La Gomera For ages, Judith has been threatening to join the Holiday Property Bond holiday club. This would basically make her a part-owner of a few dozen resorts around the UK and Europe. Well she finally got round to joining and decided that the first of their resorts that we should visit would be the one on La Gomera.We’ve been working our way around the Canary Islands for a few years now and La Gomera was the last island that we had yet to visit (if you don’t count El Hierro, which is basically a semi-active volcano and therefore arguably not an ideal holiday destination anyway).
Gatwick Friday - We drove to Gatwick Airport for our flight to Tenerife. I parked near a Mercedes displaying one of the most remarkable bits of number plate tampering I've ever seen. I assume that was an "F", although even that is questionable. You would think they'd be stopped and fined regularly, but I bet they're not.
Tenerife A few hours later we got our first view of Tenerife. Although we were travelling to La Gomera, La Gomera doesn't (yet) have an international airport, so it was necessary to first fly to Tenerife.
Los Cristianos Coming in to land, we also flew over Los Cristianos, where the ferry from Tenerife to La Gomera departs from.
Airport Having landed and recovered our bags (both were in the first half dozen off the plane - amazing!), we discovered that it was going to take longer to cover the last forty miles from here to our resort on La Gomera than it had taken to get the two thousand miles or so from our house to here! First we had to wait at the airport for an hour-and-a-half for some more people that were transferring to our resort to arrive. So we went for a beer to kill some time.
On the Coach When we got to the coach that would transfer us to the ferry, we were still the only people there. Forty five minutes later and another dozen people finally turned up.
Fast Ferry Fifteen minutes later and we were at the ferry terminal in Los Cristianos. Unfortunately we weren't booked on the fast ferry that you can see in this photo. We were booked on a slow ferry. That wasn't an issue in itself, except that it wouldn't be leaving for another three hours!!!
Fast Ferry So we got to watch the fast ferry leave while we continued to sit around. By this point we were starting to get a bit bored of the travelling (or lack of it to be more accruate).
Slow Ferry Finally we were on a ferry, albeit a slow one, and watching Tenerife disappear behind us. Yay!
La Gomera About an hour later we started to get our first good views of La Gomera, which was looking like something out of Jurassic Park in the hazy evening light.
San Sebastian I took this photo as we arrived at the port in San Sebastian. Here we transferred to another coach and headed for the resort. The resort was only six miles away as the crow flies, but it was a one hour, 22 mile drive that would take us from sea level to 3,300 feet (1,000m) above sea level and back to sea level again. This is a hilly island!
Tenerife View We climbed into the mountains as the sun was setting. There were some fabulous views across to Tenerife. I thought this came out surprisingly well considering it was taken using my phone in low light from the window of a moving coach.
Resort Finally, fifteen hours after leaving home, we arrived at the HPB resort near Playa Santiago. Fortunately their restaurant was still open so we were able to get fed, but as you can see, we were the only people in there. Judith looks pleased to have been presented with a complimentary glass of champagne.
Bowling After dinner, on our way back to our villa, we stopped for a quick go on the floodlit bowling green. But we were far too shattered to play a game so we decided to turn in for the day.
Villa View Saturday - We awoke to beautiful blue sky and this fabulous view from our bedroom window.
Lounge Downstairs we got our first daylight look at our spacious and pleasant lounge.
Villa This is the view of our villa from our garden. Strictly speaking it's probably a bit big for the two of us. The resort has a lot of one and two bedroom apartments. However, when we booked a couple of weeks ago, this villa was the only accommodation they had left. You can just make out Judith peeping out of the upper right window.
Polo A short while later our hire car was delivered to the resort. We asked for an Up-or-similar but got a Polo. I suppose that's an upgrade, but I was quite looking forward to having a go in an Up-or-similar. Now that we were mobile, it was time to head out and explore the island.
Garajonay As we often do, we immediately headed for the highest point on the island. It was about a mile to walk from the car park to the view point at the highest point. The guide book said it was best to come up here on a clear day and this was a very clear day. There were great views across to Tenerife, forty miles away. More impressively, behind Tenerife, we could also just make out Gran Canaria in the far distance, which is one hundred miles away!
