Articles > At The Edge of the World

Think of El Hierro as the full stop at the end of Europe. In the 2nd century BC, the ancient Egyptian scholar Ptolemy dubbed this most westerly of the Canary Islands “the edge of the world” - which to a Western European it was until Columbus sailed by in 1492.

For centuries after, though, the lighthouse at El Hierro’s western tip, the Faro de Orchilla, remained the line of the zero meridian until usurped by Greenwich in the 1880s - at which point the letters GMT entered the language and El Hierro shrugged its shoulders and settled back into relaxed obscurity.

And that’s pretty much how it remains thankfully. While tourists flock to neighbouring islands like Gran Canaria, Lanzarote and Tenerife, only savvy walkers even seem aware of this lovely neighbour.

Whether you walk it or drive it, El Hierro offers a wonderful array of landscapes. In spring, wild flowers carpet the stone-walled meadows of the plateau near the little capital Valverde, while pine forests straddle the ridges that mark the island’s backbone, nourished by moist air carried on the trade winds.

In the heart of the island stands of almond, apple, fig and avocado surround villages like Taibique. In sharp contrast the south and southwest is a lunar landscape of volcanic magnificence, a starkly beautiful red and black canvas. The fertile northwest valley of Frontera, meanwhile, has lush tropical fruit plantations and vineyards producing wine considered the best in the Canaries. Across the island, look-out points - miradors - offer dizzying views down precipitous slopes to the coastal plain

It’s hard to imagine such a beautiful place as the site of one of the greatest cataclysms in history. 50,000 years ago, an almost unimaginable landslide saw a giant chunk of El Hierro equivalent to 300 cubic kilometres of earth plunge into the Atlantic, generating a tsunami experts believe would have been at least 100 metres high.

What remains is a curve of ocean now known simply as El Golfo (The Gulf), and a vast natural amphitheatre scattered with tiny villages in the shadow of a precipitous escarpment. Here, too, is the world’s smallest hotel. A tiny black pumice 19th-century former naval building, the Punta Grande, perches defiantly at the end of a lava spit jutting out into Atlantic breakers that surge by on either side.

From my little balcony, I’m transfixed as the sea hurls white-caps at a black lava shore that stretches for miles into a shimmering haze of sunlit spray. That evening, I eat in the little hotel restaurant beside an antique deep-sea diver’s suit and beneath an array of brass ship plates covering the globe from Shanghai to Stockholm.

The waitress offers a simple choice between fish or meat. I choose fish and get a beautifully cooked fish called bocinegro alongside a simple salad and the ubiquitous Canarian arrugadas potatoes, cooked in heavily salted water until their skin wrinkles, served with the traditional spicy mojo sauce. The wine is from a nearby vineyard and very good.

Afterwards, I go outside to taste the sea air. The escarpment is a huge, towering wall of blackness but above it hangs the silver gauze of the Milky Way. As I stand, transfixed again, I see a shooting star and then, minutes later, am amazed to see another. Cheered by these good omens, I drift off to the sound of booming breakers.

The next morning, I wind up from the coast through the walled fields in search for El Garoe, the island’s “Sacred Tree” at the end of a red dirt road. In a place where standing water drains away almost everywhere, the tree marks precious waterpools that sustained the native bimbache people for centuries. Its location was jealously guarded when the Spanish arrived in 1402, leaving the invaders to struggle without water while the islanders enjoyed their secret supply. Love, however, proved the islanders’ downfall when a local girl, smitten by a handsome soldier, sought - unsuccessfully - to win his heart by revealing the tree’s location.

I’m still reflecting on the perils of love when I come to my first mirador and lose my own heart to the view. High above El Golfo, the Mirador de la Pena also beguiled renowned Lanzarote artist Cesar Manriques, who decided to build a restaurant here to showcase the skills of El Hierro’s cookery school, serving Canarian classics in a modern dining room perched above a sheer 1000m drop.

Miradors punctuate my exploration of El Hierro. The Mirador de Jinama marks the top of one of the island’s most important ancient trails, a rocky path that still twists up the escarpment from the simple bell tower at Frontera sitting in splendid isolation from the main church on its own red volcanic hillock.

On the opposite side of El Golfo, the Mirador del Bosco clings to the edge of a pine forest. Driving there along the high ridge of the island’s backbone, paths snake off temptingly at frequent intervals, and I pause for walks in the cool, silent shadows of the trees.

