Eruption of beauty on a volcanic gem

SOME things don’t change.

While asphalted highways soar and dive over La Gomera’s dramatic gorges and through its green cloud-forests, the owls are still abroad at night and a magnificent osprey daily quarters the sea just beyond the breakers on the main beach.

Development is still small, and good taste is its outstanding feature here. In unspoiled corners of the world, development has almost always brought ugliness. Not so, on this island in the sun. When we first came here 30 years ago, there was hardly a paved road on La Gomera while, on neighbouring Tenerife, new building was proceeding everywhere.