30 – El Hierro, last but not least

We do not find one should leave out El Hierro when sailing in the Canaries. This very special and smallest Island of the 7 main ones belonging to the Canaries, is full of surprises!

On the road again

Yet we had been warned that there is nothing around the harbour of Estaca (north of El Hierro), but we didn’t expect so little, first surprise! There’s literally a quite empty marina with toilets and showers (including cockroaches) and the ferry terminal with a little snack bar that only opens when the ferries arrive. Otherwise, a real no-man’s-land…

Therefore, we rented a car to get around. Up north we visited an old settlement still built with straw hatched roofs, since ages used by locals, especially on weekends. The semi natural pools just at the feet of the houses can be used only at low tide though. Otherwise, the sea is too rough to consider swimming.

We loved the drive heading west, with its multiple viewpoints looking over the stunningly beautiful and wild northern coast. Most roads are steep and curvy. We were even told that the island has the steepest slopes in relation to the size of the island and at some places, even Jean-Luc was stressed driving: one mistake would have meant a jump and slipping down 500-1000m till the sea…

Laurel in the north-east

As on the other islands, part of El Hierro is quite green due to the trade winds and the humidity carried by them. And here came another surprise: we were cold! The temperature difference from the sea level and the level where most of the roads and villages are, was unbelievable. Where as it was 22-23°C at sea level, 13-16° in the upper levels were clearly not the ideal temperatures for picknicking on the way…

During one of our drives, we visited the sacred tree “Arbol Garoé”, not knowing exactly what was meant by that. Finally, we discovered a network of puddles around this tree, full of sweet water. A monk, in the 16^th century mentioned it in his diary, explaining that this tree with its large branches and leaves, was able to collect enough water to provide for all the island’s inhabitants (ok, there were fewer than now!…) ! And this only because of the humidity gathering on the leaves and branches!

Pine in the South

On the South side of the island, complete climate and vegetation change: there was a magnificent pine forest. We could see by the colour of the trunks that it had been burnt a few years ago, but now it was just splendid to see and drive through. It also overlooked stunning landscapes and the steep and nearly virgin south coast.

Ecology friendly

The island of El Hierro is energy wise self-sufficient, and they make big efforts for cleanliness and sensibilizing the (few) tourists and locals concerning waste, bio agriculture, local consumption and renewable energy. For instance, they make park benches with recycled plastic collected on beaches and from the sea. And for a change, there are rubbish and recycling containers all over the place. At many places, artists were asked to produce sculptures out of the waste collected from the sea.

We like food!

Our boys are two bellies on legs (well, sometimes there is a head also)… and, if Cathy does not claim large food quantities, the quality has to be acceptable. So, at more or less regular pace, when not pick-nicking, the search of reasonably qualitative and priced restaurant is quite a challenge/ordeal. By reasonably priced, we mean main course below € 10.- (yes, we are quite greedy…). In the small village of El Pinar we finally found a pizzeria. By luck an excellent one, probably held by an Italian cook and for us the best pizza tasted on the Canaries. The boys ate 2 huge pizza Calzone… They still talk about it!

On another day, in this same small village, we tried another restaurant, specialized in goat meat. Held by locals, with a very commercial owner who managed to stuff us with more than what we initially planned. We ended up with 5 different dishes, mainly grilled and stewed goat, one of the island specialities. Excellent! We rolled out of the place, quite happy. The local wines we had tried at the same time maybe helped a bit…

Time to get ready to set sail

The moment came to get our last fresh food from the supermarket before leaving the Canaries Islands to sail to Dakhla, Morroco. But it was Sunday and the supermarkets on the islands can more be described as minimarkets… By chance, one was open and fortunately we found more or less what we needed to last during the crossing and another few days in Dakhla before starving and having to look for shops. We had been told that in Dakhla you can’t get anything except upper class bungalows and kitesurf equipment…

It was the longest non-stop sailing we had since our crossing from Tunisia to Mallorca: 290 Miles, meaning about 58 hours of sailing.

Goodbye Islas Canarias

The 4 months on the Canaries had been full of wonderful places and will stay in good memory: beautiful and surprising landscapes, nice hikes and picknicks, discovering the history of the islands, super moments with sailors we met and left, as well as a (anyway) quite a few nice anchorages, great diving and sporty sailing.