by It’s a cliché that Tenerife is all about mass tourism, with all the cultural complications that often come with it. Sure, we’re drawn by the planeload to the stack-’em-high resorts of Los Cristianos and Playa de las Américas on the south coast (2.3 million British tourists visited the island last year). But anyway, there’s no need to visit to bake yourself or drink yourself unconscious in the nearest Irish bar, unless you’re particularly keen.
Try the boutique hotels and volcanic pools of Garachico on the north coast, for example, or wander the streets of gracious San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Unesco World Heritage Site. Or explore the epic volcanic mass of Teide, Spain’s highest mountain, topped by a martian landscape of wild red rocks. The crowds rarely get overwhelming here.
Even better, next door to Tenerife is a tiny speck in the ocean called La Gomera. And La Gomera is indeed something very special: the antithesis of everything you might have heard about its bigger, heartier sibling. It is the third smallest of the Canary Islands (bigger than little-visited El Hierro and the really itchy La Graciosa, which was only upgraded from island to island in 2018) and although it has a runway, it is not no direct flights from the UK.
To get here means transferring planes in Tenerife or Gran Canaria, or transferring from Tenerife South airport to the harbor at Los Cristianos and taking the ferry on its one-hour journey west.
The moment you step aboard that ferry, you’ll realize you’re embarking on a very different holiday to the one taking place on the crowded beach behind you. First, “packed” makes no sense. Instead, it suddenly appears that the vessel will only be occupied by a handful of people who are either (A) local or (B) carefully applying sunscreen, dressed in hiking gear and over 45 years of age.
Where are we going, you see, there are no Irish bars. And not a water park in sight. (The main “resort town” is low-rise Valle Gran Rey in the southwest, a place far less frenetic than its equivalent on Tenerife.) Instead, La Gomera attracts its visitors by delivering unusual hiking routes through landscapes glorious crenellated, all packed into a button-shaped island that is only 15 miles in diameter and with a population of just 22,000. Basically, if you’re looking for the perfect Canary Island for empty nesters – at least, those of us with still-functioning knee joints – this, my doubly blessed friends, is it.
Alejandro, who drove us north from the capital San Sebastián – little more than a bay on the east coast with several parallel lines of well-kept streets behind it – put it best: “In La Gomera, you go up, you go you down – and there are many zigzags.” Thus our walking week would unfold.
My wife and I, these days completely empty nesters, had booked with Intravel, which specializes in “slow holidays” and organized all our accommodation, as well as our bags transport between hotels so that we could walk quite unburdened. He also provided us with route information (both printed and digital, for mobile phone use). I will admit that some of the raised profiles listed in these looked a little scary.
First, though: we explored the small town of Vallehermoso in the north of the island, which – like almost every small town we’ll eventually pass through – is made up of a pond of brightly colored houses that gently wash up the sides of the island. . the barranco (valley) floor, before dissolving just shy of a black-sand shoreline. In La Gomera, buildings always seem to be at the mercy of the topography: cafes perch on cliff edges, houses hidden in valleys.
In fact the Añaterve Hotel, our base for the first few nights, was more like a cozy B&B. It had a high place on a small hill, with a view out over the town towards the sea, the bed of the river below marked by bright green bamboo canes and banana-leaf fronds. From the back of the property, a narrow path led into the town through a dusty garden of frangipani, pomegranate trees and monstrous agave plants.
We ate a wonderful tuna fillet and pan con almagrote (bread with fiery dough made with hard cheese and peppers) at the friendly Restaurante Agana, which turned out to be the only restaurant open. Later that night we went to bed when a goat was struck further up the valley. Amala, one of the co-owners of the hotel, did not like the goat; she felt it was too high. “I wish it was a donkey,” she told me the next morning as she teased us.
