro. We booked the 12:00 flight from La Palma. This let us sleep in today.
• We got a bus from Santa Cruz to the airport. La Palma’s airport was small, cavernous, and quite empty. I assumed that in the summer, when there is more tourist activity, there are more flights and the airport is more crowded.
• Our aircraft, a twin propeller plane, was called “Rapadura” (“Rapture”). This seemed to me a poor name for an aircraft. La Palma’s airport (and the plane) is small enough that we had to walk out of the building and on the tarmac to get on the plane. Our flight was mostly full.

An aircraft named “Rapture” seems like a bad idea.

• The flight to Tenerife’s north airport only took about half an hour. Along the way, we had a great view of Teide.

Teide

• Tenerife North was a much busier airport. With a bit of time between flights, we got lunch at one of the airport’s food places.
• Our flight to El Hierro also took about half an hour, also on a propeller plane. This flight was about a third full.
• We almost missed the bus from the airport to Valverde, where we are staying the next three nights. The driver had just pulled out of the bus loop in front of the airport, and stopped and came back for us when he saw us exit the building.

Valverde

• We checked in to our apartment. It was very reasonably priced, and also much larger than what we needed. It also had the feeling of being two houses mashed together; it was a little bit of a maze, and the floors were at three different levels.
• We went to the food store for dinner and food for tomorrow. We couldn’t find the food store we were looking for, and wound up at a different food store.
• On the way to the food store, we walked past the TransHierro office. TransHierro manages the bus system on El Hierro, and also the taxis. We arranged for a taxi to pick us up tomorrow at the end of tomorrow’s section of trail.

Tomorrow: The first of two days of hiking on El Hierro, to finish the GR131.