To describe the nature of La Gomera is quite a job. Here will just give you a taste of what
to expect when coming to the island.
The picture above is taken from the slope of the highest mountain, Garajonay, at 1,487 m asl.
Should equal to some 4.500 feet above sea level.
From there, looking southwest, you can see the fabulous Mount Fortaleza, 1,.241 m asl.
And you may, of course, notice, that up here the forest grows. It does so above 800 m asl,
and it is the remaining of the old Mediteranean Laurisilva woods.


Up from the top of Garajonay, you could look around in any direction. Here to the west.
You may notice Fortaleza out left.


What really amazed us, were the clouds coming down the mountain slopes.
They came really fast, and if you were amongst the unlucky ones, you had to sit down
and wait an hour or two, or even more, till you could see where you were again,
and continue your wandering.

While wandering about here in the laurisilva, we suddenly jumped upon several big roots. Of course, we naturally wondered whatever had been on top of these roots. Ought to have been really tall trees, so why were they cut down when everythjing else in the National Park of Garajonay were prohibited to touch? We learned the answer later. Once by the end of the 19th Century, they imported some Canadian Pines to La Gomera. Later on, the government of La Gomera decided that only the original plants and trees should be saved, and thus they removed all the canadians.

Look once more at this picture. You see the island in the background, out in the sea?
Well, that is not true. What you really see is the top of the mountains on the island
of La Palma, way up north, showing up ABOVE the clouds.
Looks funny, but the picture is taken about 1,000 m asl (3,000 feet), so we look DOWN
upon the clouds, and the clouds hide the ocean below and make it all very confusing.


Here is another one, but don't be tricked now. Again you see another island above the clouds.
This time you see the Pico del Teide volcano (3,717 m asl) on the island of Tenerife,
north west of our position in the national park.


From the National Park of Garajonay, there are two ways down to Valle Gran Rey and our house.
The main-road, which are about 10 kms long (abt. 6 miles).


The other way down is a little more rough. It goes across the 'Riscos de la Merica'.
It sounds risky, but it isn't that bad. I'm 65, my wife a bit younger, and we can still manage....


However, going down the 67 curves from the edge of the 'Risco', made us feel a little
funny in our legs. Going up that way, doesn't appeal to us any longer.
You can read more about this here.

We like to go this road, from Arure and out on the 'Risco'. There are so many beautiful sights. Large mountains around, and deep valleys as shown on the next two pictures. Some tourists use to go this route just to say they have done so, and they do it in 3 to 4 hours up - and just about 2 hours the other way, same as us. Funny though, we spent about 6 hours on the same route down. Could it be that we did see more than many others?

Looking down towards the village of Taguluche, and to the right, down to Valle Gran Rey.

Looking across the Valle Gran Rey you have the Fortaleza mountain (1,243 m asl) up left.

There were no taxes on any of the spectacular views....

Birds	Waves	Flowers	Nature
Sunsets	In the water	and more	La Gomera 2005

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