Pictures of the Valley of the 1000 palm trees

Valley of 1000 palm trees

Do you see any palmtrees ?

In our book this trip is called Valley of the 1,000 palms. We didn't see as many palms as maybe a few 100, and the map shows another name: Barranco de la Era Nueva. If you speak better Spanish than us - and know that you are in agricultural land - you will translate Era Nueva to "New threshing area". The origin of the name is probably that some farmer relocated his threshing field to this specific location. We translate the name to "New Age Barranco" anyway, and suggest to rename the hike to "New Age-trip".

Day 7.
Vallehermoso, Valley of 1000 palm trees, Ermita Santa Clara, Chigueré, Playa de Vallehermoso, Vallehermoso
Time: 5 hours
Distance: 13 km
Ascent: 600 m
Descent: 600 m

In 1985 the (protected) palms on La Gomera were counted at over 105,000. This is more than on all the other Canary islands together.

The Ermita of Santa Clara

Our trip takes us to, yes, another Ermita. This is the Ermita Santa Clara. Just behind the chapel there are some picnic tables and some places for a barbeque, the Spanish tradition for Sunday lunch. You start around elevenish with a fire, and at two o'clock you have an ideal simmering fire for your BBQ. Of course, on a wednesday, in January, there's nobody there (except us).

In the distance you can see La Palma island

From here you have a great view over the northern coast and, with a clear sky, of the neighboring island La Palma. As you can see on this picture, we didn't have a clear sky. Later on this day it rained cats and dogs, even as it was warm and sunny at this time.

From the Ermita Santa Clara, it's only a short distance to another Ermita. This is the Ermita of Notre Señora de Cooremoto. Would she be Japanese? And if so, what is she doing on La Gomera?

From this Ermita we're walking in the rain. We skip the "view"-point from where you can see Los Órganos. Judging from the pictures we've seen, you can't see a thing from there. And because it was raining, we didn't want to check this for ourselves. So, there are no pictures of "you can't see a thing of Los Órganos".

The rain stops when we reach the beach of Vallehermosa. Here we are very pleased to find the bar open. Coffee-break!!

After the coffee break, it starts to rain again. Well, it's just a short walk to Vallehermosa; so what.

A transport system for the bananas. The cage can be lowered by the cable to the banana-fields down in the barranco and, filled with bananas, wheeled up again. It saves a lot of climbing with heavy bananas on your back.