happi hippi paradise La Gomera 7 - Agulo & Vallehemosso

On Monday 26th, we went out for a day to Agulo and Vallehemosso. We even went down to the beach. But it was a bit cloudy and cold. Apparently, north of the island, the sea was rough in general, so, usually not many went for a swim. Of course when we went down there, us and 4 other Germans were at the beach sunbathing. Oh, there were 2 Spanish lads sun bathing too. Not many people there. If it was Valle Gran ray, it would've been pretty busy beach.
 

I'm sure we went somewhere else, But I now can't remember where we went. When I look at the map, some of names are very familiar to me. I need to ask Marcus tomorrow!
 

We walked around in Agulo. And I thought it was very pretty little town. We bumped into English tourists! Some of them were huffing and puffing away walking in the town.It was a bit hilly. Good excise for them! Here are some photos.

Pretty church❀❀❀

Awesome dragon tree! 

In this little town, there were chairs and benches to sit and chat place everywhere. I thought it was really lovely anyone could sit there and have a rest. I saw an old lady sitting on one of those chair chilling out. Cool!

Gorgeous jasmin❃❃❃

We had our snack here in the church yard in Vallehemosso. We also found some disused building on the beach. It would've been soooo cool if it was still in use. I suppose it was too dangerous to stay open due to earth moving and rocks coming down and blocking the path there. Shame. Never mind.

After visiting Vallehemosso, we ended up driving big circle back to Hemigua. Somehow we drove trough mountain, came out Grajonary, then drove along TF-713 back to Hemigua. It was pleasant drive. Well, I wasn't driving, Marcus was. When we drove passed the mountain, I thought it was sooo beautiful, I had to stop and take a few shots. 

This road, surprisingly, quiet road to drive. We didn't see may cars. whereas, TF-713 or other main roads were very busy. lots of cars and coaches up and down the mountains. I was glad Marcus found lovely road. He tends to find some funny road, we do get lost, but I can now accept it's a part of fun. Actually, I don't really want to get lost on my way to air port...though.....
 

On Tuesday, we drove off to San Sebastian, catching ferry to Tenariff, stayed over night there. Following day, we flew back to Stanstead air port... When we got to Tenariff, I wasn't very happy. It wasn't as nice as where we were, and missed lots and lots. Too busy and noisy, lots of English were drinking larger in the English owned bar by the beach watching football and eating all day English breakfast....What was the point coming to such a beautiful place and doing exactly as same as they would do on Sunday afternoon in UK??? Only difference was; it was sunny in Tenariff.

 

happi hippi paradise La Gomera 6 - Hemigua

On the Sunday 25th, we headed off to north of the island called "Hemigua" We stayed two nights. We stopped for our little snack, and walks twice. Fantastic views all the way to Hemigua. Every corner we passed, energy changed and even temperature changed. Got cloudier and cloudier.

 By the time we got Hemigua, it seemed to be cleared away, and it was sunny. Clouds there were amazing. How it moved, how it melted in the air, how it formed into different shapes etc. Really had some characters. I can see here in England, we have lots of clouds, and moving. And today, it's April you know, it's been extortionally nippy all day.

 Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that it was different clouds from here in the UK. The view from our apartment window was also amazing and breathtaking. I don't remember the name of the place we stayed, but it was a part of the old monastery on the "main" road. Here's some pretty photos from Hemigua.

Fantastic view driving down to Hemigua.

This is the view from our apartment window. Mountains, clouds, and fields of yummy canary banana plantations. Awesome!

This was our apartment. Bright, tidy, beautifully done, quiet, peaceful and attention to detail. Breakfast included and it was very nice. They did vegetarian option too. Bless. Oh, coffee was in the pot, and yummy. I tasted milk. It wasn't as smelly as English milk somehow....

We went out for a little walk in the town. found the church. Cute, it was. Due to Sunday when we arrived there, it was very quiet. Even on Monday 26th, it was quiet. I thought Valle Gran Ray was pretty chilled out place, but here in Hemigua was even more chilled out. It's ideal place for someone who love chilling out doing not very much. Time moved defo different there. Very mellow and relaxing. I'd love to stay there at least a week or so next time.

Happi Hippie paradise La Gomera 5 - Dolphin watching

On the 22nd of March, we went out for dolphin watching. When we booked it, we (I was) were expecting to get the same boat as last year. This year was: "excursiones Amazonia".

 The German lady at the dolphin place by the harbour told us, this dolphin excursion price included paella lunch on the boat. Yes, it was a little pricier than the other little boat. But it had a toilet, down stairs room to leave our bags, nice seating areas and yummy paella!

We didn't tell her we were veggies. Because we always had our own snacks with us, and I wasn't expecting the paella to be home made. I was wrong!!!!! It was the BEST paella I ever had!