I stop for lunch in La Restinga, known for fish restaurants like Casa Juan, though the town lacks the picturesque charm of lots of many of the other settlements. But La Restinga is also El Hierro’s diving centre, and several companies offer the chance to explore the calm, clear waters off El Hierro’s southern tip - now an oceanic nature reserve - while a string of beachfront bars offer apres-dive.

Bamboozled by some of the unfamiliar fish on my menu, I ask the waiter about each one until, with a laugh, he disappears and returns with a big book on Canarian sealife, pointing to the relevant colour illustrations of things I can eat.

Limpets (lapas) make a fine soup on El Hierro, which I follow with pan-fried parrot fish (vieja), washed down with a carafe of the superb local Vino de Pata, before taking a look at the brightly-coloured fishing boats in the harbour.

The volcanic landscape which begins to the west of La Restinga seems utterly barren, though it also offers one of the best places to cool off on the island, down a dusty side-road that leads to the natural sea pools - known as charcos - at Cala de Tacoron, where you swim in the shadow of a volcanic cone.

While Tacoron is a favourite for sun-worshippers, for other worshippers the island’s hot spot is the Ermita (Chapel) de la Virgen de los Reyes, home of the island‘s patron saint. On the edge of the forest, high above the coastal plain, it’s a simple, dazzling white building that is the centre of El Hierro’s most famous festival when, every four years in July (including 2005), the figure of the Virgin is carried out and escorted by hordes of pilgrims on a gruelling trek to the capital Valverde to begin a month of partying throughout the island.

While the faithful bow down before their saint, the remarkable Sabina (juniper) trees at nearby El Sabinar bow down before Nature. Centuries old, the trees have been bent into strange contorted shapes over the centuries by the winds that sweep this exposed plateau, bowing until their branches touch the earth.

As the afternoon shadows start to lengthen, I arrive at the unique bit of white sand known as Arenas Blancas, which stands out like a chunk of some other island dropped mysteriously amid the surrounding dark rock. I never find out quite why this tiny sliver of whiteness exists, but potter happily for half an hour along its 100 metres or so, beachcombing for any finds cast up by the waves, while admiring the view along the El Golfo coastline towards the Punta Grande.

I stop again a mile or so further on, intrigued by tales of a healing well around which a spa hotel has been built. The Pozo de la Salud is endearingly old-fashioned, with its green walls, dark wood fittings and air of creaky formality, though I resist the offer to buy a bottle of the magic water.

What I want instead is a bottle of Vino de Pata to bring home. I pull up at a bar in the nearby village of Sabinosa where the barman grins and disappears a few moments, returning with a huge plastic container of the stuff which he decants into an unmarked bottle and hands over with a little bow.

That night, I eat at Casa Goyo in San Andres, El Hierro’s highest village. The food - grilled meat as a nod to the area being cattle country - is as excellent as I’d been told, though I’m disappointed this is one night when the owner decides not to burst into the mandolin-accompanied singing he‘s famous for.

While El Hierro lacks beaches, apart from the red sands of Playa de la Verodal in the far west and a tiny black sand beach at Timijiraque in the east, the charcos are fair compensation. The next morning I walk from my hotel to the rock pools at La Maceta, and 45 minutes in the hot sun mean I’m extra appreciative of the cool, clear water when I arrive. A magnificent view along the coastline is a bonus as I bob gently along with the Atlantic waves foaming over the pool’s black rock borders.

After a final lunch back at Punta Grande, I head for the airport a little early so I can stop off in Valverde, a sleepy little place that doesn‘t seem like a “capital“ of anything much - just 1800 inhabitants, white houses and green spaces scattered up a hillside.

There’s not too much to see but I clamber up and down the steep streets, ticking off the 18th-century Church of the Conception, admire the typical Canarian style town hall and check out the small local history museum, ask a few people which of the town restaurants they rate best - Brisas de Asabanos gets the nod - and then dive into one of the little bars for a caffeine pick-me-up before the short flight back to Tenerife.

There are plans to enlarge El Hierro’s main port - Puerto de la Estaca - with the aim of attracting cruise ships, and I’m worried. This should be a secret place, shared only with friends not tourist hordes. Even writing this has made me feel a bit like the island girl who betrayed the site of El Garoe. So do come here to see the “edge of the world”. But can you keep a secret?

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