Damien Enright: A happy ever after ‘tail’ of giant lizards of La Gomera

When I look up at the almost sheer, 2,500 foot, 750m, vegetation-naked cliffs of the escarpment of La Merica above the wild (and naked bathers’) beach of Playa del Inglés on La Gomera, I wonder how even lizards could have survived there.

There are no more than a dozen, narrow, semi-level rock scars five or six metres long and 2,000 feet up, that would afford a foothold for a clawed creature and a few succulent plants on which they might live.