Trip to the Canary Islands - 20 January 2025

We have just returned from two weeks in the Canary Islands, one week on La Gomera and one on Tenerife.  These are some of my initial impressions.  

The islands are very different, La Gomera is much smaller but has been more fully settled (in history, that is - today, Tenerife has a much larger population).  The Canary tourism draws two main audiences from Europe, one audience stays by the coast for beaches, golfing, and nightlife, the other is a trekking theme.  We were trekking folks.  The two main groups coming are English and French; there may be Spaniards, too, but they all speak Spanish and are hard to tell from the natives.  There are a scattering of other folks, too, like the Netherlands and Germans, but the English and French are the main groups.  This shows up in the dining - although there are few German restaurants (I do not know why), there are LOTS of English pubs and restaurants along with the local style restaurants.  

I used a tracking app on my phone and added it up - I talked about 150km (93 miles) over 65 hours and climbed 4657m (14000 ft) over 17 days.  Because of flight connections, we spent a night and 19 hours in Iceland, where we did a food tour of Reykjavik in the morning before our connecting flight.  Our sons were able to join us; they walked farther than I did, but I do not think that is a surprise.  

We enjoyed the trip, but the Canaries are interesting islands.  There is not a lot of "there" there - the islands are isolated and volcanic, and they are (overall) very dry.  There is a wet side to each island because they poke up into the winds and the mountains capture some moisture, but a lot of the area of the islands are pretty barren and dry.  There are no native mammals, and the original settlers (c. the year zero) brought goats and lived a subsistence living, isolated for 1400 years from the mainland.  There is not much reason to go to these islands, so no one did.  Because the islands are volcanic, life before the Spaniards was neolithic - no metals, just stone tools.  The Spaniards came around 1400 and pretty much killed or enslaved the populations by 1460 or so.  Columbus showed up several times starting in 1492 and each time, he picked up water, food, and slaves.  Even into the time of Franco, life was brutal and so there was a mass exodus from the Canaries to Venezuela, even by the descendents of the Spanish.  Pretty ugly history.  

Most of the island is covered by lava or scrub (knee-high shrubs scattered rather sparsely).  On the wet sides, there are forests, but the trees rarely exceed 20 feet in height.  These forests are lingering remnants of the forests that covered the entire Mediterranean area about 10 million years ago, and the Canary forests have survived due to isolation. They are pleasant to walk through, but even on the "wet side", the streams are often seasonal, dry most of the year.  The largest continuously flowing "river" on La Gomera is only wide enough to step over.  

I am getting long, so I shall pause. More later.