Climbing Unfortunately, much to Judith's disappointment, we weren't quite at the top yet.
Garajonay The view from Garajonay looking towards Tenerife. Judith was very pleased to know that everywhere on the island was downhill from here.
Panorama A panorama looking west, taken using my phone. The island of El Hierro is visible on the horizon on the left (that's now the only inhabited Canary Island we've not visited yet). The island of La Palma is visible on the right. Both are around fifty miles away.
Flowers There are an amazing number of flowers everywhere up here. Although it was currently hot and sunny, all of the flowers would tend to indicate that it often is not.
La Palma A view of La Palma taken with my SLR.
El Hierro A view of El Hierro taken with my SLR.
Flowers Some of the flowers we walked past on the way back to the car.
Montana de la Arana Having returned to the car, we drove a couple of miles up the road to the Montana de la Arana, where there was a short walk around an impressive forest, which is just the sort of thing you don't expect to find on the generally desert-like Canary Islands.
View Point A view point on the trail.
Another View Point Another view point, looking towards the town of Vallehermoso.
Panorama Back in the forest, here's a panorama taken with my phone.
Arure View Point Back at the car again and we decided to take a slightly indirect route back to the resort. Passing though Arure there was a sign up a small side road to a view point. So we went to have a look. And what a view. That's La Palma in the distance.
Small Panorama A small panorama taken with my phone showning the town of Taguluche. The islands of El Hierro and La Palma are visible on the horizon on the left and right respectively.
Arure View Another view of Taguluche.
Miscellaneous View Having left Arure, we headed for the resort again. This is a miscellaneous view from along the way.
Igualoro View A view from the church at Igualoro.
Flowers Some of the many flowers growing around the church at Igualoro. Finally made it back to the hotel for some dinner.
Ermita de las Nieves Sunday - I was out on my own to try a walk classed as "strenuous" in my guidebook. As the documented start of the walk was about an hour's drive from our resort, I decided to start at the half way point at the picnic area at Ermita de las Nieves. Here's our car parked in the car park.
Tenerife View As I left Ermita de las Nieves there was a nice view across to Tenerife.
Barranco de Las Lajas For the first mile or so I was walking along a ridge before I began my descent into the Barranco de Las Lajas. The bottom of the barranco was some 2,000 feet below the starting point of my walk.
Barranco de Las Lajas Awesome views on the way down.
Barranco de Las Lajas One of the rare shady spots.
Lizard There must be millions and millions of these on the island. Even when you can't see them, you can hear them creeping about in the undergrowth. They''re not keen on hanging around to have their photos taken though.
La Laja After about an hour-and-a-half I had reached the village of La Laja at the bottom of the barranco.
Up Getting back to the top of the barranco wouldn't be quite so straightforward as the descent. My thermometer showed it was about 30C out and whilst the trees were providing a bit of shade, there was barely a breath of wind.
Roque Ojila After a hot hour I got my first view of Roque Ojila.
Shade A short distance further along the trail and I found this wonderful spot where there was both shade and a bit of a breeze blowing over the ridge. So I had a bit of a rest there.
View There was also a magnificent view.
Roques Panorama In the other direction there was a great view of the roques. Here's another phone panorama, with Roque Agando on the left and Roque Ojila on the right.
Roque Agando The final ascent to Roque Agando. I was feeling really quite hot indeed by this time.
Road There was a short section of the trail that ran along side the road before ducking off into the forest in the distance on the left.
Roque Agando The trail was still rising gently, which offered a wonderful view back to the section of road I'd just walked down and Roque Agando.
Forest This was a nice shady bit of the trail. There was even a bit of a breeze blowing down there too.
Meadow This bit of the trail went through a beautiful meadow literally filled with flowers. The photo hasn't really done them justice.
Flowers Some more flowers.
Finished Finally I arrived back at the car having covered about 6.5 miles, with 2,200 feet of descent and 2,200 feet of ascent. In "normal" conditions that would have been a good walk. In the baking heat, the ascent from the bottom of the barranco was tough going indeed. There were very many other trails I wanted to walk on La Gomera, but a new strategy was clearly going to be required if I was going to tackle them without expiring.
