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| | | | The end of the world as they knew it
From the Mail on Sunday
When Christopher Columbus sailed from the Atlantic island of La Gomera in August 1492, he did not know whether he was going to find the New World or fall off the edge of the old one.
The small, humped island was his last landfall. They still say there that he spent a night of passion with a Spanish noblewoman who ordered a fireworks display as a farewell.
On the big neighbouring island of Tenerife, the volcano Teide was erupting. Columbus's sailors, many of whom still believed fervently that the Earth was flat, muttered. The omens were not good.
Just over 500 years later Mount Teide sat quiet as the morning, a small blob of cloud sitting on its head like a woolly hat.
It was winter but this far south it was like June as we set out for La Gomera from Los Cristianos on Tenerife, the sea and the sky dove grey, the sun flicking across waves that were no more than ripples.
Dolphins wallowed in a sort of half-interested way around the ferry and a family of pilot whales held up their tails, each tail like an ace of spades.
La Gomera was in sight from the start, although the ferry voyage would take an hour and a half.
In the way of islands, it had seemed to be moody, as to whether or not to show itself: on some days entirely vanishing and then sitting there clear and sturdy in precisely the same place.
As we voyaged, engulfed on deck by Spanish families with camcorders, gabbling bits of amateur commentary as they filmed Uncle Jose and Auntie Maria patting a lifeboat, I was watching the island changing colour and contour as we neared - moving, it seemed, like a dancer performing the slow Spanish saraband.
It was tall, rising at its middle to 5,000ft. An aeroplane appeared, navigating towards the mist and mountains. The new airport is up there - somewhere - its short runway fitted into the shadows. People continue (perhaps understandably) to travel by sea.
Travel guide: La Gomera
A guide to the islands
From the Daily Mail
GRAN CANARIA
Not the biggest of the Canaries; it just feels that way when you try to negotiate some of the busiest streets of the capital, Las Palmas.
Most visitors find themselves in one of the purpose-built resorts in the south of the island and fortunately most stay there for the duration, apart from the odd trip into town.
The secret to getting the most out of Gran Canaria, then, is to hire a car and get away from the maddening throng.
While the island can be circumnavigated in a day, it's more fun to push north to explore some of the typical old settlements or into the mountainous centre to visit villages such as Artenara, perched at 1,200m, pausing for lunch on the terrace at the Meson de Silla restaurant to admire its stunning views.
But even those who fail to make it that far from the sun-lounger usually manage a glimpse of Las Palmas's most distinctive stretch of sand, the amazing desert-like dunes of Maspalomas. And no, that camel train crossing it is not a mirage; it's a tourist attraction.
LANZAROTE
A favourite with generations of British tourists, Lanzarote takes pride in its extraordinary volcanic landscape. Black ash becomes a manicured garden, jagged tiny peaks a carefully tended rockery, while the lunar landscape of the island's Mountains of Fire is its most popular natural attraction.
Arrecife is the main town, Puerto del Carmen the principal tourist resort.
Both used to be small fishing ports and, though they attract crowds these days, there are still boats in their harbours and good fish restaurants to visit after the evening passeo.
Those of a cultural disposition should enjoy the troglodyte home and surreal art of Cesar Manrique; those who prefer the seaside will find the best beaches in the south of the island, along the bumpy tracks beyond Playa Blanca.
FUERTEVENTURA
For many people, this is little more than a windy desert just 50 miles from the Sahara. The upside is that at least the sand is good and the windsurfing is among the best in the world.
Corralejo in the north is the best-known resort and is good for families.
One of the highlights for day-trippers is a jaunt inland to Betancuria, founded in a fertile valley in 1405.
However, the best beaches are in the south, particularly the magnificent stretches on the Jandia peninsula.
You will need a four-wheel-drive car to reach the loveliest stretches, such as Playa de Barlovento.
On the way back north, stop for a meal at one of the restaurants in the traditional fishing village of Las Playitas.
Travel guide: La Gomera
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| | | | Pleasant, airy place
In the 18th Century it was a Scandinavian family, the Olsens, who began trading with Tenerife and Gomera.
Today they operate a ferry between the Canary Islands - the oddly named Lineas Fred. Olsen - and a shark-shaped hydrofoil between Los Cristianos and San Sebastian de la Gomera. We sailed on the regular 'steam' ferry.
San Sebastian, despite being wedged into the rocks, is a pleasant, airy place with some of the finest harbour trees I have ever seen, taller than the loftiest masts.
The buildings of its upper town are stranded on what seem hardly more than niches, climbing until there is no room left.
Columbus might still recognise its situation, for there is not enough space for widespread change.
