La Gomera, Canary Islands
Just to the west of Tenerife is the small round island of La Gomera. It’s so close—just 18.5 miles away—that you can often clearly see the peak of Tenerife’s Mount Teide looming in the background.
So close, yet so far. This 16-mile-wide volcanic dot, the second smallest island in the main Canaries group, is so very different from Tenerife and all the other Canary Islands. You could easily imagine you were in a different era. It’s like an island that time forgot.
Gone is the brashness and congestion of the more touristy Canary Island locations. Gone are the repetitive hotel complexes and box-like white villas. Here you are enveloped in a verdant environment bathed by the sun or shrouded in mist, with a low population density and little traffic. The villages have rainbow-colored houses and there’s little to no evidence of tourism-centered services. It’s somehow so much more real—and for me, at least, all the better for it.
The central highlands of the island are most often foggy and at the right altitude for sub-tropical rainforest to thrive. The result is an incredibly vibrant green island that is often referred to as the Green Pearl of the Canaries.
A Ferry to the Green Pearl
It is the end of January and my wife and I are enjoying our usual escape from the snow-clearing chores of our home in Austria by riding motorcycles around the Canaries. This time, we have decided to come for a much longer visit than usual and tour four islands instead of just one. Today, we are taking our rental bikes on the early morning ferry from Los Cristianos on Tenerife to La Gomera to explore it for ourselves. We have two mid-sized BMWs from the excellent Moto4Fun in Costa Adeje and have loaded up for a multi-island trip.
Motorcycles & Gear
BMW F 750 GS
BMW F 700 GS
Helmet: Shoei Neotec
Jacket: Held Cool System Leather, Helite airbag vests
Pants: Probiker Textile
Boots: Alpinestars New Land Gore-Tex
Gloves: Vanucci Visco-Lab
Comm System: Sena 20S Evo
We roll up to the Naviera Armas ferry embarkation point just as the sun rises and wait at the front of the line with only two other bikes while a stream of trucks emerges from the gaping maw of the ship. We are eventually called forward and ride into the mouth of the whale. Immediately, we ascend a steep, slippery-looking ramp to the upper internal car deck where we park and the bikes are strapped down.
Our adventure has begun.
It’s a Different World
A smooth one-hour crossing with a basic but much-appreciated breakfast of croissants, orange juice, and coffee sees us repeating our ramp ascent in reverse before rolling onto the jetty of San Sebastián de La Gomera. The sun is fully up and the first thing we notice is the aforementioned change in the color of housing. Even the houses seem to go with the sub-tropical feel of the island. We drop off our panniers at the little apartment we have pre-booked only a few miles from the harbor and are soon heading inward and upward along the GM-1.
What little traffic there is rapidly disappears and the scenery is already drastically different from what we got used to on Tenerife. The predominant soil and rock color here is red, but it is almost universally covered by green grasses and small cacti at this lower altitude. As we ride higher and higher toward the center of the island, the vegetation gets continually greener and more abundant. Giant palms, banana trees, and huge ferns abound on either side as the road hairpins its way along the deep furrows that radiate from the top of the island all around down to the sea. The more precipitous curves are lined with what appear to be wooden barriers, but are actually steel-faced with hollowed-out tree trunk sections which are much more pleasing to the eye. We stop and take some photos on a curve lined with Canary Island pines. There is a fantastic view looking down the valley toward the coast and a huge colored sign for the town of Hermigua.