I wished it was a donkey too, as we made our way up from the valley floor. It could carry my day pack, which was weighed down by several liters of water (the temperature in La Gomera in spring and autumn is very pleasant for hikers, but this is still tough business). The 10 mile circuit we had to complete took us about 1,600 feet above the Barranco de la Era Nueva northwest of town. Outside we could see the Roque Cano, which is swinging over Vallehermoso, a huge fist of rock which is a remnant of a volcanic chimney.
There wasn’t much waymarking along the way (don’t worry – the walking notes are excellent), but the paths themselves were well maintained. Of the six people we met that morning, four of them were dressed in high-visibility vests and were tapping the undergrowth to clear the way. The other two were a pair of German walkers who were worried about our relative fitness levels.
“I always check people’s calves to see if they’re proper walkers,” said one. “I didn’t rate the pups of some of the other people in the hotel, but yours looks good.”
Duly encouraged, we marched on into the scenery. Our surroundings were amazing, going from a grove of laurel trees to black volcanic soil in one change, the drier sides appeared with Cypriot trees and white-flowered broom, the narrow valleys lined with date palms in a more verdant green. Sharp V-shaped views ran across our line of sight as we worked our way up. Then suddenly we burst out of the valley onto the northwest coast to follow a high ridge above the shore.
After the week’s most strenuous ascent, we went to Chorros de Epina, where seven springs meet in a succession of dotted pipes. According to local legend, men must drink from odd-numbered springs and women from even-numbered ones to guarantee true love.
Perhaps too confident in our relationship, I suggested we skip the pipes and instead eat more pan con almogrote at the Chorros de Epina restaurant, located on a scarp. It was the rough halfway point to mark our route, before coming back to Vallehermoso through a pine forest.
So you get the gist. Each day starts with a climb and you take a circular route, or a direct path to your next accommodation. But that doesn’t cover how terrifying individual moments on each track are.
The ride east from Vallehermoso to the town of Hermigua – the longest of the week at 11 miles – is seared into my memory for its sheer variety: the red dust of the trail under the Roque Cano; the terraced vines and fruit trees above the nearly empty Presa Amalayuigüe reservoir; the otherworldly landscape on our detour to the Mirador de Abrante, where red sand dunes were obscured by a mist that – sadly – Tenerife hid from view; the remains of abandoned harbor infrastructure in the beautiful village of Agulo, where the banana trade once flourished.
We spent two nights at the seven-room Hotel Rural Casa los Herrera in Hermigua, which faces the town church and is a wonderful combination of dark wooden ceilings, neat balconies and crisp white linen. The Bar Pedro terrace, a little closer to the sea, was the place to be in the evening, as the few tourists we met on the way seemed to congregate there. We toasted each other’s calves with the local Dorada beer.
The return trip to San Sebastian from Hermigua is a thrill, ending with a three-hour passage that crosses the Lomo de las Nieves ridge. We continued with prickly pears in opal fruit colors and groves of much-needed Canary pines; crickets chirped and lizards skittered across the path as we made our way to the Parador Nacional de Turismo de la Gomera, located above the town. A modern building built to resemble a Canadian manor, it was on a much grander scale than our previous two hotels, but by this point we were in for a bit of pampering. From the outdoor pool, Mount Teide shone blue in the distance, serenely above the clouds – and the crowds.
We went along the coast for one last walk – a tot of two hours each way – this time to a completely empty black sand beach perfect for swimming, before heading down to town for lunch . And it was here that we found a full-size statue of Christopher Columbus, who stopped his ship at La Gomera in 1492 to stock up on provisions before heading to the New World. He was 41 at the time: almost the perfect age. I hope he remembered his hiking boots.
Basics
Ben Ross traveled as a guest of Inntravel (01653 617000; inntravel.co.uk), which offers a seven-night walking holiday on La Gomera from £1,100pp based on two sharing, including B&B accommodation, two dinners, two picnics , ferries. and translations, and travel notes and maps. Additional flights. Available until 31 May and from 1 September to 7 January 2025.
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