More than sun and sea on offer in diverse paradise

THE Canary Islands are universally associated with sun, sea and sand but they have many other attractions and the sheer diversity of the islands is striking.

Visitor who leave the beaches and resorts will find landscapes replete with interest. Each of the seven islands (there are eight, but tiny La Graciosa is always forgotten) enjoys unique topography and is home to endemic plants and fauna.

Physically, there are enormous contrasts. The three northern islands, close to Africa, are low-lying volcanic plains, punctuated by extraordinary conical hills, naked but for soda plants and desert species. That is not to say that there is no productive land. On the contrary, the native people have, over centuries, made terraces like gardens in every suitable depression and on every hillside that is not pure rock.

The beauty of the black, man-made fields in Lanzarote is legendary; vines, fruits, vegetables and cereals are cultivated in stone-walled enclosures, sheltered against the winds. Even on little Graciosa, where the only village has white sand streets and no roads but tracks across deserts between moonscape mountains, enclosures of vines and vegetables are cultivated. Fuerteventura is a mixture of cinder plains, burnt-out hills and 20km long beaches perfect for wind surfers, backed by lava crags. Things grow, brightly coloured, amazing plants, deep in the lava fissures. To see farming on Fuerteventura would make one believe in life on the moon.

The southern Canary Islands are spectacularly mountainous. Mount Teide, on Tenerife, is the highest peak in Europe — if one can consider an island 1,000 miles south of Cape Trafalgar as being in Europe at all. The highlands of the north support magnificent forests of tall Canarian pines and hill villages abound where tourists rarely venture and locals live lives with little references to the beaches of Playa Las Americas and Los Gigantes, carpeted with tourists lying oiled and shining in the sun.

In Tenerife’s forests and mountains, one finds the blue chaffinch, endemic to the island, along with Berthelot’s pipit, a local species as common as sparrows once were in Ireland. Gran Canaria has habitats far from the beaches, the serried ranks of hotels and apartment blocks, English pubs and full Irish breakfasts in the sun.

The island’s interior, easily accessible by bus — and with excellent roads, should one rent a car — has charming white hamlets, each with its ancient church and square shaded by huge palms or eucalyptus.

Of all the islands, La Gomera, west of Tenerife, is ecologically the most diverse. Despite the ravages of wild fires this summer, its forests remain the largest surviving expanse of the type of primeval woodland that once covered southern Europe.

In Spain and on the other islands, these forests were cut down to provide fuel for the furnaces of the sugar cane industry in the 15th century. Gomera was too remote and mountainous to make its exploitation easy, and so 4,000 hectares, 10,000 acres, of its unique forest survived.

La Palma is a steep island of twin peaks, and its horseshoe-shaped volcanic crater, 1500m deep and 6.5 miles across, is said to be the second largest on earth. Its towns have a ‘colonial’ flavour — old wooden balconies over paved streets, fine churches and a feeling of old Spain. Beaches are few, but the hinterland produces much fruit and wine.

Favoured by Spanish holidaymakers, British and German visitors are relatively uncommon here.

Recently, I saw two cows in a shady corral in La Gomera. Here, cows are rare and kept in pens for fear they would topple off the steep terraces.

However, on El Hierro, at the tail-end of the Canary archipelago, cattle are commonplace. The plateau on which the main town, Valverde, is located and where most of the 9,000 population live is very much like Connemara or West Cork, green fields divided by stone walls, with cereal crops and cows.

Few foreigners visit Hierro; even fewer since the recent volcano. The peace is resounding and, on its quiet roads other humans are rarely encountered. Traditional courtesies are observed and people wave greetings as they do in rural Ireland.