La Gomera

We caught a ferry to La Gomera today. It's about an hour on a catamaran from Los Cristianos to the capital San Sebastian. It is another volcanic island, much of which is a National Park with rare micro-climates. This eroded volcanic plug is in the zone of laurel and juniper forests. Only 22,000 people live on the island today, half of the population size when Christopher Columbus made La Gomera his last port of call before crossing the Atlantic to the Americas in 1492. The roads around the volcano and along the gorges are hair-raising. Before it was conquered by the Spanish it was occupied by Berber peoples from North Africa and we bought some local specialities, biscuits and sauces, that were more African than Spanish.