Full Moon Back at the resort, after dinner I went out into the resort's gardens with my camera to take some photos under the full moon.
Full Moon This photo is only illuminated by the full moon.
Palm Tree This was the palm tree that we could see at the bottom of our garden. This wasn't just illuminated by the moon.
Roque Agando Monday - Sightseeing day. We started by driving up to the view point at Roque Agando, which I walked past yesterday. Amazing.
Roque Agando Another view of Roque Agando. You can just make out the main cross-island road snaking past the bottom of the roque and providing a bit of scale.
Barranco de La Laja Across the road there was a nice view down the barranco that I walked up yesterday. You can just make out Tenerife through the haze. It looks like it's floating in the sky.
Nice View No idea where it is though.
Mirador Vallerhermoso The view from the Mirador Vallerhermoso. The clouds pouring over the ridge opposite were very impressive.
Visitor Centre View This was the view from the roof of the Visitor Centre, otherwise known as the Centro de Acogida del Parque Nacional de Garajonay.
Hermigua After leaving the Visitor Centre, we made a couple of attempts to locate the Mirador de Abrante, which a) allegedly has an amazing view, and b) allegedly has a pretty good restaurant. However, we were totally unable to find it, so drove to the town of Hermigua instead (via Agulo, which didn't live up to its billing as "the prettiest town on La Gomera"), where we found a nice cafe/restaurant at the Molino de Golfio. This is a photo of Judith in the garden there.
Nice View A nice view of the nearby roques from the garden at the Molino de Golfio.
Palm Tree This palm tree has a bucket hanging from it because they're harvesting the oil from it.
Hermigua A nice view of Hermigua from the road back into the mountains.
San Sebastian When we got back into the mountains, it turned out that the road back to Playa Santiago had been closed by a landslide, which was slightly annoying as we had to drive all the way back to San Sebastian to drive around. On the plus side, I did get this nice photo of San Sebastian along the way. There was a nice view of Tenerife peeping through the haze in the background too.
Trail from Quise Having dropped Judith off back at our resort, I decided to try a new walking strategy of going out in the evening. So I drove the 25 minutes to Quise, parked the car and headed off on this trail to a secluded cove. Although the trail was pretty rough, it was gently downhill and fairly easy going.
Trail After a while of walking gently downhill, it occurred to me that I was getting very close to the coast, but not particularly close to sea level. You can see the trail snaking away into the distance on the left of the photo.
Casas la Cantera It turned out that the last half mile was a fairly steep switchback trail straight down the cliff and into the Casas la Cantera.
Casas la Cantera My first clear view of the beach and the old abandoned fish processing factory.
Fish Processing Factory Down at sea level I got a good look at the abandoned fish processing factory. And it was immediately apparent that is wasn't as abandoned as it was supposed to be. There were a few hippies living in tents amongst the ruined buildings.
Casas de Cantera Not wanting to anger the hippies, I took a few photos and headed back to the car. It was at this point that it became apparent that my evening walking plan wasn't working very well. The cliff face had been baking in the sunshine all day and was currently angled to catch the full glow of the evening sun. Consequently it was a very tough climb back up, with my thermometer regularly climbing over 30C. All in all it was quite a challenging four mile round trip with 1,600 feet of ascent and descent.
Sunrise Tuesday - Was being keen and up at dawn to catch the sunrise over Playa Santiago. Although you can't actually see the point at which the sun rises over the horizon because Tenerife is in the way.
Boats Boats in the habour at Playa Santiago at sunrise.
Clouds This was the view from our villa when I got back. This was the first time we'd seen clouds on the southern side of the island.
Valle Gran Rey We were out and about exploring again. This time we'd decided to drive to Valle Gran Rey at the western end of the island. Here Valle Gran Rey could just be sees in the far distance at the end of the barranco.
Valle Gran Rey Zoomed in a bit, here's a slightly better view of Valle Gran Rey.
Terraces On the way in to Vall Gran Rey we drove through some of the terracing that used to cover much of La Gomera when farming was the main industry. It's hard to imagine the immense effort that must have gone into creating this landscape.
