La Palma - Vacations that cleans your head and body

 

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We are back from La Palma Island—one week earlier than planned. As Heraclitus put it: ‘The only constant in life is change.’

Autumn had been long. Too much work, too much admin, too little joy. I needed to get away, regain motivation, and clear my head before I could keep going. I tried to leave in December, but that was too crazy. So I planned January.

At first I wanted three weeks somewhere far: South America, Mexico, South Africa, Southeast Asia… The options multiplied until I couldn’t choose at all—I kept switching frantically between forecasts, maps, and flight tabs.

And then it clicked—like it always does—and I knew I had the right solution. I don’t want exotica. I don’t want decisions. I don’t want a daily puzzle of where we’ll sleep and what we’ll see next. I just want to switch off. I want mountains, simple movement, and thoughts that finally go quiet. La Gomera surfaced first, then La Palma: Canary Islands I hadn’t been to yet, with mountain trails, cheap flights, and the promise that a tent might be enough. Jan sighed with relief when I finally stopped freaking out and banging my head against the wall in indecision and picked one plan. This is, unfortunately, my process: panic, anger, analysis, stress—and then a sudden click, and I can finally breathe out and focus on the one option I’ve chosen out of millions.

The departure was busy, but fine. First I launched both girls toward their school skiing trip, then we packed for hours and I worked half the night like a madwoman to clear my desk of urgent tasks and for a few short hours I even managed to sleep. In the morning, we ran for the bus, dragged backpacks heavier than we would have liked (well, carrots and cucumbers are important for hiking, right?) through the airport, and flew to Tenerife. Then bus and ferry. On the way we had to promise Robert we’d definitely return to the white-sand beach in Los Cristianos on the way back—we didn’t yet know that we would keep that promise, just a bit differently than he imagined.

We arrived on La Palma late, found an overpriced bed because a capsule hostel wouldn’t take us with a child, and fell asleep quickly. The next morning we got on a bus, with backpacks (now over 25 kg) packed with all lunches and dinners for 5 days hike from home, filled in water, and a gas canister that I managed to buy on the run in Los Cristianos before the ferry left. 

In Los Canarios (Fuencaliente) we got off the bus and began climbing. While planning, I hesitated a lot about whether we could manage this. From 700 meters we were supposed to climb up to a

bout 1,900 m above sea level today. But I decided that the GR 131 in this direction would be a better option for us. Technically, to camp on La Palma you should have a permit—just apply a week in advance, give an approximate itinerary, and you’re good to go. For the national park inside the caldera you need a special permit. That would have been fine—if I hadn’t found this out last night. So I hope camping outside the national park isn’t enforced too strictly. Water might be an issue, and it might freeze up there. But there should be a refuge along the way and some water taps. Water turned out to be no problem—it existed, but every tap came with the same label: ‘sin potable.’ Non drinkable. Bring a filter. Filter every drop. Tested for you.

The sun is shining, the pine forest on black volcanic soil is stunning, and we snack constantly. A couple of retired pairs overtake us; some cyclists come against us (later we pass a sign saying “cyclists are strictly prohibited” with a handwritten note underneath: “I do not care”). The views keep improving. The volcanic landscape is amazing. One volcano erupted actively here in 2021, now everything looks perfectly calm. Robert collects volcanic stones, throws pinecones down the slope and slowly stops listening to us. It’s clear that he is tired. Even the fairy tales aren’t working anymore. So we stop around 1,850 meters. He’s still climbed more than a thousand vertical meters today—even if we haven’t gone far on the map. The forecast for a few days ahead nags at me, but we have time and food.

La Palma has the most beautiful starry sky in Europe. Verified for you. In the evening we pitch the tent and pee with a view of volcanoes, the sea, and the sunset. At night we carry Robert outside to pee, and above us is a sky so full of stars we can hardly believe it. There’s no moon. Supposedly you can see up to 3,000 stars with the naked eye at once here, including the Milky Way in all its detail. Wow.

