El Hierro is the smallest and most westerly of the Canary Islands – it was once considered the end of the earth (it was the zero meridian before that was moved to Greenwich). Columbus sailed by here into the unknown to ‘discover’ new lands. It still retains that wild frontier feel – windswept, remote, beautiful.

The ferry boat  from San Cristianos in Tenerife to El Hierro was surprisingly big for a destination of about 11,000 inhabitants. There were queues of lorries and trucks waiting to board the daily two and half hour crossing..but very few passengers. The crossing was also surprisingly smooth. We arrived in darkness at the only ferry port on the island and walked up a dim road with few streetlights to a couple of waiting taxis.

Our taxi was a clapped-out wreck but that didn’t stop our silent taxi driver from roaring past the ferry traffic on the narrow winding uphill road, belching fumes all the way. We peered out the car windows into blackness having no notion where we were.  He deposited us outside the house that we had rented and pushed his card into my hand before roaring off into the night. Our landlady wheezed alarmingly walking up the four steps to the house….not good on an island where everything is uphill. When she got her breath back, she gave us the keys and a quick tour in barely comprehendible Spanish( our inadequacy, not hers)and then she too disappeared. The house was large, smelt of damp and the wind rattled the windows. But that didn’t keep us awake…..the crowing of a time-warped cock nearby was responsible😯

The following morning, opening the front door, we looked out at a blue sea, framed by a bluer sky….we had no idea from the night before that we had sea views (but in reality most places have sea views even if you are many kms from the sea because of the mountainous terrain) The back door opened onto a little verandah with towering mountains obscured by cloud and mist. We could have been in Connemara….with cacti and Aloe Vera plants😀 where the stone walls were made of volcanic rocks, where the turf banks were lava stones…..a strange familiarity  around Mocanel in El Hierro.

In Valverde, we walked around the Opel Corsa that we decided to hire for a day, noting all the dents and scratches. The car rental woman laughed and said no need to worry about dents, this is El Hierro! The tyre threads would certainly not have passed any NCT inspection. There was no talk of deposits or credit card details, we just paid €30 and the car was ours for 24 hours.

Valverde may be the capital but it’s  a small mountain town known primarily for its fog and wind. One guide book had warned not to expect Manhattan🤣…but it did have a fine church and plaza and a really helpful tourist office.

In the north of the island, we drove through a tunnel almost 2500 m long. We were so surprised as we didn’t know anything about it and had difficulty getting the lights of the rental car to work😲. We were now in the region of La Frontera in warm sunshine,  sweating in our jeans and jumpers. El Hierro is a very small island but it feels much larger with such diverse landscapes and micro climates. We drove through pine forests, along barren lava cliffs that fell steeply to the sea, through high heather fields with the occasional goat and cow.

We swam in rock pools with the clearest green
water….El Hierro lacks real sandy beaches but has plenty of clear rock pools for swimming.    We tried to have a coffee in the world’s smallest hotel – a 4 bed exclusive place but they wouldn’t let us in (residents only)

But the real stars of the island are the amazing trees. We drove to the desolate western end where trees have adapted to the constant wind by burying their heads- bending, not breaking is the motto here. The islands symbol is a wind – twisted juniper tree from the El Sabinar region. 

The area around Saint Andres, the highest village on the island at 1100m, is home to swirling mists and a sacred tree, El Garoe, one that filtered water from the clouds and supplied the inhabitants of the island with fresh drinking water….saved them from dying of thirst by dripping water from its leaves which collected in pools in the impermeable rock underneath. No wonder the tree was considered divine _ a blessing from the heavens. On a dry island, water IS life. Science might explain away the mysticism but there was still magic in the air…with moss wrapped trees, fragrant pines, giant Aloe Vera plants and above us, restless billowing clouds of fog and mist. This was the Ruta del Agua (the Water Trail), a gorgeous hike.

I always thought that electric bikes were for the lazy or the unfit or the elderly(I know I’m in that latter category now😯 but still … ) but since we hired ebikes here, i’ve changed my mind. They are fantastic and not just for the super hilly terrain of El Hierro. The wind was so strong – there was a storm – that at times even going downhill, we were almost at a standstill💨💨. But e-bikes are the way to go- allowing you to go further, to bike with people of different fitness- there are several modes and you can always turn off the battery.

