Corona Times - Valle Gran Rey

Solve the riddle. Travel one day by airplane, boat and bus to go here. Enjoy beautiful scenery, wild mountains, cloud forests, palm trees, beaches and the ocean. Live in a little house or apartment and spend most of your time outside in the year round warm climate. Eat fresh tropical fruits like maracuja and mango and taste cuisines from different continents. When the sun sets gather at the beach with the locals to hear the drums and watch a fire performance…

Where were you? Mexico, Thailand, Hawaii? I am in Valle Gran Rey on the Spanish Canary Island La Gomera! In April me and my family would have visited it but Corona kept us from going. It’s one of my favourite destinations so I decided to go back in time and make a virtual visit. I have been here quite often and even considered moving here on some occasions. I just love this place!

My first trip here was in 2004 which also happened to be the first time that I used discounted airline staff tickets. I was working for German airberlin back then. Me and my wife, at that time girlfriend, flew from Berlin to Tenerife. We hadn’t planned too much, read the Lonely Planet on the flight and decided we would first visit La Gomera and then Tenerife during our approach to Tenerife Reina Sofia or Tenerife South Airport (TFS). After landing we took a public bus to Los Cristianos, the Southern harbour town adjoining a big touristic area called Playa de Las Américas. From the bus stop we walked to the ferries. There are several options to go to La Gomera. You can take Fred Olsen’s Benchi Express or Navieras Las Armas ferry to San Sebastian, the capital of La Gomera at the Eastern shore of the island. Both of them are big multi-deck ferries taking cars and trucks. It’s cool to see all the traffic drive onto the ferry. There is a little luggage train where pedestrians are supposed to leave their bigger luggage items before boarding the ship. The ferry has restaurants and you can go on deck to for better air and a nicer view. When you need to wait some hours before embarking, which is mostly the case, you can go to the beach, Playa de Los Cristianos, go shopping or eat something at one of many restaurants. We often go to an Asian all-you-can-eat buffet on the first floor overlooking the beach and ferry terminal. It offers good value for money. If you travel this way, you can continue your journey in San Sebastian by bus, rent-a-car or taxi, the latter option being rather expensive but sometimes necessary.   

In 2004 we took a ferry that no longer exists in current day, the Garajonay Express, a smaller catamaran taking passengers only. The ferry, which was named after the highest mountain and national park of La Gomera, also stopped in San Sebastian, but then continued to Santiago and Valle Gran Rey. We first got off at Santiago, a very small and quiet port town in the South of the island where we stayed for a few days. At another time friends of mine worked here in Hotel Jardin Tecina & Tecina Golf. I have never been to this luxurious five start resort. We stayed in a pension called La Gaviota meaning the seagull. Nothing fancy, but it had a beautiful view of the harbour and you would fall asleep with the sound of the waves against the quay. I think we made some strolls in the area and once dined in restaurant La Cuevita which is really a cave cut into the rocks of the mountain.

La Gomera’s only airport is also located in Santiago. You normally don’t hear much about this airport with the IATA code GMZ. On another trip where we combined three Canary Islands, we once landed here with an ATR 72 of Binter Canarias coming from Las Palmas, the capital of Gran Canaria. It was quite spectacular as the area is mountainous and the runway only measures 1.500 metres (4.921 feet). If you have some more time, for example three weeks, I can really recommend island hopping between several Canary Islands and making a real journey out of it. This airport is also linked to Tenerife Norte (TFN).

After some very relaxing days in Santiago which has kind of a dreamy, surreal atmosphere about it, we continued our journey with the Garajonay Express to its final port Valle Gran Rey. When we arrived in the village Vueltas, an older man introduced himself to us as Adolfo and asked if we were looking for a place to stay. He seemed trustworthy and we let him drive us in his old Mercedes from Vueltas to La Calera and then downhill to the village called La Playa. Halfway down he parked the car and we walked a simple stone path to the apartment.

We loved the place but thought it was too expensive. Adolfo, who turned out to be German like my wife, was willing to show us some other, cheaper apartments, but also told us he knew we would come back here anyhow and he was absolutely right. The apartment was simple but fabulous. The simple part was the inside with a little living room annex kitchen, two bedrooms and a bathroom, nothing fancy but all you need really. The fabulous part was outside. There was a little patio in the front where you could sit in the shade. An outside spiral staircase led to the roof terrace where you had a magnificent view of the Atlantic Ocean and the rest of the valley. The house was surrounded by mango trees and some palms. The mango farmer would later give us a few very tasty ones. You hardly notice the few neighbors that were around. In the back there was a friendly Austrian couple hearing classical music now and then. In the back you also had the mountains which were a bit dazzling and intimidating, towering up so wild and high and you could also see the town of Calera where we made nice strolls through narrow and steep streets. 

