The Allure Of La Gomera
DON ISIDRO ORTIZ places the knuckle of a forefinger between his lips and begins to whistle. The sounds rise and fall in cadence, sharp staccato phrases followed by longer notes that echo across the valley before us. A few moments later I hear another whistle, clear and piercing but some distance away. It sounds like birdsong.
A stout 88-year-old with weathered features and a deep, melodious voice, Don Isidro smiles at my nonplussed expression. “I asked my friend Doña Estefanía when she’d be home for dinner and she replied ‘in an hour,’ after she’s finished milking the goats!” he tells me in Spanish. This seems unlikely, since Estefanía Mendoza Barrera (to give her her full name) is a schoolteacher. But then, this is just a demonstration of Silbo Gomero, the world’s only whistled language and a fixture on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list.
It’s my first full day in La Gomera, the second smallest of the seven Canary Islands. Scattered off the coast of northwest Africa, this sunny Spanish archipelago is Europe’s southernmost territory and a popular destination for tourists from more northerly climes, particularly Britain and Germany. Most head to the bigger islands of Fuerteventura, Tenerife, Gran Canaria, and Lanzarote, leaving La Gomera to a niche market of nature lovers drawn to its rich biodiversity and spectacular volcanic landscapes. But it is the island’s reputation as a unique repository of millennia-old Canarian culture that has brought me here.
While you can fly into La Gomera from neighboring Tenerife, I, like most visitors, arrived by