I’m freezing. Thank goodness I brought a warm sleeping bag. At around 2,000 meters it was close to freezing, so I appreciate it when Robert crawls into my sleeping bag and warms me nicely. Outside it’s drizzling, fog so thick you could cut it with a knife, wind pushing the tent, and in the morning I have no choice but to crawl out in my down jacket and gloves and start cooking breakfast while Jan tried to pretend he was not awake. I even broke the rules and cooked in the vestibule. Then—like the island was playing with us—the fog tore open and the sky went bright blue. We dried the tent, packed, and walked on

through a landscape so beautiful that I cannot turn my head fast enough—volcanic ridges, clouds, fog under us, sea. Then as we start descending, it gets colder, more clouds roll in and hide even the volcanoes around us so I feel sorry for the people walking against us from El Pilar—no views today for them. 

At a picnic area called El Pilar we found a tap and the familiar Spanish label: sin potable. Not drinkable. We filtered some water and cooked. A man came over immediately and scolded us with the kind of tired
authority you only get from spending all day preventing disasters. No camping here, only on the other side of the road —‘no permit, no camping.’ No stove on wooden tables either: ‘madeira, madeira… no cocina.’ He pointed our burner toward the tiles like he’d done it a thousand times. Take your trash with you; the bin is only for toilet paper. It must be exhausting to spend the whole day chasing tourists to make sure they behave respectfully… I wouldn’t trade places.

Cheerfully we continue along the red trail, and the volcanic landscape turns into rainforest. We won’t make it to the refuge today. It’s still over 500 meters uphill and 5 km away, and it’s getting dark. We consider pitching the tent right on the trail—flat ground is rare here and we haven’t met anyone in the last three hours—but eventually find a bend just big enough for our tent. We clear pinecones, branches, and stones and squeeze the tent between the slope and a tree. Robert trims branches with his knife. Tomorrow, when we forget them, he won’t be

happy. When we lie down, headlamps pass through the bend uphill. Good thing we’re not in their way—they probably wouldn’t appreciate the nighttime surprise. Under trees the air was warmer; at 1,400 meters we finally slept deeply. I love this part of hiking the most: when the world contracts to basic needs—cold, hunger, thirst, bladder, sore hips. It’s primitive and oddly freeing. The mind stops staging its complicated dramas.

After breakfast when we start walking uphill, two fit young guys overtake us—they set off before dawn and can’t understand how we, with a child, managed to appear so far along by 9 a.m. It’s funny to let the guys sit in their confusion for a moment—nobody expected us to sleep halfway between camps because we simply couldn’t make it farther. We sit together on a rock overlooking clouds pouring over the hills “like the biggest waterfall in the world” (in our son’s words). I tell Robert a fairy tale, and before noon we reach the refuge, where we meet the guys again. They’re hiking today from El Pilar all the way to Roques de Muchachos.

We fill up water at the refuge. “Sin potable.” We filter some, but then we get lazy and don’t filter one bottle, planning to filter it later or use it for cooking. On the south side of the hut it’s really hot. I peek inside—the refuge is very nice and quite large: bunk beds, tables, some leftover gas canisters, fairly clean—but we’re not sleeping at noon. We move on, and I hope a flat spot will turn up along the way. The weather is supposed to worsen tomorrow, and the path ahead doesn’t look very generous with flat spots. Robert keeps walking, but when he realizes he doesn’t have his favorite stick he carved, he collapses. He throws sticks and pinecones down the slope; he still asks occasionally if it is ok to throw them down, but when we stop him, it’s bad. After three days of serious elevation gain, he’s probably had enough. Jan looks for possible side trails down. Evening slowly approaches and on the northern slopes a cold wind is blowing.

We stop at a yellow junction and Jan and Robert vote to go down. I say okay, but that I at least need to climb the hill in front of us and have one more look. The light was soft, the horizon endless, and below us the clouds poured over the ridges like water. Here and there hilltops—now islands—poked out like small dark boats. In the distance, Teide rose from Tenerife like a myth. I stood there and enjoyed that strange beautiful feeling—like I’d knocked on heaven’s door and they’d let me in for a minute. Probably the most magnificent view I’ve ever seen in my life. 

I come back with a few photos that can’t capture it and show them to Robert anyway. “Down, or on?” I ask again. “If we continue, we have to leave now. It’s uphill, then we can sleep in a cave and go to the observatory. But we don’t have much time. You decide.”
He starts down, stops after ten steps, and says, “I don’t know.”
“Want to try going on?”
“Yes.”