We docked not far from where his three vessels, the Nina, the Pinta and his flagship Santa Maria, were moored before the voyage to America.
It was not difficult to imagine them unfurling their sails, the crews waving nervous goodbyes, and moving out towards the unknown.
On the stone quay we boarded a bus for our own journey of exploration into the mountains. For an island 14 miles by 16, there is precious little flat ground.
The road had to climb the moment it left town and in no time we were looking down on the roofs, the streets tucked between.
Precise terraces clutched the hillside, expertly walled and neatly laid out - but empty as abandoned alleys.
La Palma, La Gomera and El Hierro
LA PALMA
The most tropical and fertile of the Canaries, La Palma, the Green Island, has arguably the best-looking landscape. This is not a place for beach lovers - there are only a handful of black beaches round its shores. Rather it attracts nature lovers looking for some peace and quiet on one of the least-visited islands.
Top on their list of attractions is the great Caldera de Taburiente, a massive, beautiful volcanic crater, which is ideal for hiking.
The town of Santa Cruz has a wealth of old colonial atmosphere and architecture, as well as a lively seafront promenade of cafes and restaurants.
The main draw in the north of the island is the town of San Andres, which is the home of the island's most sacred spot, its 17th-century church.
LA GOMERA
A favourite destination with walkers and hikers, with trails criss-crossing its 370 square kilometre area, La Gomera is, in shape, like a great volcanic meringue pie, with peaks and troughs and an indented crusty coast.
An immensely fertile land, with a thousand different shades of green on every slope - pale young vines, darker banana plants and everywhere the dread-locked silhouettes of date palms dancing on the jagged horizon.
Accommodation options are limited to a couple of hotels and smaller guesthouses, and there's little to attract the beach lover. Instead, the island draws a loyal following from visitors who appreciate its laid-back ambience and a certain innate quirkiness.
La Gomera's best hiking is in the Garajonay National Park at the heart of the island.
EL HIERRO
Definitely a getaway-from-it-all destination - as long as you don't mind the fact that there's not very much when you get there. It's more of a day-trip island really. Once you have admired the view over El Golfo Valley, visited the old church in the capital Valverde, there is not much left to do except to stand by the lighthouse at Orchilla, once the most westerly point of the known world.
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| | | | Sunlit triangle of sea
Only a few years ago they were crammed with vegetables and fruit - the famous early potatoes and tomatoes - now nothing grows.
Once the island depended on its produce and 40,000 people lived there. Now there are only 17,000 inhabitants, most employed directly or indirectly in tourism.
The others left their smallholdings, and in many cases their families (there are communities bereft of men), to find work in the busier Canary Islands, in mainland Spain or across the ocean in Venezuela, where there are said to be more Gomeran people than in Gomera.
Before they emigrated, however, they built an exemplary road. General Franco, who was Commander of Tenerife when he plotted the Spanish Civil War, hardly gave the Canaries a second glance.
But once the regime changed, the people of Gomera began to build the road. It climbs not steeply but gradually, with long stretches decorating the hills like fringed skirts.
Our bus rose like an easily ascending plane, every alteration in direction a change in the passing show.
We saw green valleys funnelling down to a sunlit triangle of sea, river gorges called barrancos so deep the sun never touches them, convoluted rocks, cactus and ferns, a forest of laurels - the tree which anciently clothed every island of the Mediterranean - and among it all, like an odd defiant outpost, an occasional house with cultivated terraces, still in business, the man's dented car parked on the last ledge before a thousand-foot drop.
So gradual did the climb seem that it came as a surprise when we felt our ears popping and the guide told us we were at 4,900ft and it was time for elevenses - thick yellow wine like sherry and a lump of goat's cheese.
We were in a small place among straggling trees and we sat in the sun, hot despite the elevation.
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| | | | Sugar-loaf hills
Then a man arrived on a bicycle. At first I did not click. Just a man in cycling shorts getting a drink and a bun. Then you thought: 'Wait a minute - a bike at nearly 5,000ft? He was (perhaps needless to say) Swiss.
His name was Stephen Bodenman and he was not even sweating.
'Oh ja,' he said without a sign of breathlessness. 'I have come from the bottom, from the town. It was quite warm when I started but it is good up here, much cooler.'
Had he needed to get off and push? 'No, no,' Herr Bodenman looked shocked. 'Not once. I pedal all the way. It is not so difficult.'
He let me take his photograph. 'I have still more way to go to the top,' he said. I was still not sure he was not having me on. 'How long does it take?' I asked carefully. 'From the town to here?'
