La Palma, muchas bananas

Banana fields surrounding the Port of Tazacorte

We have now arrived at the northwestern part of the Canaries, La Palma and the village of Tazacorte. This small town/village on the west coast of La Palma is known for the enormous fields of Banana plantation. We are surrounded everywhere by Banana trees, even small houses uses spare ground to grow bananas. At the moment we are trying to cope with hot and very humid weather so our makeshift Bimini (sun cover) is on. The water temp is close to 30 C and the water is unfortunately not very clear, we think it is because of the agriculture drainage. On our 65 nm sail yesterday from San Sebastian, La Gomera, we saw a couple of large shoals of Dolphins, both large Bottlenose and Atlantic Spotted Dolphins. The sail was again a “performance sail”, we had max reefed sails and still averaged 9+ knots for more than an hour, with max speed 11.7 knots. A big reason was a 1-2.5 knot northerly current so we shouldn’t brag too much about it. We are planning to stay a week here and explore the island by bus and hikes. Hiking is a big attraction on this island with more than 1000 km well marked trails. The island has the second highest mountain in the Canaries of ca 2500 meters. Close to the peak are a number of astronomy installations, built and operated by different European countries, including Sweden. Apparently, as a contrast to the humidity at sea level, the environment at these sites is very well suited for astronomical purposes.