A travel writer friend is ranking the Canary Islands for The i Paper. It is an impossible task as the islands have distinctive personalities and vary in size, population, and terrain.
We lived in the Canaries for fourteen years, writing about them and creating Slow Travel holidays, which involved virtually walking across each island. To compare them on any level requires extensive first-hand knowledge, something which isn’t always the case in comparison type travel articles.
But people enjoy comparison pieces – they can reinforce opinions or provoke outrage. Which is the best Canary Island depends mostly, but not always, on personal preferences. Coming at it from a fly and flop holiday approach gives vastly different results than from a Slow Travel angle. With that in mind, these are my picks for some aspects that interest me most.
Best Canary Island for hiking
The western islands of La Gomera, La Palma, El Hierro, and Tenerife plus Gran Canaria in the east all give me the greatest satisfaction when it comes to exploring on foot. I find the scenery more spectacular and varied than on Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, and La Graciosa (technically one of the populated Canary Islands, but it’s unfair to judge it against the other islands). Saying that, I enjoy walking on all the islands; each rewards with a unique hiking experience. Overall, Tenerife is my favourite because it has the most diversity of terrain – volcanic, pine forests, ancient laurel forests, coastal routes … Spain’s highest mountain.
Google Search: Coming up first (ignoring AI answers as they’re ‘lifted’ from others and are often nonsense) is hikingisgood.com. They opt for La Gomera, an unsurprising choice as it has a reputation for exceptional hiking. However, from some comments, I’m not sure how extensively they’ve explored other islands.
Best Canary Island for beaches
No contest, the eastern islands blow the western ones away, golden and white sand playas being way more pleasing to the eye than black ones. Whenever I see a travel article promoting La Gomera, El Hierro, or La Palma as beach holiday destinations, I question the writer’s motives … and knowledge. Fuerteventura shades it for me, mainly because of Corralejo and Jandia.
Google Search: Most travel sites don’t separate Fuerteventura and Lanzarote. One that does is Which, opting for Fuerteventura (taken from a survey of 1800 people).
Best Canary Island to get away from it all
El Hierro doesn’t have the ingredients that attract the masses. Subsequently, there is a shortage of direct flights. It’s also two and a half hours by ferry. It was once believed that El Hierro lay at the end of the western world. In a way, it feels as though it still does. It’s the island for the most intrepid travellers.
Google Search: Quite a few sites choose La Gomera, which makes me suspect that El Hierro is so far below the radar it isn’t even considered. Lonely Planet also prefers El Hierro.
The most Canarian Island
By this I mean where Canarian culture is strongest. Many people, travel writers included, make the mistake of assuming the quieter a location is, the more authentic it is. It’s a fallacy. There are numerous ways to judge levels of Canarian culture. One is simply the volume of resident Canarios. Basically, the more Canarios, the stronger the culture. Using this measure, Tenerife and Gran Canaria come tops. Another way is to compare the ratio of foreign to Spanish residents. Bottom of this league is Fuerteventura with 31.1% foreign residents followed by Lanzarote with 24.5%. Gran Canaria has the least, only 10.1%, with La Palma next at 13.3%.
Google Search: Tellingly, this confuses Google. I suspect it’s because many mainstream travel sites don’t know the islands well enough to understand what Canarian culture is, or that it even exists. This theory is reinforced by TripAdvisor where, when a similar question was asked, responders seemed totally perplexed by it.
Best Canary Island for gastronomy
If we’re talking avant-garde dining, Tenerife boasts the most restaurants with Michelin stars, with Gran Canaria second. Focus on traditional cuisine and Tenerife still wins. Having a population of not far under a million means more restaurants aimed at residents. There are areas renowned for their excellent traditional and contemporary Canarian cuisine where there aren’t many, if any, tourists. Tenerife is also the only island to have guachinches, makeshift eating establishments linked to the production of wine. Size doesn’t necessarily matter when it comes to ‘good for gastronomy.’ We’ve rolled into El Hierro (the smallest island) at 23:00 and been able to order a selection of tasty tapas in a traditional bar, whereas in Fuerteventura’s (second largest island) former capital we struggled to get a meal after 18:00.
Google Search: Our Buzztrips website showed up first, mentioning Lanzarote, but only as a shocked reference to a survey carried out by Canary Island Tourism. Lonely Planet and The Times agree on Tenerife.
The most unspoilt Canary Island
El Hierro feels detached, as though it remains trapped in a time warp. It is the island where there is a greater sense that little has changed in years. Walking across El Hierro, with the mist swirling around us and the gnarled limbs of trees materialising out of the fog, it’s easy to believe local myths and legends might actually be true.
Google Search:The Times falls into the ‘quiet equals unspoilt’ trap by picking Fuerteventura, the island which has, by far, the highest percentage of ‘all inclusive’ visitors of all the islands (48%).
Finally, my favourite Canary Island
Despite living on Tenerife, La Palma, la Isla Bonita, is my favourite Canary Island. Apart from beaches, where it is weak, it scores highly on many levels. It is distinctly Canarian in culture, with stunning and diverse scenery, a good mix of traditional and modern Canarian restaurants, great hiking, and some nice towns with attractive historic centres. In a sentence, La Palma manages to combine some of the more cosmopolitan personality of bigger islands with the quaint charm of smaller ones.
I’ll probably agree with some of my friend’s conclusions and disagree with others. We all experience destinations in various ways, which is why travel writing is so subjective.