Since he decided, he turned on some secret energy
generator and walks quickly. I launched a special fairy tale about an octopus in parallel universes that used people and goblins as an energy source and learned new strategies incredibly fast. Robert walks like
clockwork, the story has many twists to keep it going, and for the first time on La Palma we stick exactly to the times on mapy.cz. The sunset is… unreal and impossible to capture. When we pass Pico de la Cruz it’s already dark. I turn on my phone’s camping light but finding the side path to Cueva de Morro is  still hard, which secretly pleases me because I was afraid it would be easily accessible and monitored—it officially lies beyond the national park boundary and we should probably have a permit to sleep there. It’s good we can’t see the kilometer-long slope beneath us in the dark. 

The cave is amazing. We cook, settle in behind a stone wall, and sleep well. The best sleep came when I shifted to the middle and felt warmth on both sides—Jan on one, Robert on the other. Some luxuries are primal. 

In the morning I made breakfast and—out of laziness that would later feel like arrogance—I used unboiled water and even drank a little from the bottle. If I had known what awaited us in the evening, I would have thought twice. We pack up and head for the final section of our journey. The weather forecast likes us—rain shifts from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., so we can comfortably reach the summit of Roque de los Muchachos (2,426 m), look at all the telescopes along the way, admire the caldera from above (beautiful views, but not even close to yesterday’s), fill water from a tap next to the info center, and then slowly head down the
mountain. The first part of our journey is complete. I’m proud that Robert walked it.

We hitchhike toward the visitor center because we don’t feel like walking 5 km along the road. It works on the first try. We pay 15 euros entry and then explore the insides of the telescopes and various visualizations of what the La Palma observatories study. My heart is happy, and Robert enjoys it too. 

Then reality returned: prices, availability, and the sense that every bed on the island had been booked by someone richer and better organized. We argued over maps for half an hour and finally aimed for Santo Domingo. The first car that passed—a confused elderly German couple—stopped and, somehow, drove us all the way there. An old German guy opens the door and invites us with a smile in. Even Robert looks suspiciously at the not-so-well-kept house and room, which honestly makes our eyes pop. But in the end the place has its own style. In the evening the guy plays loud ’70s and ’80s music on an old record player, and when asked whether he’s a musician he replies: “I am too old for rock’n’roll, but too young to die.” I don’t feel like cooking in the greasy kitchen, so I buy canned food at a small shop and struggle to  push myself to eat it.

I barely fell asleep before I was sprinting to the bathroom. Diarrhea, then vomiting—classic something is very wrong. By the Bristol chart it was a perfect seven (thank you, Pavla Horáková). I was grateful the toilet sat next to the sink so I could do both at once. Somewhere in the middle of the night I ended up with my forehead on the porcelain, and my dream of continuing the trek dissolved completely. When Jan got sick too, it stopped being “my problem” and became “our plan is over.” Robert, of course, slept like an angel. By morning we were shaky and pale. I booked two nights in Santa Cruz. First we needed to recover—then Robert needed a beach.

The bus winds curve after curve along the coast through Barlovento, which I wanted to hike around, but now I close my eyes and try to survive, watching fallen stones with Robert. Somehow we manage even the transfer to Santa Cruz. At the accommodation we leave our backpacks and take Robert to the beach. He builds castles, splashes around happily, and I sit resigned on the sand. When they let us into the room at three, I’m grateful to finally lie down. I still don’t feel like eating, but I manage a piece of baguette.

The next day is for rest. My stomach still hurts, but we go for a short walk through town and enjoy one of the many rainbows above our heads. Robert doesn’t want to walk at all, and I have zero energy to

persuade him. You think you’ll take a child to the most beautiful place in the world, hike mountains with him, then take him to the sea—and then at the sea he’ll want to walk uphill with you. And he doesn’t. He wants the beach. Strange, right? He goes swimming with Jan (and they’re back soon, nicely black and cold), and I try to figure out what we’ll do next. When I realize the ferry to La Gomera leaves at 5 a.m. direct or 6:30 via Tenerife, it scares me a bit. On top of that I don’t feel ready to carry a backpack yet, and I forgot that tomorrow I’m supposed to be on a dissertation defense committee, and I’m not sure I can guarantee a good enough connection from the forest. Oh dear, life has never been simple. Jan suggests we keep hiking around La Palma. It doesn’t sound completely insane.

