Los Llanos de Aridane La Palma

On Wednesday 22 November, the day after we arrived at Puerto de Tazacorte, we took the bus from outside the marina up to Los Llanos de Aridane which we thought was the nearest useful food shopping town. It certainly turned out to be a good shopping town but, during the bus ride, we passed through the small town of Tazacorte, a short but very vertical drive above the port, and realised that that town would have been able to provide all that we required. [Ed: given the name of the built-up area outside the marina, Puerto de Tazacorte, perhaps we should have realised that there was likely to be a small town of Tazacorte somewhere close in the vicinity!] That said, Los Llanos de Aridane turned out to be well worth a visit – and not just for the HiperDino supermarket.

The old part of Los Llanos, with its narrow, pedestrianised streets and low, red-tiled houses, is most attractive. 

We enjoyed strolling past the brightly painted facades, admiring the balconies of the larger buildings and the beautifully varnished, ornate wooden doors and window frames of many of the properties. It has always been a wealthy part of the island and today it remains an up and coming part of the island.

Museo Arqueologicio Benahoarita. (R) Representation of a cave home (L) representation of a cave burial site (the body was always supported on wood or vegetation so that it did not lie in direct contact with the ground)    

Just on the outskirts of the old town is a very modern-style building which houses the Museo Arqueologicio Benahoarita, a museum concentrating on the pre-Hispanic period (approx 5BC to 15AD) when the Canary Islands were inhabited by the Guanches or Benahoaristas. They lived mainly in caves…

… or in rudimentary low stone houses. The society was essentially a tribal one, with 25 different fiefdoms/cantons across the islands each ruled by a chieftain. The fiefdoms all squabbled amongst themselves [Ed: nothing new there!] and by the time that the Spanish invaded and conquered the island, there were 12 cantons on La Palma alone.

The Guanche practiced a little farming, goat herding and hunting for their sustenance. Tools were primarily made from stones, wood and bones and the museum has fine examples of their hand-driven mill wheels, pestles and mortars and bone implements. There are also examples of simple jewellery made from shells. Some fish was included as part of their diet but the Guanche did not seem to have any seafaring knowledge which has left the archaeologists with an interesting dilemma as to how the people actually originated on the islands. Similarity in place names, burial practices and rock carvings suggest a link to the Libyan-Berber tribes from the Maghreb, modern day Tunisia and Morocco.

Stone piles and water courses used for religious ceremonies   

The Guanche worshipped a god known as Alcorac in Gran Canaria, Achaman in Tenerife and Abora in La Palma and there are some records of their religious practices from documents written by the invading Spanish. At their sacred sites, usually on the highest ground, stones were stacked in the shape of a pyramid. On religious celebration days, the people gathered at these sites to pray, dance, sing and celebrate.

Water was hugely important for survival and the Guanche people had special ceremonies to try to ensure the arrival of the rainy season. Rocks cut with water channels and small hollows have been linked to these ceremonies.

The Guanche have also left a legacy of their art (and religion?) carved into cave walls, cliffs and on large stones. Mostly geometric in design, spirals predominate and these have also been seen on their pottery and in the layout of rocks at the high religious gathering sites.

Guanche/Benahorense clay bowl
decorated with the solar-lunar calendar    

Their pottery is particularly interesting in that it was made by hand without the use of a wheel and was decorated with geometric lines and patterns. One vessel dating from 400-650AD is decorated with 365 lines, the days of the solar year, and the grouping of the lines shows the lunar cycle and its phases. It is believed that the linear decoration on all Guanche pottery has mathematic elements of symbolism linked to this calendar, based on astronomic observations.

But perhaps the thing that struck us the most, after our long, steeply downhill slog on La Gomera, was the description of the Guanche goatherders’ method of moving around on the steep mountainsides. The goatherders carried long, relatively thick sticks (say 2m long by about 5cm in diameter) which they used to help them up the steep terrain of La Palma in the normal fashion of mountain walkers the world over. Coming down again was a different matter…… Instead of planting the pole and then leaning on it to ease the strain of walking down the precipitous slopes, they planted the pole and then, holding it with both hands (but not their feet), slid down it to land smoothly and softly and, crucially, without jarring their knees and straining their joints and muscles, a few feet below the level from which they had started. There was a film showing walkers using just the same technique and it looked to be a joy on the leg muscles and knees but I’m sure it would take some time for your hands to adapt and stop blistering.

And so, with a greater understanding of the pre-Hispanic residents of the islands we returned through the old part of the town and, on the bus, back to BV. During the evening we planned a day’s road-trip further afield which, we hoped, would include a walking route [Ed: sadly, without walking pole] in some of the heartland of Guanche territory.

La Palma, Canary Islands