This is only a re-creation of events.
We have arrived in La Restinga on the island of El Hierro, which is a very small and confusing place. We attempted to explore the village this morning but didn’t have much luck. The tourist office doesn’t ever seem to open and, oddly enough, the bank and post office have signs indicating that they are only open from 11:30 am to 12:30 pm. Strange right? At 11:30 we double checked and only found the post office open.
We decided to wander around and found very few people or places of any kind. During our second tour of the main strip Adam said that it felt like we were in a ghost town and I had to agree. We decided to give up our walking exploration and try our luck at finding a wi-fi connection at one of the café’s. Our neighbour at the dock mentioned to Adam that people were nervous about coming to El Hierro because of “the volcano” so we decided to look that up first. A very tense 10 minutes followed. If one googles “El Hierro” and “volcano” one finds a lot of information. One would discover for example that a volcano had erupted just south of the harbour at Restinga, the entire town (600 people) was evacuated, and all access in and out of Restinga had been cut off. Getting concerned? We were too, especially since the timeline was hard to pinpoint; either this all took place last year or a few weeks ago. The noticeable lack of people around seemed to point toward a recent problem but, in the end, we confirmed that the town was evacuated in October, 2011.
Apparently an underwater volcano erupted, sending magma up to 60 ft into the air, and raised the water temperature to 35 degrees (sorry older readers I don’t know what that is in Fahrenheit but it’s really hot!). The spewing magma created a new land formation and since then there has been ongoing seismic activity. Restinga experienced 1000 earth quakes between June and July, 2012 and a volcanic event took place in September. It’s not really clear what that means but we know that it involved a lot of dead fish suddenly floating in the water. We can only assume from the almost complete lack of boats in the harbour, operating businesses, and people in the streets that the evacuation last year scared people off and the village hasn’t recovered. That or the rampant earth quakes are keeping people away.
We are here until we get a weather window to leave for the Cape Verde’s so we are going to make the most of it and leave as soon as we can. Right now we are concentrating on trying to find out whether the bus is running again because the only bank in the village doesn’t appear to be operating and Adam has made it clear that the three hour hike up and out of the valley into the next village is not an appealing option. Worst case scenario: we get someone to wire us money to the post office during the hour that it is open.
We decided to wander around and found very few people or places of any kind. During our second tour of the main strip Adam said that it felt like we were in a ghost town and I had to agree. We decided to give up our walking exploration and try our luck at finding a wi-fi connection at one of the café’s. Our neighbour at the dock mentioned to Adam that people were nervous about coming to El Hierro because of “the volcano” so we decided to look that up first. A very tense 10 minutes followed. If one googles “El Hierro” and “volcano” one finds a lot of information. One would discover for example that a volcano had erupted just south of the harbour at Restinga, the entire town (600 people) was evacuated, and all access in and out of Restinga had been cut off. Getting concerned? We were too, especially since the timeline was hard to pinpoint; either this all took place last year or a few weeks ago. The noticeable lack of people around seemed to point toward a recent problem but, in the end, we confirmed that the town was evacuated in October, 2011.
Apparently an underwater volcano erupted, sending magma up to 60 ft into the air, and raised the water temperature to 35 degrees (sorry older readers I don’t know what that is in Fahrenheit but it’s really hot!). The spewing magma created a new land formation and since then there has been ongoing seismic activity. Restinga experienced 1000 earth quakes between June and July, 2012 and a volcanic event took place in September. It’s not really clear what that means but we know that it involved a lot of dead fish suddenly floating in the water. We can only assume from the almost complete lack of boats in the harbour, operating businesses, and people in the streets that the evacuation last year scared people off and the village hasn’t recovered. That or the rampant earth quakes are keeping people away.
We are here until we get a weather window to leave for the Cape Verde’s so we are going to make the most of it and leave as soon as we can. Right now we are concentrating on trying to find out whether the bus is running again because the only bank in the village doesn’t appear to be operating and Adam has made it clear that the three hour hike up and out of the valley into the next village is not an appealing option. Worst case scenario: we get someone to wire us money to the post office during the hour that it is open.