We arrived in La Restinga, the ‘resort capital’ and warmer side of the island on a sleepy Sunday afternoon….don’t expect a party town. It was small and quiet…the 2 supermarkets, the bazaar and gift shop were closed. A handful of bars and restaurants were open along the harbour but sitting in breezy sunshine at an outside table drinking a beer, we couldn’t have been happier. Our apartment on a side street had stunning views and was full of light. La Restinga has a reputation for the best food on the island….especially the fresh fish which is delicious. Desolate volcanic peaks of every red and brown hue form the backdrop to the town. There were lots of natural  swimming pools with ladders attached to the rocks for easy entry. Along the coast, lava flows have solidified forming strange patterns of folded whorls…..it looked like it could have happened yesterday but it was millions of years ago. The most resent volcanic activity was out at sea in 2011, a couple of kilometres off the coast, when there were small underwater eruptions but the town of La Restinga was evacuated for a short time.

And for a dry island where rain  is infrequent, we were shocked to open our door to drenching drizzle on the first morning. It didn’t last long and gave us rainbows…..and was much-needed in the area.

El Hierro is an island for taking it easy,  a place for nature lovers, hikers, swimmers and divers or for simply hiring a car and  driving through the most amazingly diverse scenery. The bus service is reasonably good – it links most of the villages but the buses are fairly infrequent…but it worked fine for us….as long as you’re are not in a hurry. It was very quiet while we visited in mid-February,  the high season  is the summer months but even then tourist numbers are low. It the sort of place where people leave their car keys in the ignition and don’t lock their house doors and where we were told not to bother locking our electric bikes. A Spanish TV series called Hierro, was filmed on the island in the last couple of years and has been responsible for an increase in tourism…..we haven’t seen the series but apparently the island looks amazing. It’s about a murder- all fiction of course because there’s no crime on El Hierro….apparently.

El Hierro was declared an UNESCO World Biosphere and Geopark in 2014. It aims to use only completely renewable energy….it certainly has the wind power….its windmills were always turning furiously . Unfortunately, the centre that explains the islands sustainability plans was closed when we visited – also the info is only available in Spanish which is a pity. But this small island, 100kms off the African coast in the wild Atlantic Ocean has big plans

Onwards for us to La Gomera, another small island. We have to take the ferry from El Hierro back to Los Cristianos in Tenerife to pick up the ferry to La Gomera. We weren’t too impressed with Los Cristianos when we spent the afternoon there waiting for the ferry to El Hierro. The setting was nice but there was lots of high rise apartments and a whiff of sewage along the promenade – often a problem with high density tourism – and practically everyone was speaking English but we did have some really nice fish ‘n chips there 😀.

The February sky was tinged pink and cool as we waited in Waterford for JJ Kavanagh’s bus to take us to Dublin airport….our first visit to any airport since our trip to Ethiopia in 2019. All trips since then then were confined to Ireland or else by ferry with the Guzzler. We were missing the Guzzler already – we had to be far more disciplined with our packing without the luxury of throwing things in the back of the car ‘just in case.’

Dublin Airport was eerily quiet on Wednesday morning, Feb 2 without queues or bustle. JJ dropped us at the door of Terminal 2 (great service) and we self checked in one 10 kg bag and sailed through all hand luggage checks with no-one asking about Covid passes or Spanish QR codes. Despite that, our 14.20 flight to Tenerife was surprisingly full…maybe it was the freedom to fly, the lure of winter sunshine, the cheapness of the ticket (we paid less than €100 for 2 tickets) or that more exotic destinations were off-limits. A gang of young people from UL had planned to go to Vietnam instead and we would have been winging it to the Philippines if borders were open to tourists.

While we were waiting for the flight in Dublin, we checked bus timetables in Tenerife. We had booked accommodation the previous night for the first three nights in Puerta de la Cruz in the north of the island and we were flying into the south. We discovered that it was a public holiday in Tenerife – feast day of the Black Virgin, the patron saint of the island – and bus services were very curtailed so we decided to hire a car for the first five days…..an electric car and so began the saga of the electric car.

We arrived in Aeraporta Sud at about 6.45pm – it was a little cloudy but still bright and a very pleasant 21^o degrees, not bad for an early February evening and there was no time difference between the Canaries and Ireland. Our Spanish Covid QR codes were scanned for entry -a few people didn’t have their QR codes and were kept aside. Presumably they got help to fill them in and hopefully were allowed entry and not sent back on the next plane. We picked up our (very)compact electric car – a Fiat 500. The battery was fully charged and the car-hire guy told us that there were plenty of charging points in towns and shopping centres everywhere, many of them free. The journey to our apartment in Puerta de la Cruz was just over an hour on good roads but about half way there, we were shocked to have to turn on the windscreen wipers 🙄- the first rain in months apparently (and the only rain we have seen since).

