The original volcanic bedrock of La Palma was pushed up from the ocean floor by the force of swelling magma, and then subjected to eruptions which covered the land-mass like a stack of pancakes, and the centre of these upwellings was more or less in the north or centre of the island. Eventually, about 700,000 years ago, a huge chunk of this duvet of rocky coverings simply slid off the underlying mound in a southerly direction, leaving a massive horse-shoe shaped gash. The lightening of the load in that area encouraged new volcanoes to grow up in the south, and there are two peaks as a result, with a caldera between them and the old central heights.
We found all this in the enticing Banana Museum in Tazacorte, the next town up the coast, which we visited in the afternoon. Our morning was spent lounging around - and we discovered the reason for the wild booming noises at night. Our terrace is actually a shelf over a deep cave - we are sleeping on air! The waves punch into this hole to create this powerful noise.
We drove up the coast to see if we could see the fishing fleet at Tazacorte, but then went on to what's called the Puerto de Tazacorte. That is really just a little tourist destination, with two broad black sandy beaches, some restaurants, council housing, tat shops and a deep and attractive valley cutting up into the interior. The valley sides are steep and black, ending in ferocious cliffs with distressed faces, one interleaved with red streaks like Roman stonework, the other a mass of boulders and clinkers like the ash from an anthracite fire.
Use of that valley, like any other flattish land on the island, was grabbed by rich and powerful families who tried a succession of enterprises to make their fortunes - sugar, tobacco, slavery and most recently bananas. The kings of Spain always backed them. A very surprising trade in the 19th century was the farming of cochineal, that red dye-stuff which comes from beetles. That lasted about 40 years, till chemicals took over.
The labour was unimaginably hard - backbreaking - with nothing more than picks and shovels to scrape into the unforgiving rock to make terraces for the crops and water-courses. Time and again the poor tried to wrest some sort of control from their landlords, but it was useless. The church was nominally at least on their side, but had its own objectives. One shipload of missionaries headed out to South America, but was immediately forestalled by French privateers who (being Protestant, amazingly) murdered the lot of them. The French have a long history of attacking La Palma - one called Jambe Le Bois (Pegleg) attacked and burned Santa Cruz on the east side of the island in 1553. The struggles for the poor went on, right through Franco's dictatorship.
It was the British who brought bananas - Mr Ffyffe being the foremost and the battle to grow them was then matched by the struggle to ship them and market them. The cultivation of bananas is hard enough, but the picking and transportation and preservation of the crop is a whole science, not to mention the diseases and pests which assail the crop, and the ferocious competition between different colonial and emerging countries which also grow them. Of course the Canary bananas are the sweetest and most flavoursome, and were identified by the famous little blue paper label which I remember from years ago.
The Banana Museum where we learned all this is in a pretty house at Tazacorte, and it consists of more or less nothing other than a set of huge display panels, like the pages of a book, laid out in two rooms. There are a few objects such as shears, weighing scales and push-along trolleys, very like what you'd see in your own garden shed but a bit bigger. This was both hilarious and poignant. What else can they do but tell their story? But it’s a very dry presentation. The windows - as we saw in Tenerife a few yeaes ago - are a 17th century English invention: sliding sashes which allow for circulation of air in the summer heat.
Now it's all tourism. Joining the EU led (unbelievably) to a decline in trade for bananas, and the Ffyffes company ended up being traded in and out of various fruit conglomerate corporations ending up in Ireland. Outside on the hillsides, the bananas are grown immaculately, each fruiting stalk clothed in blue plastic (not explained in the museum whose information has not really been upgraded since the early 2000s. The terracing is superb. We saw lorries trundling along with their harvest loads. Modern packaging has helped - but the Canaries face increasing competition from Africa where the fruits are maybe 30cm long. Bananas are only rivalled by oranges in the world of fruit consumption, and are a major foodstuff for most of its consumers - only in the pampered West do we eat them as a dessert.
Back to the beach. The sand is softly gritty, and a marvellous charcoals black colour and filled with really tiny sparkles from the edges of the grains. It is delightful. I was reminded of the floor I hate so much at the airport, with its menacing sparkles in those glossy black tiles.... I find on my travels so many points of connection and coincidence.
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