Wright El Hierro Pictures

 

We visited El Hierro, one of the smaller Canary Islands, in January 2014 for CharleyŐs 77th birthday. The idea was to hike, sometimes with a guide and sometimes on our own, and to get some sense of the island that way.


The island has an intensely volcanic landscape with a surprising flora, including giant euphorbias and seemingly ubiquitous aeonioums, as well as aloes and prickly pears of the sort one finds in the southwestern U.S. Water is in short supply. Indeed, it took a miracle to break a drought many years ago, and to celebrate that event the islanders carry a statue of the Virgin from one end of the island to the other every four years in a procession that attracts thousands of people. We hiked on parts of the procession path and were struck by the dedication of those who take part in this grueling event.

 

The pictures here have been broken roughly into four bunches: buildings, flora, landscapes and paths. To see all the pictures of buildings, for example, click on the first link below to open a sort of slide show. Click on any small picture to see it blown up. "Next" and "Previous" will navigate through the whole set, and clicking the funny little house-like icon will take you back to the full thumbnail collection.

 

To get back to this page from thumbnails, click the "back to main directory" link.

 

ThereŐs a story behind most of the shots that the captions donŐt begin to tell, of course, but perhaps the pictures will give you some idea of what we saw. If youŐd like higher resolution versions, you have but to ask.

 

Charley and Leslie

 

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Buildings includes mainly houses, but also some other man-made structures.

 

Flora contains samples of the plants we saw, some of which we still havenŐt identified.

 

Landscapes shows some of what we saw when we looked around. We visited a number of miradors, i.e., viewpoints from which one could look down the steep cliffs of the island. El Golfo is the result of a massive landslide into the ocean.

 

Paths has pictures of some of the paths we took, though not of the most treacherous ones.

 

Finally, we include a few videos.

 

On the cinder path shows us on the ridge.

El Golfo is a view from the Mirador de la Pe–a.

Isora looks around from the Mirador de Isora.

El Mocanal was taken on the way back from Valverde to our hotel in El Mocanal.

 



If you have an interest in seeing pictures from our other adventures, simply go up a directory and scroll down to find links.