Google told us that there was a fast electric car charger near Loro Parque ( a zoo/aquarium in Puerta de la Cruz) so we headed in that direction the following day only to find that we had to pay €4 to park before we could use the charger. So on we went in search of another charging point and found one near the Botanical Gardens but it was in use. So we amused ourselves by drinking barraquitos – an expresso layered with condensed milk and liqueur – a great way to pass the time and a speciality in the Canaries. But later when we attached our cable to the car charger we found that we needed to swipe a card to get it to work although the actual charging was free (this isn’t unusual as we have a special card to charge our electric car at home). Luckily Carmen, my sister in law who lives in Tenerife was with us and she rang the number on the charging point and off we went in search of a card which we found in an electric motor bike shop just before it closed for the day. Back to the charging point (still free, phew!!!!) and now we discovered that we needed to register the card before it would work. That shouldn’t have been a problem but it was….there was no option to register a card on the website unless we had ordered the card from them and they had posted it out to us. We contacted the rental company(CI cars) to get them to register the card – no problem, they said – and so we drove to their small office in Puerta. The rep there tried for about 45 minutes to register the card but without success. So we were in the ridiculous position of hiring an electric car (that we were very happy with) but with no way of charging it – the company should have had cards registered already for use but they didn’t. So we had no choice but to swap our electric car for an even more compact hybrid Fiat 500 (the only car that was in Puerto). The boot was teeny in this one – we had great fun fitting Carmen in the back seat with her two dogs -Snowy and Jamie – and all their paraphernalia including a dog-buggy (Jamie has a terminal heart condition and has mobility issues). By then we were all in dire need of some refreshment… luckily wine was very cheap …as was fuel, about €1.30 a litre. But the car had a certain retro charm with its cream leather seating – like something in an old Bond movie.

Caoimhin had the Bond feeling over the next few days as he sped around hairpin bends in our little car – Tenerife may be small but the landscapes are incredibly varied – banana plantations, fig trees, cloud forests, lunar landscapes, hill villages that were so steep that the little Fiat struggled and hillsides dotted with caves and terraced cultivation, sunshine coasts and cloud-wrapped mountains. We visited Candelaria with its impressive statues of the ten Guanche kings, the original inhabitants who ruled the island before the Spanish invaded. Fine specimens of men reported to be tall, strong and blue-eyed and despite tales of great valour, they were crushed and destroyed – at any rate little evidence of their lineage remains in the present day physique of the locals 🤣. We visited Santiago del Tiede, a gorgeous town famous for its almond grooves, hiking trails and the most fabulous OTT church with statues clothed in silk cloths,

We spent five nights in Puerta de la Cruz in two different apartments – both about €45 a night with swimming pools and balconies. Puerta was a large bustling fishing town full of palm trees, flowering shrubs, black sandy beaches, hotels and a long esplanade lined with restaurants, cafes and tourist shops. It has a mountain backdrop that twinkled with lights at night from hill villages. Mount Teide, the highest mountain in the Canaries and shaped like a child’s drawing, lurked up there too but because of haze, cloud and dust, we rarely saw it, only catching occasional faint glimpses of its snow-capped summit.

We headed on to El Medano, a little beach town and fishing village near the airport – much smaller and scruffier than Puerta de la Cruz but with a laid-back charm, very popular with surfers and water sport enthusiasts, families, walkers and sun worshippers. On windy days, the sky was full of coloured kites from the kite surfers against a backdrop of blue sky and the red glow of Montana Roja (red mountain} and an arid dessert landscape where even cacti struggle to grow. Tomatoes were grown intensively until the 1960s and depleted the land leaving it barren but there is some recovery and hope with conservation efforts and the creation of a Special Nature Reserve with salt lakes becoming a mecca for migratory birds

We will be sorry to leave El Medano today – we rented an apartment here for a week… but we get itchy feet🙃 However, I would definitely recommend El Medano with its comfortable daytime temperature ranging from 22⁰ to 27⁰– lovely restaurants and cafes – and so near the airport that a taxi costs only €15. Such a lovely place to escape winter.

But today we will take the ferry from Los Christianos in Tenerife to El Hierro, the most westerly island of the Canaries. It has been called the island with Soul – I image something like the Aran Island but warmer… but I could be totally wrong.. The seas are forecast to be rough but we have been told that the Canarian cure for sea sickness is to eat a small can of olives with anchovies (never fails….apparently)

Till next time, Happy Valentines Day to everyone ….and remember if you don’t have a Valentine, treat yourself💕💕