On our first trip, me and my wife went swimming at La Playa’s fine black sand beach. It was a beautiful sunny day with big waves and we swam some fifty metres away from the beach. Somehow we had underestimated the waves and the current and at some stage when we tried to go back to the beach we couldn’t. Wave after wave hit us, barely giving us time to breath in between and my wife sort panicked and to be honest, I also briefly thought we weren’t going it to make it back, but luckily somehow we did. Shocked, but happy to be in one piece, we walked the beach until Puntilla where the beach is made up of rocks and pebbles making a relaxing and meditative sound while the waves hit them. We just sat there, counted our blessings and enjoyed the day. It was a moment I will not forget. My wife made a picture of me (first image) and I enlarged it, wrote ‘relax’ below it and gave it to my parents.

After our first visit to “Valle” as the locals call it, we have come back here many times and always booked through Adolfo and got kind of befriended with him over time. His real name was Adolf but for obvious reasons he had changed that to the more friendly and Spanish sounding Adolfo. We did not always stay in the same apartment as Gomera has many so called “repeaters” who book the nicest apartments well in advance. We sometimes also stayed in La Calera, Puntilla or Borbalan. Our friend Christina from Berlin is an absolute fan of Vueltas. Other people prefer the upper valley which is quieter and cooler. Some years ago Adolfo did not respond our emails and later we were very sorry to find out he had died.

By now we have a new liaison to directly book our lodgings which is helpful because some of the nicest little houses and apartments are not featured in the global booking engines. The whole place is sort of untypical in terms of tourism development. Hotels and package tours are not the predominant way of booking your stay here. There is Hotel Gran Rey. It looks very nice and sometimes I envy the rooftop swimming pool, but besides that, I never had the urge to go there. There are also some bigger apartment complexes such as Charco del Conde and Laurisilva. We once stayed in the latter one, named after the laurel rain forests that can be found in the uppermost slopes of the barrancos or deep ravines. It’s quite ok with children because of the private swimming pool, but I personally prefer the little houses and apartments in the middle of nature, up on the mountain slopes or in the villages. Some attempts for further apartment complexes have been made, but somehow mass tourism and La Gomera don’t match which makes up part of the charm of the place. 

Here is some general information to get your bearings of Valle Gran Rey and the island. La Gomera, one of the smallest Canary Islands, is situated west of Tenerife at some 1.300 kilometres (808 miles) away from Tarifa, the Southernmost Point of the Spanish mainland and Continental Europe. It’s only 300 kilometres (186 miles) to the African coast, a rather desolate area called Western Sahara which is claimed by Morocco. You could say La Gomera is far away from everything and it feels like it’s somewhere in the middle of Europe, Africa and Latin America. There are only a few more than 20.000 inhabitants on the whole island. Valle Gran Rey, situated on the West coast, looks out at the two most Western Canary Islands La Palma and El Hierro, both visible with clear weather conditions. These four islands form the Spanish province Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Unless you arrive by boat, you will enter Valle Gran Rey on the GM1 “highway” coming from the North-East. When you come out of the last tunnel, a stunning view of the valley and Atlantic Ocean will appear and it’s worthwhile to make a stop at one of the viewing points or miradores. What stands out are the terraces and traditional architecture with typical white houses. Going down, you pass little villages such as Lomo del Balo, El Retamal, Los Granados and El Guro in the upper valley or Valle Alto before reaching La Calera in the lower valley or Valle Bajo. From here most traffic including the public bus takes a counter clockwise route. If you continue to sea level you arrive in Playa de La Calera, simply called La Playa. Following the coastal road south you pass La Puntilla and end in Vueltas, the port town. From Vueltas another road following the slightly higher slope of the valley returns to la Calera going through the village of Borbalan. At both ends of the valley you can continue dead end roads. If you turn right in La Playa and follow the North-Western road you will end up in Playa del Ingles, a pretty wild beach. 