Well, we had one young German lady who was a vegetarian and she asked for veggie paella. When we stopped for little break after dolphin watching, the captain choose lovely quiet spot for our lunch. I popped into the toilet. When I came out, they were already started! Without me!

 I wanted to take photos!!!! And this paella, Marcus was given small portions for us, when I had a mouthful....OMG! It was divine. Oh, NOOOOO. I really regretted we didn't tell the German lady in the shop...I don't regret often these days, but I really did and gutted that day. We were really fancied paella on our last day of our holiday in Tenarif, we were on the mission. Found ONE restaurant served veggie paella, we ordered. It was very disappointing..

Anyway, I love my food, I can go on about food forever, but stop here and these are photos from the dolphin excursions.

This is us eating yummy paella.

The guy with white top is the captain. He drove the boat with his foot. Very clever. 

He was the dolphin guide. He knew about dolphins in and out. He was in research for 18years. He spoke at least 3 different languages! I wanted ask lots of questions, but I was too busy watching dolphins or eating paella, I missed the opportunities. Maybe next year, I can ask him questions about dolphins! 

This is Marcus and the BEST paella! I wish there was more!!!!

This boat wasn't big either. Apparently the same size as last year's boat. There was another company doing dolphin watching, "excursion Tina", it was massive boat. I didn't like the look of it. Didn't feel the same as those little boats.

 Last year, we had fantastic experience on dolphin and whale watching. I still remembered the energy and one of dolphins actually looked up and looked me in my eyes. That was the magic moment, encountered with wild dolphins really close. So, I kind of, expected that again.

 Well, we had some more magic moment this year too. Our boat was hanging around about 1-2 hours, couldn't see any. Then, after 2 hours or so(maybe less....) the captain had message from other boat, Tina. Tina saw some dolphins swimming. So we went towards her. Here they were. They were swimming away. The dolphin guide told us they were hunting. It was very rare to see dolphins were on the go and mission to hunt.

 We were watching them for ages. They came towards us, and swam under neath our boat, very fast! Then they disappeared. "Where have they gone???" , Then we saw two cheeky dolphins appeared and swam towards us, stayed on the head of the boat with us for ages! I wanted to touch them!

I felt they knew how I felt, I almost felt like touching them and they let me....Wow! It was another magic moment. The captain let go of them, and we headed to our paella lunch.

Again, I loved the every moment. It was very precious spending time on the sea and encountered with beautiful dolphins. Everytime it happened I felt very personal. That was the advantage of being in the small boat. I'm so grateful we choose the perfect time and day to have the experience! I loved the dolphins there. They looked happy.

 When I went to Indonesia loooong time ago and did dolphin watching, I hated it. Loads of tourists boats were chasing dolphins, they didn't look happy. That was how I felt. I felt sad. And swore to myself "Never again!" Whereas here in Gomera, they control who could do the excursions and limit the numbers of boat. They have more respect towards other kingdoms. 

By the way, this is the more info for:

 "excursion amazonia"

4 hours, €42 for adult, €25 for kids(under 12) incl; paella lunch with drinks

minimum 7persons, max;10 persons

info & reservertions: 616 47 22 65/ 922 80 55 15

Happi hippie paradise La Gomera--circular walk

This was one of high lights of our holiday--- big circular walk. I was really looking forward to this. Last year, we couldn't finish this walk. We heard so much about it through walkers we met last year. They all told us, on this walk, there was a church and a big water fall. I really wanted to see the beautiful water fall with my own eyes. But Marcus got his back hurt during our walk, so we didn't walk any further than maybe 2hours from the coast.

 But this time, we ended up doing the whole walk. It took us about 9hrs from the coast. We walked along the sea from the Vueltes harbour to the next beach.

 Cor, blimey, it was long walk, longest and hardest walk I  ever done. Well, I haven't done many walks in mountains or rocks (literally NONE) anyway. Only recently, started walking. Then realised walking in mountains were good fun.

 Apparently, there was even bigger circular walk than we did. Maybe next time, we'll do the bigger walk with camping gears. We started from the coast; Playa de las Arenas. there was walk path towards mountain. Just followed yellow line.... there were fairly clear markings to start off with, along with walkers' stone markings. 

Last year, there were waterfalls, and beautiful clear rivers. But this year, it was very dry. There was no waterfalls. But, when I was standing in the middle, I could almost feel and hear the sound of water.....☺ We were walking where water was, and first a couple of hours, I found fairly easy to walk up the dry river.

