In which Sid and Doris transfer to El Hierro via the sun- and beer-soaked beaches of Tenerife.
The original vague plot for this trip was three nights per island, but the lack of ferries on New Year’s Day meant that Doris added an extra day on Gran Canaria and only allowed two nights on the small-est, untouched-est and above all west-est island, El Hierro.
There is a danger that this could turn into a bit of a stamp-collecting exercise, so S&D work hard to keep their usual childlike sense of inquiry and curiosity.
We can’t leave the fabulous Hotel Jardin de Tecina without nominating as Conveyance Of The Day their hard-worked battery-powered gofermobiles.
These little beasts have enough power to pull a trailer loaded up to 8′ high with big suitcases and golf clubs, but alas their suspension or in particular their damping is a thing of the past – possibly the only legacy from before the 9 month refit that the hotel has recently had. The result is that the conveyance bounces, the operator bounces, the accelerator pedal foot bounces… a perfect positive feedback loop. Shugi recognises some fellows in adversity.
Off to the ferry port on a clear day when the other islands float prettily above their cloud shawls. We climb steeply past the Gomera airport, which was obviously the subject of a spirited and creative planning brainstorm. Instead of building it on landfill out to sea – a common solution but one that might not work given the verticality of these islands, someone had the genius idea of building out a flat space on the side of the hill. Given the strength and reliability of the prevailing winds it is entirely likely that an almost-VTOL approach can be managed in fixed-wing aircraft.
The ferry timing is kind, with a midday ferry to Tenerife and a late afternoon trip over to El Hierro, made all the more enjoyable because the passing of the 6th January means that Christmas Music is now absent on board, although it is gong to take Doris a long time to get rid of the earworm caused by substituting “Feliz Navidad” for the lyrics of any Christmas song or carol.
A two-hour stopover in Tenerife, supported by the usual Fred Olsen entirely fuss-free queueing and check-in processes, gives the intrepid duo a chance to sample some more foreign culture, this time the British Abroad in Tenerife’s Los Cristianos. Doris’s sister sold timeshare apartments here in the early 80’s (it was an equivalent rite of passage to working on a kibbutz, depending on your religion).
She said to us “Los Christianos was still mostly an agricultural and fishing village with some tapas bars”. Los Christianos was first settled in 1860. Tourism seems to have started with convalescent Swedes enjoying the warmth in the 1950s. It is now more like 1950s Blackpool (Coney Island?) for Brits and Germans brought somewhere warm where there is a ready market in rented holiday apartments and tandem mobility tricycles.
The town is now 20,000 people and Tenerife welcomes 5,000,000 tourists per year. Most of these are other-placers who will not leave the hotels at Playa de las Americas, which doesn’t leave so much revenue for other tourist farmers. Still Los Christianos is buzzing.
None of this means you can’t still get sardines and whitebait from a cafe on the front. S and D land from Gomera, scamper into Los Christianos for late lunch and jump onto the next ferry for El Hierro and just one more little island.
On the dock S and D see a very tidy Ford Sierra, with the bi-plane wing. Fords had had serious names like Zephyr, Consul and Popular. Then Tommy Steele went on a Summer Holiday and suddenly Fords were called ‘Exotic Aspirational Place’. The Duo consider a Ford based European tour to Granada, Cortina, Sierra (Asturias), Capri, Torino and maybe go in an Anglia? (There is a town called Puma, but we won’t be going.)
Anyway, the ferry leaves for El Hierro, the Western-most and smallest of the Canary Islands (pop. 12,000). The route from Puerto de la Estaca along the dead-end coast road to the isolated Parador de El Hierro reminds us of the Hebrides. This is not like the Playa de las Americas.
Google maps shows a roundabout?! It is the place to pause before the signal to proceed down the single track tunnel under the Roque de la Bonanza.
At dinner Sid keeps an eye out for Hoss Cartwright, but it is the usual Parador restaurant experience.