At the utmost South-East end of the valley, beyond Vueltas, there is Finca Argayall, an alternative and sustainable community that hosts yoga retreats and all kinds of other seminars and workshops. It’s a fantastic location and even if you don’t stay there, you can book individual yoga classes or meditations. I once did a dynamic meditation here which was really refreshing. In the past we also had lunch here a few times. The food, vegetarian in buffet style, is excellent and you can eat at the ocean view terrace, next to the pool or under the shade of a huge rubber tree. Many of the tropical fruits, vegetables and salads are grown in the Argayall’s own permaculture garden. One year someone from the island invited us to celebrate New Year’s Eve in Argayall which was a really special experience. I guess we were some hundred and fifty people. There was a little bar next to the pool serving Caipirinhas and other drinks. At a quarter to twelve a gong sounded and we did a guided meditation and everyone went silent. The only thing you heard was the sound of the waves on the rocks and pebbles which is quite meditative in itself. The moon lights gave a mystic aura to it all. At twelve, someone said “Happy New Year” and the party continued! Our youngest son slept in a chair and we partied until deep in the night. It was one of my best New Year’s Eves ever.   

The road to Argayall is a bit tricky as it runs next to very steep rocks that go straight up some three hundred metres (thousand feet). The road should not be used during or shortly after heavy winds or rainfall and has some risk even under normal conditions. Near the beach in Vueltas there are some signs warning for landslides in Spanish, English and German. The same road also leads to a fruit farm run by an elderly eccentric couple and the hippie caves at Playa de Las Arenas also known as ‘Schweinebucht’ or Pigs Bay. You can start a challenging hike here which I did a few times. 

Valle Gran Rey means Valley of the Great King. A lot of hippies came here in the seventies and eighties and Valle had a similar status as Goa and Kathmandu. Like many of the Canary Islands, La Gomera has a long history of banana plantations. The traditional farmed terraces, plots in raked steps across the mountain, give Valle Gran Rey and La Gomera its typical style. Water is a scarce resource on the island. There is very sophisticated systems of canals that can be opened and closed to irrigate all different plots and if I remember correctly there are strict rules on who gets how much water when. It’s very interesting to see how narrow concrete canals can be opened and closed with simple wooden bulkheads to guide the water in the right direction. If you are interested in buying a plot of land, the connection to the canals or a well is vital. Another crucial topic is the allowance to build on the land or rebuild a ruin. If the land just has an agricultural destination, it’s only allowed to set up a little shack, which in some cases is used for more than just gardening materials if you know what I mean. Most bananas are now produced in Latin America and came from Africa via the Canary Islands. The bananas that are currently grown on the Canary Islands come from Indo-China. You can probably write a whole article about the history of bananas and the ties with Latin America. The Castillo del Mar in Vallehermosa, now a cultural centre, used to be the Pescante or Empaquetadora de Platanos, the station where all Gomeran bananas were shipped. It's worth a visit. In some times when economies in Latin America were very weak, quite some inhabitants came to the Canary Islands, which is probably why you hear so much Latin music.

As always when you travel, and also when don’t travel, eating out is a nice thing to do and Valle Gran Rey is no exception here and has much to offer. 

To start the day, there is Zumeria Carlos, next to the church and the bus stop in La Calera. We simply call it the fruit bar. The service is sometimes a bit grumpy but always authentic and the fresh fruit shakes are great. They further make tasty sandwiches and serve decent coffee. Great for breakfast or lunch. If you are here in summer time, do try my favourite shake: maracuja – orange! La Gomera is one of the few places where maracuja’s grow in Europe.

In the afternoon, Cafe Olé, near “baby beach” and Charco del Conde, is very relaxed to hang out. Read a book, play a game, socialize with fellow travellers and people living on the island. They have great smoothies, pancakes and many other (healthy) meals but will also serve you a nice and cool German Hefeweiss beer and many other drinks.

Also nice for the afternoon when you have been to Vueltas beach is Bar Cofradia de Pescadores, or just plain ‘Hafenbar’ or port bar. They have tasty fresh tapas for a good price and the place is populated by a great mix of local people, fishermen, tourists and a rare vagabond. The terrace has a great view of the port and the beach. Kids can just play around, but mind the quay which is rather high and not secured. There is a stone stair leading to the water and sometimes huge mantas or stingrays come here.

If you really want an excellent meal I suggest La Garbanza, offering very refined Moroccan kitchen with goat cheese, honey, couscous and great sunset views. I find the owners are really cool. It’s located in La Puntilla, close to Hotel Gran Rey and the bronze statue of Hautacuperche, the indigenous leader in the rebellion against the conquistadores. Sit outside if it’s free and not too chilly and enjoy the sunset.  

Also nice for a short stop is La Crema ice café adjoining “baby beach” or Charco del Conde. Good ice and nice place to sit in the shade. Baby beach is a little beach that is completely surrounded by rocks at low tide, ideal for the little ones to play and thus quite relaxing for parents. El Sue?o de Yanini in Vueltas is another very good ice café is La Playa also has an ice parlour.

