Blog
Diving and snorkelling in the Canary Islands
The water is at its warmest at the end of summer, which makes autumn the best season of the year for putting your head under. Here is what you need, what you do not need, where to go on each island, and the one thing that has to be taken seriously.
What to see in Puerto de la Cruz
Puerto de la Cruz was the first tourist town in the Canaries, and it is still the most walkable. You do not come here to lie on pale sand: you come for the old town, the rough sea, the architecture of the seventies and a botanical garden from the eighteenth century.
The best viewpoints on La Palma
La Palma is a small island with two thousand four hundred metres of vertical, and that turns almost any bend in the road into a balcony. These are the viewpoints worth stopping at, what you see from each, and the one you have to plan before you go.
Virgen de la Peña, Fuerteventura's biggest fiesta
Every September the whole of Fuerteventura goes down to a tiny inland village to accompany an image that fits in two hands. The Virgen de la Peña is the island's patron saint, and probably the oldest Marian carving you will see in the Canaries after the one on La Palma.
Fishermen's guilds: where to eat fish in the Canary Islands
In almost every coastal village in the Canaries there is a building by the harbour that does not look like a restaurant, and where you will often eat the best fish in town. It is the fishermen's guild. Here is what it is, why it works, and how to order.
The Canary Islands in October: what to expect
October is the month when the islands change gear without changing temperature. The sea is still warm, some rain comes back to the north, and at the end of the month the clocks go back and it gets dark earlier. Here is what to expect, and what to keep in mind when planning.
Virgen de los Dolores, Lanzarote's biggest fiesta
On 15 September the whole of Lanzarote stops. The island heads up to Mancha Blanca, a small village in the municipality of Tinajo, to a shrine built because of a promise made while the ground was splitting open. Here is what is being celebrated, and how to be part of it.
Fiestas del Cristo in La Laguna: what they are and what to expect
In mid-September La Laguna holds its main fiestas around a sixteenth-century image. There is a fairground, a procession, and a night of fireworks that draws people up from across the island. Here is what is worth knowing before you go, including the one about the cold.
What to see in La Laguna: the town that became a plan
La Laguna does not make sense building by building, it makes sense as a plan: a town laid out in one go, without walls, whose grid later travelled to the Americas. Here is what you see in a morning, and why the old town is a World Heritage Site.