Suite 05 · 1,180 m
Observatory Suite
Two rooms only. Forty minutes above the sea, a hundred metres below the dome, and the darkest legal address in the archipelago.
You will sleep badly here, and be glad
The road runs out four hundred metres below the suite and the last of it is walked. What you get for that is a room on a shelf of basalt with nothing built above it, nothing lit below it, and a door that opens straight onto the ridge.
Rafael keeps the dome a hundred metres up the track and opens the shutter most nights between April and November. If the seeing is good he will knock, whatever the hour, because he assumes that is why you came. It usually is.
- Area
- 71 m² plus a 30 m² roof
- Sleeps
- 2
- Bed
- One king; a roof mattress on request
- Altitude
- 1,180 m
- Aspect
- West-north-west, over the vineyard
- Getting here
- 14 min by car, then 6 min on foot
- Sky brightness
- 21.8 mag/arcsec² at zenith
- From
- €890 per night
Gallery
Four frames, one ridge
Drag, or swipe
The light
What the room does to a day
21 June
The suite is turned twelve degrees north of west. Sun reaches the terrace at about a quarter past nine in June and leaves the room at 21:14; in December it arrives at 09:50 and is gone by 18:09. Between the two there is the hour after sunset when the sea below still holds light and the sky above it has already given up — the reason the terrace has a lamp and no lighting.
These are the colours the site itself uses, sampled from the same clock.
The plan
Thirteen metres by eight point four
1:100 at A3
Drawn by Estudio Barlovento, Santa Cruz de La Palma, 2020. The opening in the south wall is 5.5 m wide and slides fully into the pocket, which is why the terrace and the room are one number in summer and two in February.
- Walls: 280 mm, lime-rendered pumice block.
- Floor: honed basalt, 40 mm, laid on the roof of the water tank.
- Roof: 220 mm insulated deck, white lime, 30 m² usable.
In the room
What is here, and what is not
Five things
The bed
Two metres of Canarian pine, linen from Béjar, and a mattress you can have replaced with a firmer one within the hour.
The dark
No exterior light on this side of the ridge after 21:00. Interior lamps are 1,900 K and dimmable to nothing; the reading lamp is red.
The roof
A stair to a terrace of 30 m² with a mattress that lives in a locker up there. Guests use it more often in December than in July.
Heat and water
Underfloor heating from the solar array; it is 9° up here in February. Rainwater is collected off the roof for the garden, not the taps.
What is not here
No television, no minibar, no telephone in the room. There is a radio that reaches Rafael in the dome, which is the only call anyone makes.
Two rooms, so this calendar is mostly the truth about two rooms. Rates are per night for two, including breakfast, the bathhouse and one night at the telescope. Minimum three nights from 15 June to 15 September.
If the month you want is closed, write to Lucía Herrera rather than giving up: people cancel a fortnight out more often than you would think.