La Palma: a Treasure Trove of landscapes in One Island

La Palma is a small island, just 17 miles by 28 (27 x 45 km). You can easily experience a different landscape every day for a week.

“The Dead Sea”

I'm standing beside a grid of square, shallow ponds, each one maybe a metre across edged with stone.  The water in each pond is a pale coral pink, with a lacy white edging. Some have white mounds in the centre. This is the Fuencaliente salt works. From May to October or November, the ponds are full of sea water, getting ever saltier as the sun sucks away the moisture. It's a great place to see migrating birds (plovers, dunlins, sandpipers, turnovers and occasionally even flamencos and shelducks)  but the only things that can live in this water are a tiny crustacean, Artemia salina, which is pink like the first stirrings of dawn. This is only two and a half miles (4 km) from...

“Mordor”

Now that it's early evening the air is cooling down, but I can feel the day's heat radiating off the black lava. 

Nothing grows here. It rarely rains, and it's too far to pipe water in. Every time I come, I'm reminded of astronaut Buzz Aldrin's description of the Moon - “Magnificent desolation.” Nobody lives here, but my goodness, it's impressive to see now and then. Some of the ground is covered with the tarry looking pahoehoe lava, but most of it looks like the clinker from a blast furnace. There are a few orange lichens, but nothing else grows here that I can see. As the crow flies, it's only two thirds of a mile (1 km) from here to...

“Mars”

This doesn't look like planet Earth at all. The rocks are dark red and orange and there's a hint of sulphur in the air, tickling the back of my throat. I can hardly see any plants, and everything is dry. Amazingly, I'm standing on a hill which is younger than I am.

This is Teneguía, a volcano which erupted in 1971, making the island half a kilometre longer. There are fumaroles: holes the size of rabbit tunnels with the entrance surrounded by lemon yellow crystals. Some of them are warm, like a hair dryer on the lowest setting. The volcano is asleep, but it's definitely dreaming down there. The trade winds swirl my hair, and the view down towards the salt pans is amazing. It's only twelve and a half miles (20.5 km) from here to...

“Barbados”

The small town of Tazacorte is an island in a sea of bananas. As far as the eye can see there are bananas and bananas and bananas, with a sliver of silver sea behind. It's hot, but more humid than the lava field. I know it's ridiculous, but I can't lose the feeling that there are dinosaurs watching me from behind the fronds. And it's only ten miles (16 km) from here to...

“The Walled garden”

Much of Breña Baja and Breña Alta is like the walled garden in a stately home. Tiny fields are crammed with vegetables, or flowers for export. Lettuces and carrots and broccoli and leeks, often in lines like a cross stitch sampler. You can grow almost anything on this island if you just pick the right spot. And it's only another nine miles (14 km) from here to...

“Narnia”

I'm walking through a million shades of green. Trees covered with lichen surround me, arcing overhead, and I crush moss and bracken under my feet. Even the air smells green.

Oregano and thyme scent the air in sunny clearings. Birds and butterflies flit between the leggy trees and ferns. My footfalls are almost silent on the leaf mould. This is the laurel forest that used to grow all around the Mediterranean in the time of the dinosaurs. Now it only grows in the Canaries: on La Gomera, the north of Tenerife and here in the north of La Palma. I'm a sceptical, scientific type, but I feel magic in the air. I half expect to meet a gnome or Mr Tumnus trotting along with his parcels.

And it's only three and a half miles (5.5 km) from here to...

“Scotland”

I find Forestry Commission woodlands rather gloomy and the trees are almost identical, as though they were made in a factory. Canary pine forests are luminous, and each tree is different, like giant bonsai trees. The trunks look a little like giraffes' necks, and if you poke your finger into a dark patch, it will quite likely come out sooty from the last forest fire ten or twelve years ago.

The baby pine trees are a lovely pale bluey-green, almost eau de nil. Again, my footfalls are silent on the fallen needles, but now the air smells of resin. The world is full of light as a flock of red-billed choughs (Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax) glides past, cawing. Although it's farther by road, as the chough flies it's only four and a half miles (7 km) from here to...

“Kilimanjaro”

Here above the treeline the hillside is covered with bushes –codeso– like less scratchy gorse. They're all in bloom, the hillside is as much yellow as green and the wind smells of mead. Just above the car park are the Muchachos – a group of natural stone pillars that look sorta-kinda-like a group of young men. As I walk around them, it's a little like being in a low flying aeroplane. The fluffy clouds are far below, and look as though they'd be delightful to jump on. It's all too easy to understand why so many cultures believed that the Gods lived on top of the mountain.  But six months later it's like...

“Iceland”

The same mountain top after a winter storm is another world. The rocks are shrink-wrapped in half an inch of ice, the bushes are studded with it, and a foot of snow blankets the ground. It's several degrees below zero and the wind is full of ice needles.

The world is shrouded in fog until a sudden gust rips the clouds away and all that ice sparkles like diamonds under a vivid blue sky. And after touring the mini continent, I'm still only fifteen miles (29 km) from the salt works.