Playa del Ingles On the way into town we saw a sign to Playa del Ingles (literally English Beach), so we thought we'd pop down there for a look. The reason I've only got a photo of a rock is because the beach itself was full of people with their kit off. So even though there was a magnificent view of beach and sea and cliffs, I didn't dare to raise my camera.
Playa del Ingles Oh, and I took this photo of my feet to remind me that the black sand was incredibly hot in the sunshine. Like painfully couldn't-have-walked-on-it-without-my-shoes-on hot.
Playa del Ingles We walked up the beach away from the nuddies for a while until we got to a bit that was completely free of them (although you can still see their beach umbrellas in the distance). Then I took this photo of the beach and the sea and the cliffs. I told you it was a nice view.
Judith Just as I was about to take this photo, al bloke walked into the background, just over Judith's left shoulder, and stood there for a good twenty seconds, watching me pointing my camera pretty much right at him (because he was standing almost right in the middle of my shot) before ambling off. The challenges us photographers have to put up with. Tcheeeeeer.
Valle Gran Rey Feeling that we had fully explored Playa del Ingles, we headed into Valle Gran Rey itself, where we found a nice restaurant overlooking this beach. So we stopped for some lunch. I had a very nice paella, except for the prawns/shrimps, which still had their legs and antlers on and needed to be dismantled!!!
In the Sea After lunch we thought we'd be as well to go in the sea a bit, just to see what it was like. I didn't go too far in though as there's some mad stuff in there. Have you seen Jaws?!
Terraces Heading back into the mountains, here's a mini phone panorama of the amazing terraces and the mad, winding road out of town.
Forest On the way back to the resort we decided to sneak in a short scenic walk in the forest, where it was actually raining!
Presa de Meriga The destination for this walk was the reservoir Presa de Meriga. The guidebook said to try to visit when it was foggy, as it was more atmospheric. I think we can safely tick that one off.
Presa de Meriga Another view of Presa de Meriga.
Forest On the way back to the car. The whole loop was only two miles, with a modest 250 feet ascent and descent, but Judith still thought it was a bit hilly and arduous to be classified as an "easy" walk.
Cactus Back at the resort, it was still fairly early so we decided to have a walk around to grounds before dinner. This was a cactus in their garden.
Mini Golf We even had time to get in a couple of holes of mini golf before dinner.
Jerdune Wednesday - My new strategy for walking - get up really early and set off just as the sun is rising, before everything has had chance to warm up and there's still plenty of shade about. The tricky part of this approach was that I had to force Judith to get up and drive me to the start point of my walk. Here I am at Jerdune (well, here my shadow is), just after Judith dropped me off. To make things as easy/lightweight as possible, I'd left my SLR at home so all of the photos of this walk are taken using my phone.
Barranco de Chinguarime The first few miles of my walk would be along the side of the Barranco de Chinguarime. As you can see from this photo, my plan was working well so far as most of the barranco was in cool, deep shade. Yay!
Trail The trail was fairly easy to follow most of the time as it was bounded by these sort of stone walls.
Farmhouse I regularly passed derelict farmhouses. Apparently this land was farmed until fairly recently.
Terraces The presence of the same sort of terracing we saw on the other side of the island yesterday hints at the farrming history of this part of the island. There was a nice view of Tenerife in the distance (although the sun was reflecting a bit too brightly off the sea for an ideal photo opportunity).
Trail It was just as well that most of the trail was bounded by stone walls as it would have been pretty tricky to follow otherwise. I get the feeling that not many people pass this way. I didn't see anyone during the four hours I was walking.
Casas de Contrera This substantial building looked like it was occupied until I got quite close and discovered that it was also derelict. My guidebook said this was a working farm until recently.
Barranco My walk headed steadily downhill until it basically arrived at the sea about three barrancos east of Playa Santiago. This necessitated a bit of barranco hopping, which was slightly arduous given that the sun was now getting pretty hot.
Playa Santiago However, before long I was back in Playa Santiago, having walked nine miles with a pleasant 3,800 feet of descent and a modest 1,200 feet of ascent. All things considered, my early morning walking plan has worked very well indeed.
Pool Back at the resort, Judith was lounging by the pool, so I took the opportunity to take a few photos.
Garden In the garden.
