Island life!


Redefining the period 'unspoiled', La Gomera is a mini (less than 25kms across) island-paradise, whose rough coastline - of rock-strewn bays, and black-sand beaches - belies a starkly contrasting interior, wherein subtropical florae jockey for control with prehistoric volcanic plugs.

While most of the larger tour operators endeavor trips to Gomera, the island is all the more as well even an 'alternative' destination - due exclusively to its defect of traditional beaches, and other commercial distractions: although there are bars and restaurants aplenty, the 24/7 dance clubs of the Balearics are conspicuous by their absence.

That said, Gomera is close all year round - normally sunny, with temperatures ranging from a winter low of approximately 20-degrees, to a summer aerial of 28-degrees+. And it offers multitude attractions - nice especially to holidaymakers who seek a conducive year-round climate, much eschew the tourist crowds.

Getting there
There are no sincere flights to Gomera: the European Union-funded airstrip is suitable alone for the short island hops - to Tenerife North and Gran Canaria - that commence twice-daily. You are accordingly left with two choices: to fly into Tenerife North, in hopes of catching a connecting flight. Or to holding to the sea.

The Garajonay Accurate high-speed catamaran from Los Cristianos (a 20-minute, EUR 20 taxi guide from the airport) reaches Santiago - the island's southernmost town, and my chosen destination - in a tiny over an hour. Unfortunately, however, the function is somewhat unreliable: a aglow breeze is all that's required to restrict the vessel to port.

This activity the case, you've an equally enjoyable contingency: the Fred Olsen ferry to San Sebastian (La Gomera's cash town).

Secure a window seat and digital watch Gomera, aloof 30kms distant, rise up away of the mist, the choppy sea refracting the golden sun, creating rainbows at the vessel's hull. Or stay outside on the sundeck and aroma the sea air - eyes pealed for bottlenose dolphins and captain whales...

On arrival in San Sebastian, you posses two choices: bus or taxi. The former are universal and reliable; the latter: everywhere and underemployed. Santiago is roughly 30kms west of San Sebastian. A taxi is so possible to bill enclosing EUR 75,-. However, the majority of luggage-laden tourists prefer to tome their hop arrangements in advance - ensuring seamless taxi, boat and coach connections from the airport to El Balcуn.

Early impressions
The 40-minute propel to Santiago is a revelation: your introduction to Gomera - carrying you heavenward along giddying peak roads. Then plunging back down wound up sweeping terraced valleys scattered with cacti, prickly pear and eucalyptus. The doing triggers a benevolent of sensory overload - of nearly unbearably eloquent colours, and unfamiliar scents. To one side you encounter towering basalt cliffs. To the other: deep, caliginous laurisilva forests; almond and orange groves; banana plantations - a process and diversity of florae and vegetation that simply cannot exist elsewhere.

Then before you perceive it... you are sweeping down into the refreshingly undisturbed village that is to be your provisional home.

All over and about
For walkers, Santiago represents an prototype base: large footpaths criss-cross the island. They are - almost without exception - brilliantly signposted, with routes to suit all levels of fitness and ability.

And a numeral of accompanied walking tours - such as the Shower Forest Walk, which takes city everyone Sunday - are available, offering coach-collection from the Santiago. Honorable one indication of caution, however, before you fix off...

Receive along first-class walking boots, water, a camera, with piece of spare camera-eye or movie - for the infinite character of inspiring views that you'll thirst to receive - and a waterproof jacket. Yes, a jacket. As you bask in the Canarian sun, contemplating your ahead peripatetic adventure, you'll most doable mock the authentic suggestion. Don't. The temperature can drop, dramatically, consequent much a short manage into the mountains. And drop is not unusual. You compass been warned.

Less athletic visitors testament be satisfied to attain that cars are available for hire, and fuel is cheap (EUR 10,- will comfortably include your diesel costs for a all-inclusive progression of the island). The roads, though narrow and winding, are hushful and recently tarmacced, moulding this a fat hook to hunt Gomera's clandestine nooks and crannies. (Just dwell upon to sound your horn, as you navigate those all-too-common blind corners.)

You might extremely assent to joining the full-day island excursion. This informative coach trip, which takes in a stay at the Garajonay Federal Field Guest Centre, as bushy-tailed as lunch at the Castillo del Ruin (a restored 19th century banana trading station, that stretches gone into the Atlantic), will doubtless divulge multitudinous sites of care to which you'll require to return.

Needful Gomera
Whatever your preferred wealth of transportation, a tarriance to the 'Parc Nacional de Garajonay' is essential. There, the near-constant temperature and humidity has created an almost eerily tranquil 3,984-hectare globe fabricated up of honours and lichen, mosses and ferns, freshwater springs, streams and spectacular rock formations.

Protected owing to 1982, and achieving UNESCO recognition in 1984, Garajonay is national to one of the world's largest continual areas of laurisilva forest - a home that has almost disappeared from southern Europe and North Africa.

Weather permitting, a boat journey to San Sebastian is likewise recommended (though it's first avoided, when the sea is rough). The port-town and important was visited by Christopher Columbus, in 1492, before he establish elsewhere on the voyage for which he is crowing known. (Indeed, a indication at the community right records how the explorer drew its hose to 'baptise America'.)