Straight-faced, he said: 'Much longer than it takes to go down.'
It was easy to see how, before the road was developed, the interior of even a small island like Gomera was so isolated. Sugar-loaf hills start up with no warning, two or three in a group, forests and gorges split the landscape.
We reached a windy plateau, where there was a little house preserved as it had been in former times, a potato patch presided over by a scarecrow, stone sheds for animals and the house with its bed, its table and its fireplace as contained and snug as a crofter's cottage in the Shetland Isles.
People must have lived a Robinson Crusoe existence up there, the next habitation across a sheer gorge, rarely making the long journey to the town, taking what produce they did not eat themselves by mule to the floor of the valley.
They kept in touch with their neighbours, and what they knew of the world beyond, by whistling.
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| | | | The whistling language
El silbo they call it, the whistling language that crosses hills and villages and can, it is claimed, be heard up to six miles away (with a following wind).
There are legends as to how this old art came to be - including an unpleasant story that the Gomerans learned to whistle because the earliest invading Spaniards cut out their tongues. I prefer to think it was in order to talk to the neighbours.
So unique is the skill - the limitations of the whistle are somehow adapted to make some of the sounds of speech, with a range far longer than the loudest shout - that it lives on.
We had a shrill demonstration from a waiter in the place where we stopped for lunch, a virtuoso act where, using fingers or without, he translated the phrases of half a dozen languages with earsplitting force.
We were told the story of how the men of Gomera were recruited as whistling signallers in the mainland battles of the Spanish Civil War, although, since there were some in both armies, the messages could be readily translated by the enemy.
The strange art has been preserved (by the interest of UNESCO) and children now have whistling lessons at school.
You can imagine mothers turning their offspring out of the house - 'You whistle your homework in the garden.'
Back down in San Sebastian we now realised the significance of the inhabitants whistling to each other in the streets.
Some men repairing a distant roof were conversing noisily but easily in this way with a fruit seller under the trees by the sea.
And what trees! White-trunked and hung with broad leaves unmoving in the warm afternoon, they stood sturdily about the square, shading the cafes and balconied homes and a girl in black with an English voice who sat gracefully engrossed in making bangles with bright beads but - for reasons of her own - would not say where she was from or divulge her name.
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| | | | The Door of Pardon
The island, so far south, is a refuge for all sorts of wandering people.
Leading from the square is the Calle Real, a street with an old house that was once the custom house and prison, and a small, silent, courtyard sheltering a well.
This was where Columbus is said to have drawn water for his ships before they sailed across the ocean.
A small reflecting disc gleams in its depths and there is an inscription which says: 'With this water America was baptised.'
There are other relics of early days: a restored square tower where Beatriz de Bobadilla, the supposed lover of Columbus, once claimed refuge from the rioting populace.
She had married a murdering nobleman who was himself murdered (by the same angry locals).
The church has an entrance called The Door of Pardon, through which the ringleaders of the insurrection were encouraged to pass if they wanted to confess their guilt and be forgiven.
Beatriz (formidable and forbidding, judging by her portrait which still hangs in a parador above San Sebastian) did not play fair and once they had passed through the door had them executed.
The present-day locals, the young ones, were playing football, using the dreaded door as a goal.
The caretaker would not let us in to see the place where Columbus prayed before leaving La Gomera (the man was setting up a table-tennis table for the footballing boys).
Christopher's must have been a powerful prayer because he left and walked the few yards to the harbour to steer his three small ships out into the August sunset and the outset of the most famous voyage ever made.
As for ourselves, we got aboard the ferry and sailed back to Tenerife for dinner.
TRAVEL DETAILS:
Bath Travel (http://www.bathtravel.com tel: 01202 200600) offers flights with Palmair to Tenerife from Bournemouth.
Tour operators to La Gomera include Mundi Color Holidays (http://www.mundicolor.co.uk tel: 020 7828 6021) and Citalia The Real Spain (http://www.citalia.co.uk tel: 0870 010 2188).
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| | Available rental properties in La Gomera |
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| |  | | Ondina C,Sea view house in Hermigua, La Gomera
Great house with valley and sea views in Hermigua, La Gomera
|  | | Sea view apartment with pool,Hermigua,La Gomera
Lovely and modern1 bedroom apartment with full ocean view in Hermigua.
|  | | VGR107Seaside apartment, Valle Gran Rey, La Gomera
1 bedroom simple apartment in Valle Gran Rey Coast
|  | | OndinaB2, sea view property, Hermigua,La Gomera
Three bedrooms house with wide BBQ area and wonderful sea and valley views
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Holiday Rentals in La Gomera |
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