La Gomera

La Gomera, one of the smaller Canary Islands, is roughly round and about 22 km across, yet it rises to 1,487 metres at Alto de Garajonay. Its shape has been compared to half an orange split into segments: deep ravines, the barrancos, radiate from the central plateau to the sea, with steep ridges between them. The island is about twelve million years old and its last eruptions happened some two million years ago, so erosion rather than fresh lava has made the landscape — sheer coastal cliffs, eroded volcanic plugs such as the Roque de Agando, and on the north coast Los Órganos, a wall of basalt columns formed by lava cooling slowly in an old crater.

The summit plateau catches moisture from the trade-wind clouds and is often wrapped in mist. Here survives laurisilva, a dense laurel rainforest, protected as Garajonay National Park, a World Heritage Site since 1986 and the first in the Canaries. The whole island became a biosphere reserve in 2012. Among its rarities is the La Gomera giant lizard, thought extinct until a small population was found on the cliffs in 1999. Lower down, terraces cut into the slopes carry vineyards, orchards and banana groves watered by old channels.

The island's people have their own way of speaking across the ravines: Silbo Gomero, a whistled form of Spanish inherited from the pre-Hispanic inhabitants, which can be heard some three kilometres away; when it was in danger of disappearing it was made part of school teaching, and it was inscribed by UNESCO as intangible heritage in 2009. History touched La Gomera in 1492, when Christopher Columbus took on supplies at San Sebastián before crossing the Atlantic, the last land he stood on before America. The capital keeps the medieval Torre del Conde, where the island's rulers once took refuge during a revolt. Every five years the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the patron saint, is brought by boat from her hermitage at Puntallana to San Sebastián and carried around the island for two months.

Getting there

The island is usually reached by sea: ferries from the port of Los Cristianos in southern Tenerife take about 45–50 minutes to San Sebastián de La Gomera. Tenerife South Airport (TFS) is the nearest international airport, about 65 km from the island's centre. La Gomera Airport (GMZ), near Playa Santiago about 34 km by road from San Sebastián, has inter-island flights to Tenerife North and Gran Canaria.