Visiting La Gomera
Roque Agando
La Gomera is one of the smaller Canary Islands and is around 20 miles away from the coast of Tenerife. The easiest way to get there is to catch a ferry from Los Cristianos which takes 35 minutes or an hour depending on which one you get. The contrast between Los Cristianos and La Gomera couldn’t be more marked. If you like plenty of nightlife, access to a full English breakfast and lots of tourist amenity, then La Gomera probably isn’t for you. If you want to get off the world for a while and enjoy plenty of peace and quiet, incredible scenery and some amazing hiking, La Gomera is a great option.
Barranco Benchijigua
The island has been spared the tourist development that is a predominant feature of some of the larger Canary Islands, mainly due to its mountainous terrain. La Gomera is only about 15 miles wide by 14 miles north to south, and is essentially a big circular mountain with tens of incredibly steep sided valleys. The settlements tend to be clustered at the foot of the valleys on the coast, but the lack of flat land has meant that their scale is limited. Every time you turn a corner in the car, a sheer valley side rises up in front of you. It is simply incredible to look at and very easy to understand why the local people developed a whistling language to communicate between valleys as travel before the roads were built would have been time consuming and difficult.
How to Get There
The easiest way to get to La Gomera from the UK is to fly to Tenerife South and catch a ferry from the nearby port at Los Cristianos.
We flew to Tenerife with FlyThomasCook who have a range of flights from Gatwick. If these don’t work for you, we like Skyscanner for a good listing of all the operators running flights from the different UK airports.
We then caught a ferry from Los Cristianos to San Sebastian in La Gomera. We took the fast ferry run by Fred Olsen as the times worked well for us. Naviera Armas also run a service on a slower boat with improved dolphin and whale spotting opportunity. There did not seem to be much difference in price. We booked in advance, but neither of the sailings we were on ran at anything like capacity so it does look entirely feasible to just show up.
Stressful ferry port at San Sebastian
Catching the ferry is really straightforward. The port is well marked and is tiny – there is none of the hassle of say Dover. We arrived 40 minutes before the ferry and were way too early. We exchanged our printed e-mail confirmation for tickets in the terminal building. Our passports were checked as we got on the ferry.
We hired a car in Tenerife (as we wanted to go and look at Mount Teide) and kept the same car to go to La Gomera. We used CICAR because of this, as we knew they were fine with us taking one of their cars to another island. Lots of people went on the ferry as foot passengers and hired a car on arrival in La Gomera. Holiday Autos or Easycar have good prices for this option. Our crossings were completely uneventful. On the way out we did not hear the announcement as docking & just followed everyone else. This turned about to be a mistake. We should have gone down to the car as they let cars off before the foot passengers, behind whom it turned out we were queuing. There were some quite grumpy people trapped behind our stationary car when we eventually appeared. Sorry…..
There is an airport on La Gomera, but it is tiny and the service is between Gran Canaria and Tenerife North only. If may be worth checking out connections on Skyscanner to see how this option compares.
What to Do
View of Tenerife from La Gomera
La Gomera is an incredible place if you like to hike. The landscape is stunning, the paths well marked and well maintained and the weather mostly very benign. The landscape is also interesting for anyone into landscape photography and art.
The different elevations produce distinctly different flora as well. The Garajonay National Park not only contains La Gomera’s highest point at 4,869ft, but also a sub tropical rainforest containing one of the world’s largest areas of laurel, along with over 450 other species of flora, making it a UNESCO world heritage site.
There are several beaches around the island. These are black sand and do not tend to have lifeguards or amenity in terms of sun loungers for hire etc. (the beach at San Sebastian is the only place I saw any of this type of thing). They are however wonderfully quiet and uncrowded. There are various whale and dolphin watching and fishing trips run from various points around the island.
Other than that, La Gomera is just a good place to simply potter about. Driving is straight forward. The roads are well maintained, well marked and quiet. It takes a long time to get from one place to another as every road is a selection of hair pin bends winding up one side of a ravine and down another, so there is no point in being in a rush. There are plenty of viewpoints (miradors) to stop and take in the views.
Where to Stay
The main tourist centres are at San Sebastian (the capital), Playa Santiago, Valle Gran Rey, Vallehermoso and Hermigua. Of these San Sebastian is the largest settlement, but Valle Gran Rey has most in terms of tourist amenity, including plenty of restaurants, cafes, shops and 2 nice beaches. Valle Gran Rey is the most obviously touristy place, but it is a world away from even the tiniest resort on one of the more developed islands. The south of the island tends to get more sun and the north can be cooler and wetter so this may influence your choice of accommodation.
From Playa das Americas
I am a sunshine lover so looked mainly at Playa Santiago and San Sebastian. We ended up hiring a villa near Playa Santiago and I would happily go back. I liked the almost comatose atmosphere of Playa Santiago which was dozing in Saturday evening sunshine when we arrived.
To Playa Santiago
Having spent the night before in a hotel in Playa Das Americas in Tenerife (yes, I know), the contrast was almost unbelievable. Despite being separated by only a short stretch of water the two places are almost polar opposites. English / Dutch pubs, neon lights, traffic and crowds were suddenly transformed into a tiny town with 4 or 5 restaurants and a group of old men sat outside a bar playing dominoes. By the way, if you do go to Playa Santiago, you must go to the bakery. It has fabulous bread, cakes, quiche and empanada. I have to confess to having worked my way through quite a lot of cake. It seemed rude not to try several over the course of our stay……
In terms of hotels, the two ‘good’hotels on La Gomera are the Parador La Gomera overlooking san Sebastian and the Hotel Jardin Tecina near Playa Santiago. Both are four star with plenty of amenity.
If neither of these options appeal, Booking.com has a particularly good range of hotels for La Gomera, along with a selection of self catering apartments.
We booked our stay through HomeAway who have a great range of self catering options, including apartments in the larger centres, luxury villas and rural houses.
What to Take
Valle Gran Rey
If you intend on hiking whilst you are on La Gomera you will need a good pair of walking boots (well walked in), a sunhat, lots of sunscreen and a waterproof. It can get chilly, especially on Garajonay, and heavy cloud cover can blanket the higher parts of the island at any time.
For more information on what to take if you are hiking, check out our info on day hiking equipment and handy checklists.
Other than that you will definitely need a camera.
I took along my trusty Spanish phrasebook as I can never go on a trip without attempting to mangle the local language. Lots of people we met did speak English but some didn’t so this came in handy a couple of times. Actually, the time it would have been most useful was when we were deciding which path to take on a hike and a very helpful gentleman came out of his house to give us advice. The only phrase I actually understood was ‘el camino’, which I know means path. Other than that we were both utterly stumped. He seemed to be pointing us down the path we felt was the more likely of the two so we scampered off after much smiling and muchas gracias ing.