 We saw a few people including a German guy in his 60's with walking gear and outfit. He thought we were naughty without having walking map with us. We thought we just could walk to the water fall, and it would've been about 4 hours walk, then back to the coast. That was our "plan". After waking passed dodgy path, this German guy came back and said " there was no proper path here, so, not doing the walk." And told us not to go either. People we saw last year said the same thing, if I remember right. It's me, If someone says don't do it, of course, I want to do it even more.

 So, we went ahead. We pottered a lot. Then we saw a German couple with walking outfits. They seemed to know where they were going. Well, they had a map. When we reached the water fall place, took us about just under 5 hours including pottering time and snack time.

 The most of time, we were climbing rocks with our bear hands and my walking sandals. Thing was, as soon as climbed up some rocks, the yellow markings disappeared. We walked a bit anyway, then usually, found it somewhere else. It wasn't very clear where to go. I sometimes just followed foot prints people left and stone markings.

 Anyway, Marcus asked the German couple where they were going and they told us they were doing the circular walk, get to the church then going down back to the valley "El Guro".

 Apart from them, we didn't see anyone else by this point. We saw a couple with a young baby earlier, but they went back to the coast long time ago. So, we kept walking and climbing the mountain. It was peaceful and very quiet.

We kept walking and walking. It was hot. We were sweating. We saw lots of caves on the walls of those mountains. Awesome views!

At this point, this German couple were in front of us. We didn't want to interfere, so we walked a bit behind. After this, they stopped for break under the tree. We were still walking. By then, path wasn't too bad. Although it was a bit rough path, there was no more rock climbing.
 

Then we saw.....(sorry about quality of my photo, my camera's knackered, need a new one)

Houses! Civilisation! I really thought when I saw a few houses, it was the end of the walk, just going down the road. Easy! But reality was, opposite. It wasn't the end of the walk, just coming out of the national park, and still needed to continued to find the other side of the park to get to the church.

We weren't sure about where we were going, then we saw hippies! They called us to walk where they were going, so we followed hippies.

 Then we saw.... the church! It was cute! It was called: Ermita N.S de Guadelupe. We saw more people. It seemed like it was popular spot for walkers. We even met a few English people! 

Unfortunately, this cute church was closed. Couldn't get in!!!! By then, I was so excited we were nearly the end of the walk. I knew we just needed to go down the mountains. no more going up! So, this English guy we met at the church, him and his German mates gave us direction which way to go back.

So, we did. After 30mins or so, we saw about 10 people walking around already, everyone looked knackered. We were the only ones(and the German couple) came from the coast.

 Again, we got lost a bit. I saw a couple coming towards us, so I asked which way to do back to Valle Gran Ray, again, this couple, (they were English!!!) kindly gave us directions. And they were impressed we came from the coast, and she said the walk, me and Marcus did was the hardest walk in the whole island. Ooops, I didn't know that, I did it with my pair of keen sandals! (love my Keen, good shoes for walking like this!) No wonder my feet hurt afterwards.

 Anyway, I had energy back again when I saw the houses under neath the valley. I could do with some nice smoothies....

I really thought it was guanna get easier, yes, it was easier than where we were walking, but I was tired!!!!! From that point, it took us probably another a couple of hours to get down. 

These houses were in the El Guro. When we got there, we walked along the road. we didn't get a bus back. We didn't cheat! We continued walking. By then, I could feel my legs were going, I knew if I'd stopped, my legs would've collapsed. So carried on.

I started feeling a bit grumpy. I was hungry. We saw people drinking beer in a bar. First time in ages, I felt I really fancied a pint of chilled beer. Looked so nice. But we didn't go in. We bought bottles of water instead. It tasted soooo nice we drunk the whole bottle in one go(500ml)! We carried on walking.

 Then found a nice green grocers, got ourselves some fruits and veggies for our dinner. It took me another week to process what we did that day. I now really proud of myself, actually finished the walk. The view we saw there was phenomena. It reminded me going up Mt. Fuji with my family when I was a young girl. I couldn't finished the walk, I was too tired. We could see the top, but we walked down. My dad didn't speak to me for a few days after that. When I was growing up, my dad used to bring up the Mt.Fuji story every time I wanted to give up doing something. My dad thought I couldn't finish nothing. I really thought I was useless and felt always guilty I didn't finish the walk. But now, I know I can do anything If I really want to and I'm not useless. Moreover, this walk was harder than Mt.Fuji, although smaller, these path were lot steeper. I slept well that night. I became SNORIE NORIE again. Poor Marcus, he had to put up with me snoring......

 Next time, I would like to do the walk again and try different walks too. It was fantastic experience.

 

I recently purchased a walking book called La Gomera by Klaus and Annette Wolfsperger. This walk is on p114 black31, and it has more detailed information. I think it's a great book, I defo recommend if you go for a walking holiday.