As the name says supermercado El Callao in La Playa is no restaurant, but it’s ideal to grab a cold bottle of lemonade or bear when you are at the beach or for example before the sun is setting and the drums are played. Next to the La Playa promenade the Gomeris play their Bola Canaria, the local sport that resembles game of bowls or jeu de boules. It’s nice to watch them as they take their game very serious and have a lot of fun doing so during this social event. For bigger groceries we mostly go to Spar supermarket in Borbalan to save some bucks.

In the past there was a legendary bar in la Playa called Casa Maria, named after the owner Maria who unfortunately died in recent years. The bar existed for more than fifty years and was home to many musical performances. It has been closed now and is looking for a new owner.  

Also quite recommendable are some restaurants in La Calera with panoramic views over the valley and ocean. Of course these are just a few suggestions. There are many more excellent restaurants, bars, supermarkets, organic stores, bakeries and shops. In Borbalan there is a little playground. In the weekends there is a nice little (hippie) market near the bus station in la Calera that you should visit at least once. At the market I once picked up a cactus fruit with my bare hand and had thorns in my hand for the next couple of days. I will never forget that, if only because my wife and boys still make fun of me for that action.

A bicycle is ideal to get around in the lower part of the valley. We often rented them at Gomera Bikes in la Playa because it was nearest to our location, but there is also Bike Station Gomera in Borbalan and Bikers Inn in Vueltas. If you have enough time, you can even walk most distances but with smaller children that are no longer in strollers, this can be tiresome. If you want to see more of the island, it’s easiest to have a car and move around in your own pace. During our first trip, we travelled the whole island and also visited Hermigua, Vallehermoso and San Sebastian.

Valle Gran Rey has an interesting mix of people. There are basically three groups. There are the Gomeris or original population and then there are the long term and short term visitors who mostly all seem to get along very well. I remember reading “better brush up your German” in a Lonely Planet sometime and that has some truth in it. There are in fact many Germans in Valle Gran Rey living there permanently or visiting. There is a German bakery, a German butcher and a German doctor who also happens to be a professor of visual arts and well known street photographer. There is also a very funny and well written German satiric magazine called ‘Der Valle-Bote’ (Valle Herald) with slogans such as ‘the ultimate island magazine’, ‘independent – impartial – out of touch’, ‘buyable but not bribable’ and ‘loved in Gomera – respected in the world’. It often lies around in apartments, restaurants and bars and you can buy it in Vueltas in a store called Capitano Claudio. Or maybe it’s even created there. I am not sure. We sometimes also bought some fishing rods for our boys in this store. As said many people keep on coming to Valle for many years and we know quite some of the steady and temporary visitors by now. The audience is very individual and very social at the same time as my wife once described it. There is also a high percentage of single parents, above all single moms from Berlin. Obviously Valle Gran Rey and La Gomera are not everyone’s cup of tea. If you like big all-inclusive hotels and luxury resorts, there is the slightest chance that Valle Gran Rey is not your thing. We’ve met many nice and sometimes crazy people here such as Klaus the baker, Anke from Münster, Wolfgang the Goa Pope and many, many others, some of which we still know. When our kids were smaller we sometimes went to concerts by Frederik Vahle, a well-known children’s songs singer in Germany and even had some drinks with him afterwards with another friend of the island who knows him quite well. 

Quite some visitors come to La Gomera for the hiking and nature. There are many very nice trails. The Garajonay National Park, Europe’s only cloud forest, declared Unesco World Heritage in 1986 is an absolute must see if you are on the island. With smaller kids we did not do so much hiking and often stayed in the lower valley and just enjoyed going from one beach to another, drinking something, eating something and sucking up the relaxing atmosphere. I remember one time I went hiking with one of my sons and made a little box on wheels to pull him when he was tired. How times change. Nowadays we run fifteen kilometres (nine miles) together and at the end I can’t hold up with him… Another time we made a tour with a donkey that normally transports stones and other material to remote building locations. It was a great tour all the way up the higher valley to the waterfall and our little son sat on the donkey. When we came down again, we passed some horses and the donkey ran off rather close to a steep ravine. That was a scary moment but the donkeys owner had every under control, sort of. He later explained that the horses had bitten the donkey in the past.

We made several boat tours from Vueltas. One very nice tour is offered by OCEANO who promote themselves with “Respectful Whale Watching”. Another tour we once did, was with a bigger ship of Excursiones TINA where lunch is also included and we went swimming. 