Closed After lunch (paella again as it's Paella Wednesday in the pool restaurant - the prawns/shrimps needed dismantling again!), we headed out for a bit of a drive and encountered the other end of the closed-by-landslide road that thwarted our drive home the other day.
Mirador de El Bailadero Handily the road had been closed right next to the Mirador de El Bailadero, which offered a very nice view of the Roque Ojila, which I saw from the other side on my walk on Sunday.
Roques We then headed to the premier view point on the island, which offered magnificent views of several roques. Here are Roque Zarcita and Roque Ogila.
Roque Agando Here's a phone panorama showing Roque Agando on the right and Tenerife in the distance on the left.
Roque Agando Another phone panorama showing Roque Agando. I reckon this must be by far the most photographed spot on the island. Time to return to the resort for dinner.
Trail Thursday - Our last full day. On this day I'd forced Judith to get up at sunrise to drive me back to Roque Agando, where we were taking photos yesterday evening. There's a long trail that goes all the way from there to Playa Santiago, where our resort is. Again, the early start meant I started my walk in lovely cool shade.
Flowers For the first thirty minutes or so I was literally wading through flowers. Much of the time they were so deep and thick that it was tricky to even see where the trail was.
Stream A rare sight indeed on La Gomera - running water.
Barranco de Benchijigua The trail was still following the Barranco de Benchijigua, which was still mostly in shade. Excellent.
Roque Agando When I looked behind me, Roque Agando, where I started, looked very far away.
Oasis Eventually, at the village of Targa, the barranco opened into this virtual oasis.
Playa Santigo A while later and I was back in Playa Santiago again. I'd walked just over nine miles, virtually all in shade, descended 3,800 feet and ascended only 550 feet. This is definitely the way to walk on La Gomera. It was a shame this was our last holiday day and I wouldn't get the opportunity to deploy my new walking strategy again (on this holiday).
Flowers Miscellaneous flowers in Playa Santiago.
Jardin Tecina I met up with Judith back at the resort. We decided to go and have a look at the Hotel Jardin Tecina, which resides on the cliff top on the other side of Playa Santiago from where we were staying. It's possible to follow the road up to the resort. Or you can walk along the beach and get their "secret" lift up to the hotel (but you need a key card to make it work). This was the view of Playa Santiago from the top of the lift.
Main Pool This was the view of the main pool at the Jardin Tecina. It looked very nice and I can see why it's highly rated on Trip Advisor.
Restaurant View This appeared to be one of the hotel's restaurants. However, despite the fact that it was lunchtime, it wasn't open. In fact none of the restaurants in the main hotel building were open.
Jardin Tecina View A miscellaneous view in the grounds of the Jardin Tecina.
Lift After walking around for a while, we decided that it would be handy to have some lunch. So we headed back to the lift, which is in the building on the right of the photo.
Terrace Judith on the terrace outside the lift.
Club Laurel Despite the main hotel's restaurants being closed, their Club Laurel at the base of the cliff was not. So we popped in there for a nice lunch. Given that everywhere else to eat seemed to be closed, we were surprised to have the restaurant pretty much to ourselves.
Beach After lunch, I decided to try to walk back along the beach, whilst Judith (sensibly) decided to walk down the path. As the beach was covered in large rocks, progress was slow and hazardous. After about ten minutes I decided to give up and return to the path before I managed to hurt myself.
Sunset We returned to our resort for dinner, where we stuffed ourselves almost to busrting point at the buffet. So we decided to go for a bit of a walk along the cliff top path before sunset. Unfortunately this was as much of sunset as we got to see because the sun disappeared into cloud.
Sunrise Friday - Time to go home. We were up at 5am to leave the resort at 6am and catch a ferry back to Tenerife at 7:30am. This was the view of the sun coming up over Tenerife as we were waiting for the ferry in San Sebastian.
Tenerife We were at the airport for 9am, which was a bit of a pain as our flight wasn't until 2:30pm. Fortunately the flight was on time. We got some lovely views of Tenerife as we took off. Overall we've really enjoyed our time on La Gomera, but getting there and back again has been a massive pain. I think we're going to need to work out how to make the process a bit more efficient before we visit again.