Robert solves the decision paralysis for me. At midnight he starts vomiting. Then again. That was the last straw. This makes no sense—better to save the vacation for another time than pay for accommodation for people with stomach aches. I’ll pay for flights home instead. Jan isn’t thrilled about leaving for Tenerife by ferry in four hours. We look at accommodation, but it’s hopeless—insanely expensive and barely available, meaning we’d have to keep moving. On top of that I enter action-mode panic, and then there’s nothing to discuss. We book the ferry, flights, pack, wash laundry, and meanwhile keep carrying Robert to the toilet to vomit. The neighbors upstairs must be thrilled with us at 4 a.m. At 5:40 we leave for the ferry. Well—Jan lifts Robert to carry him and Robert vomits. So he has to carry him like a baby. Plus a backpack. I do a final sweep of the apartment and shoulder the heavier pack. We make the ferry to Tenerife.

Robert, pale and suddenly angelic the way sick children can be (they don’t argue, they hug you, they sleep…), lay on a bench in Los Cristianos for hours with a view of the very beach he’d wanted to return to. Sometimes the universe keeps your promises in the most sarcastic way possible. He sleeps most of the time, interrupted only by regular vomiting and drinking.

A few hours later we were on a plane.

So yes—this was a cleansing vacation. First we cleansed our heads in the mountains. Then we cleansed our digestive systems for three days. It did not go according to plan. Who knows whether we should have stayed longer, or whether leaving early saved us from something worse. Those are the what-ifs.

On the plane, Robert slept. I read Teorie podivnosti by Pavla Horáková (highly recommended).  Half-delirious on the plane, my brain kept looping a parody of a Jarek Nohavica song: "filtruj vodu, filtruj pitnou vodu, filtruj vodu a nebudes sr..." (‘filter the water, filter the drinking water, filter the water and you won’t sh—’)

Next time I will filter all the water very carefully. I promise. 

Maybe it wasn’t the water—who knows—but I will probably never eat canned pasta again. It went down my throat about five times, and it wasn’t good even the first time. 

 

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Travel Notes

Route / structure

• We followed GR 131 on La Palma, starting from Los Canarios (Fuencaliente) and heading up toward Roque de los Muchachos (2,426 m).

• With a child (and winter conditions), we naturally broke days shorter than the “adult” pace so it took us 3.5 days, guys who passed us made it in 2 days.

Permits (don’t do what I did)

• Wild camping is permit-based. In principle you apply in advance with an approximate itinerary.

• Inside the national park / caldera area there are additional restrictions and a separate permit system (limited nights / limited number of people).

• I found out too late and relied on staying outside the strict zones and being discreet. If you want peace of mind: arrange it properly.

Water (“sin potable” means: filter it, always)

• Water exists, but a lot of taps are labeled “sin potable” (not drinkable).

• We saw water taps (and water was running) at El Pilar, near a refuge, and by the Roques de los Muchachos info area — but still labeled sin potable. 

• Bring a filter and actually use it. Every time. Even when you’re tired. Especially then.

Weather (January reality check)

• At around 2,000 m it can be near freezing, with fog, wind, and drizzle — and then suddenly clear five minutes later. During day it is nicely warm.

Camping / sleeping

• Flat ground can be surprisingly rare in places, but we always found some place to camp, on top also some bivaques with stones around

• The refuge we passed looked clean and functional (bunks/tables)

Food / fuel

• We carried most meals (lunches + dinners) from home. Heavy, but it meant no daily logistics. We actually took way too much.

  We carried water for 2 days always, but that was actually not necessary thanks to so many water taps. 

• Getting a gas canister was easiest before the hike (we bought one last-minute in Los Cristianos in hardware shop, should be easy to get also in Santa Cruz de La Palma, but we would not have made the morning bus on time). 

Transport notes

• Getting around is very doable with buses

• Hitchhiking worked quickly for us on the mountain road

Observatory / visitor center

• If you like astronomy even a little: Roque de los Muchachos / observatory area is worth it.

• We paid €15 per person for the visitor center / museum by Roque de los Muchachos, there should be also nice astronomy/science museum by Santa Cruz de La palma (https://ojosalcielo.com/) that should be really worth visit as well.