La Gomera

An enchanting green jungle of nearly impenetrable ancestral laurisilva forest, the 40-sq-km Parque Nacional de Garajonay is La Gomera's essential drawcard, covering 10% of its surface and unveiling its finest hiking and cycling. Up here, on the roof of the island, cool Atlantic trade winds clash with warmer breezes, creating a constant ebb and flow of mist through the dense, damp forest, something called ‘horizontal rain’. The last Ice Age didn’t make it as far as the Canaries, so this landscape was common across much of the Mediterranean millions of years ago.

Garajonay was declared a national park in 1981 and a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1986. In 2012 a massive fire destroyed 7.5 sq km of laurisilva, leaving large areas of stark blackened trees, which will take an estimated 30 years to recover – fortunately, there's still plenty of green left, though it's a long road to recovery.

La Gomera's capital in every way – economically, bureaucratically and historically – seaside San Sebastián centres on a delightful historic core with shaded plazas, sun-bleached pastel-painted buildings and pedestrian-friendly streets sprinkled with shops, cafes and restaurants. Its main claim to fame is that Christopher Columbus stayed here on his way to the New World, and the explorer's every footstep (real or imagined) in the town has been well documented for visitors. If you’ve just hopped off the boat from Tenerife's Los Cristianos, shift down a gear or two: slow-paced San Sebastián feels a world away from its neighbour across the water.

Living up to its ‘beautiful valley’ moniker, the sleepy agricultural town of Vallehermoso makes a great base for exploring the secluded northwest of the island. Small mountain peaks rise on either side of the deep gorge that runs through town to meet a volcanic beach; admire the green terraced hillsides peppered with palm trees, in the shadow of the 650m-tall iconic volcanic monolith of Roque Cano.

Curled into La Gomera's sunny southeastern coast, Playa Santiago is a small, oceanside resort where a sleepy village centre and soothing seafront promenade give way to a few undulating banana plantations and a long cobblestone beach washed by calm waters.

Until the 1960s this area was the busiest centre on the island, with factories, a shipyard and a port for exporting local bananas and tomatoes. But the farming crisis hit hard, and by the 1970s the town had all but shut down, its inhabitants having fled to Tenerife or South America. In recent years, tourism has breathed new life into Playa Santiago, particularly in the form of the huge, luxurious Hotel Jardín Tecina owned by Fred Olsen, and several excellent restaurants.

A deep, brilliant-green gorge running down to meet the island’s most popular beaches, the naturally spectacular Valle Gran Rey (Valley of the Great King) is La Gomera’s tourist epicentre. Dramatic bare-rock cliffs line the valley and coast, creating a large part of the scenery's grandeur, and when the rest of the island is soaking in drizzle, the Valle Gran Rey is often happily working on its suntan. Most services here are geared towards the many German visitors in search of sunshine and nature (there are some good walks), plenty of whom are long-stay. Come sunset, people congregate along the seafront promenade, where fire dancers and other performers set up.

Valle Gran Rey proper is the low-key resort strip along the beachfront, with the barrios of La Playa and Vueltas at its northern and southern ends respectively and La Puntilla between, though the Valle Gran Rey district extends up the valley.

The best beach in the Hermigua area, 5km northeast of town, Playa de la Caleta is one of northern La Gomera's prettiest black-pebble beaches. Framed by rocky headlands, it has fabulous views across the water to Tenerife's Mt Teide, along with picnic space, a tiny chapel, a seasonal beach bar and a colony of friendly cats. It's signposted from the seafront at Hermigua.

The bucolic hamlet of El Cedro is tucked between farmed terraces and laurel thickets, 14km southwest and uphill from Hermigua, on the northeastern border of the Parque Nacional de Garajonay. The Boca del Chorro (also called Boca del Cedro) ravine runs roughly north–south through the village, emptying into the Hermigua valley as a waterfall just to the northeast. Though there's little more to El Cedro than a handful of houses, a campsite and a chapel, several exciting walks pass through here.

Something like a great sculpted basalt church organ rising from the ocean's depths, the utterly extraordinary cliffscape of Los Órganos clings to La Gomera's northernmost coastline and has been battered into its present shape by the Atlantic. Though it's just a few kilometres north of Vallehermoso, to visit, you’ll need to head out to sea with a boat-tour company, such as Tina, from Valle Gran Rey or Playa Santiago in the island's south.