Passion all the neighboring towns, San Sebastian is quiet, friendly, and indubitable well-kept: you'll behold no graffiti on the walls, scarce cigarette butts on the pavement. With a population of 2,000 or so, it is the largest municipality. The eminence and the hills dominate the west; the harbour lies in the east. And within that port, the beach, which - though rocky - is both disinfected and safe.

The town's handful of shops, restaurants and bars are all within inconsiderable walking distance, forging it an paragon destination for a luminous lunch, a revivifying glass of wine, and a spot of people-watching in the central square.

Similarly accessible via the general ferry from Santiago, Valle Gran Rey to the west offers - on pleasant days - a comprehensive look of La Palma and El Hierro. In appendix to a public beach, the region provides divers reminders of Gomera's very interesting past, not least the hermitages of San Nicolбs de Tolentino and La Adoraciуn de los Reyes which - though recently renovated - age back to the early 16th century.

Historically speaking
The earliest common inhabitants of the Canaries were the Guanches, a Berber humans of specific anthropological interest, who were assimilated by the conquering Castilians in the 15th century. Of the Guanches, babyish hint remains - which is hardly surprising, as they were illiterate. That said, they did concession a rather atypical legacy on Gomera: El Silbo, the peculiar whistling speech used by the farmers to communicate from elevation to mountain. (Alas, El Silbo is slowly dying out, in column with the decline in farming - not to mention the relatively original arrival of electricity and the telephone.)

By 1495, the archipelago was entirely Spanish. And thus it remains, in spite of the Canaries' proximity to Africa - and the islanders' tongue-in-cheek protestations to the contrary. We are, they protest, Gomerans anterior - Canarians second. Peerless accustomed these preconditions, or the assault of a high-profile international football match, cause they acknowledge their Spanish ancestry and influence.

Wholly unlike the added religious Spain, where Easter is all-important, Gala is the Canary Islanders' favorite festival - and the Holiday El Pollute is its most popular, captivating distance usually three days prior to Ash Wednesday.

In reality, the islanders depend upon small pardon for a party, and each town hosts its own annual fiesta. Most notable are those of San Sebastian, which is held in January, and includes street theatre, air and dancing, and culminates in a procession to the district shrine. Other acceptable diary-dates contain the fiesta of Guadalupe - the Supporter Saint of Fishermen - in mid-July; that of Santiago, in tardy July; and El Paso, in September. (This closing - the largest of Gomera's fiestas - attracts 100s of revellers from the nearby islands.)

Culinary choice
The island's cuisine - liking its hymn - shares all the more with the Spanish Caribbean. The limited wine is most distinctive, complementing a tapa (snack) of watercress soup, goat's cheese, latest fish and roast pork or billy-goat meat. The 'papas arrugadas' (salty skinned potatoes) that accompany most meals are absolutely delicious. As are the 'mojo' and 'almogrote', two piquant sauces that enrich the hunks of new bread that arrive, unsolicited, at your restaraunt table, the mo you sit.

Those with a sweeter tooth will be indebted the Canarian speciality of 'guarapo' (sap of the Canarian palm tree) - the accomplished addition to fruit salads, and other desserts - as hardy as the multifarious lard cakes, buns, pastries, biscuits and roasted milk that are mainstays of Gomeran confection.

Those who prefer to cook will be pleased to become able that Santiago's supermarkets are well-stocked and realistically priced.

In addition, the village's legion cafйs, bars and restaurants, many of which are situated hard by to the small, vivid port, pass a election of anglicised, and also local, fare - enabling you to grip from a glossy snack or a multi-course tapas meal. (Be warned: countless Gomerans assume of the latter, as the former.)

For a choice treat, you may as well intention to delight in one of the five restaurants at the luxurious Tecina Hotel and Golf Complex, which is owned and managed by the island's 'first family'.

That family, the Olsens, is inextricably linked with Gomeran history, dating back enhanced than a century. No one knows what prompted Norwegian Thomas Olsen, and later, his sonny Fred (father of the company's now President) to effect buying land in the area, in 1904. One assumes that he simply fell in affection - with the island, and its inhabitants.

Despite turning a appreciable income - by securing state of the island's freshwater springs, and purchasing vast tracts of land at rock-bottom rates - the Olsens brought (and indeed, endure to bring) whether not wealth, then at least prosperity, to the island: in those early days by, amongst other capital works, establishing a functional irrigation course and opening the island's beginning school. And, bounteous recently, as Gomera's biggest employer.

Today, the island survives and thrives almost entirely on tourism. Which is hardly surprising. For, in stark counterpoint to the deeper exotic pursuits mentioned earlier, it's a lay where you can again drink in the intimate comforts of at rest - not least: BBC TV and Radio 4; dilute plain from the tap; and a grand criterion of accommodation.

You don't yet accept to adjust your wristwatch when you arrive.

In fact, tucked elsewhere in your remarkably well-appointed apartment, there'd be inappreciable to remind you that you're in reality holidaying on an extinct volcano.

Save, of course, for that sublime climate.