So, after the first trip me and my wife came back to La Gomera many times, first with our firstborn son, then with both our sons and one time also with my parents. We also visited Tenerife, La Palma, Fuerteventura and Gran Canaria. On Tenerife and Gran Canaria, besides all beaches, aqua parks and zoos, I can really recommend visiting Santa Cruz and Las Palmas which are really bustling big cities functioning as capitals for their respective islands and provinces. I have never made it until now, but I still want to ascend Tenerife highest mountain Teide once. With its altitude of 3.718 metres (12.198 feet) it is the highest point in Spain. If measured from the ocean floor, it's 7.500 metres (24.600 feet) making it the fourth-highest volcano in the world and showing the origins of all Canary Islands. As small as the Canaries may seem on the world map, it is said that if La Palma’s Cumbre Vieja, an active but dormant volcano, were to erupt, the western flank of the mountain with a volume of 500 cubic kilometres (120 cubic miles), could tumble into the Ocean causing a giant tsunami that would reach Spain, Britain and even the US East Coast! Let’s just hope that never happens. La Palma is very nice and green too by the way. We once stayed in the town Tazacorte. El Hierro is the remotest and smallest island and should be nice too. What I can further recommend on Tenerife is the town El Médano which is only one exit away from the Southern airport. If you have a few hours left after or before your flight do visit Café Flashpoint, located at the end of the beach nearest Montaňa Roja, the red mountain that you see when taking off and landing at Tenerife South Airport. Dink and eat something and enjoy looking at the wind surfers and kite surfers or take a short dive yourself!  

When we were in Valle in 2010 a little black and grey striped cat followed us to our house. We fed it and it stayed for a few days. We got in touch with Angelica of Pro Animal Gomera who takes care of stray animals and she kindly arranged all formalities for us to take the cat, from then onwards named Poekie, back to Germany! Cats are not endemic in La Gomera and eat many geckos and birds and most people don’t really care for them. One year later Poekie moved to the Netherlands with us, so from being a stray cat in the middle of the Atlantic it turned to a real traveller.

In 2011 we saw the preparations for the so called An-Tiki Expedition. In Vueltas some Englishmen including an 85-year old were building a raft to cross the Atlantic. The name An-Tiki was a tribute to Thor Heyerdahl’s Kontiki expedition. I never found out how this expedition ended. In 2012 a huge fire destroyed many houses and palms in Valle and all inhabitants had to be evacuated.

Valle has many different faces and can always surprise you. While doing my research I found out that one of the major popular festivities, the offering of the Branch, featuring the offer of local produce and traditional pastries to the patron saint, takes place on 16 August, my birthday! According to the Spanish Tourist Board it is a good opportunity to enjoy popular dancing accompanied by the beat of the typical La Gomera drum. There are many more Catholic festivities such as Nuestra Se?ora de los Santos Reyes (6 January), Nuestra Se?ora de Fátima (13 May), San Antonio de Padua (13 June), San Juan Bautista (23 June), San Pedro (29 June), Nuestra Se?ora de la Salud and San Buenaventura (14 July), the Virgin del Carmen (16 July), the Virgin del Buen Viaje (last weekend in August) and the Virgin del Coromoto (first weekend in September, in La Hayas). During most parties in Valle a big outside disco is build up in La Playa’s little central square and the music, mostly Salsa, can be heard in the whole valley. This square is always a social meeting point by the way.  

Looking at the Spanish tourism board’s site I also learned some more things, for example about the local gastronomy: “The most typical dishes of Valle Gran Rey include a wide range of hearty soups –particularly the watercress potage; a toasted flour known as gofio, which is widely used in appetisers and desserts; and goats cheese. This cheese is best savoured in a type of delicious local paté known as almogrote. The typical local cakes and pastries often feature the use of guarapo, the honey made from the sap of palm trees.” I also found out the giant lizard of La Gomera is endemic to the island. I can’t recall ever seeing it, but you do see many small lizards and geckos, the latter inevitably entering your house but not really bothering you.

Obviously winter is the real high season in Valle because most Western European visitors then like to flee their cold home countries, but I can also recommend coming here in other times of the year just as well. In summer there is mostly no drumming at the beach and there are some more Spanish visitors. I hope you liked this virtual visit of Valle Gran Rey and maybe feel like visiting it “for real” once it’s possible again. I certainly will!

P.S. Please don’t like, comment or even share this article and please don’t solve the riddle. I would like to keep Valle nice and quiet. No, just kidding, of course please do react! See other virtual trips down here including your virtual flight with Imaginair. Follow me if you are interested in future travel adventures and destinations! I try to publish one each Friday. Sketches, paintings and drawings were all made by myself, photos by myself or my lovely wife Doris.

? Bjorn Gianotten 2020