Fernando`s hideaway - Island Connections

CANARY ISLANDS
10
FOREIGN LANGUAGE NEWS 006
La Gomera’s success
Fernando’s hideaway
By Barbara Belt
The lady herself
Fernando Méndez is doing a wonderful job of
promoting La Gomera
The ‘Casas rurales’ are hugely popular
‘green tourism’ niche market:
nothing to do with the appearance of ferry passengers on bad
sea days! Green tourists like
walking, relaxing, cycling, or
just hanging out, in unspoilt,
natural environments.
The other smaller islands of
the province, La Palma and El
Hierro, are also green destinations, attracting nature lovers
and walkers rather than sun
and booze fans, but recent figures on tourist occupation levels there are disappointing.
In El Hierro’s case, this is
easily explained by the longer
journey required from Tenerife
South Reina Sofia, the near-
est international airport, adding both travelling time and
expense.
La Palma, however, has its own
international airport, with arrivals direct from the UK, Germany and other northern European countries, so there is no
obvious explanation for the fact
that whilst La Gomera (with
no direct international flights)
enjoyed substantial rises in
tourist occupation, La Palma
logged only an overall seven
per cent increase last year.
The one million, two hundred
thousand plus arrivals there in
2009 constituted an all-time,
never-repeated high.
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La Gomera enjoys continuing
success as a low key, ‘green’
alternative for northern sunseekers who prefer to avoid the
bucolic delights and concrete
excesses of mass tourism.
The Canaries have all done relatively well over the last couple
of seasons. Uncertainty over
personal safety more or less
wiped out growing competition from North African and
Middle Eastern winter sun
destinations. Recent events
in Paris at the Charlie Hebdo
offices in Paris will deliver the
coup de grâce to tourism east
of Europe.
So some Europeans will holiday further west than before;
many choosing Central and
South America. There is a
similar increase in (predominantly British) visitors to the
USA, Miami in particular, as a
stroll along South Beach past
boozing Brits confirms.
Not everybody has the means,
time, or inclination to travel so
far for winter sun. Central and
South America present their
own challenges. The constant
vigilance required to hang on to
personal possessions is wearing, despite lots of stunning
natural beauty and interesting
local culture, while Miami’s
characterless malls and commercialism are not to everyone’s taste. In comparison, the
Canaries are a good bet for a
winter sun shot, being closer,
far safer, politically stable -if
not stagnant- and sufficiently
diverse to offer something for
nearly everyone.
Within this framework, La
Gomera caters for the growing
One important factor is that
La Gomera’s head of tourism,
Fernando Méndez, is considerably more able than is customary. Casting no doubts on
the abilities of his counterpart in La Palma, Raúl Camacho, there’s nevertheless no
doubt that La Gomera’s man
is tireless and unstoppable
in his quest to promote the
island. He’s had considerable
success to date, which is of
course reflected in the number
of bods in beds. Now there’s
good news that rural tourism, a
sector he is a particularly stalwart supporter of, is enjoying
steady growth, with more visitors than ever last year opting
for country stays.
Fernando’s background isn’t
irrelevant. He grew up in Las
Hayas, a small mountain village in Valle Gran Rey. His
mother Efigenia realized the
importance of education and
foreign language learning as
useful tools for the future and
somehow managed to send her
sons to England for summer
courses, at a time when only
a few ‘cacique’, elite families
of the island, had the imagination and funds to do so.
His parents established Bar/
Restaurante La Montaña, generally known as Casa Efigenia,
in the village, offering home
grown and homemade food,
wine and liqueurs and a welcome for all visitors. No visit
to the island is complete without a visit to Casa Efigenia in
Las Hayas. Over the years,
outbuildings and ruins close
to the family home were carefully renovated to operate as
Casas Rurales, (literally translated as rural houses=country
cottages).
Fernando thus grew up in a
family whose business revolved
around foreign visitors to the
island, providing perfect
training for his present job
as island head of tourism. He
first became a teacher and
was young head of the small
school at Chipude for a while,
coinciding with my one of my
stints doing English workshops
for school children and teachers all over the island. It was a
pleasure to arrive at his school
in the middle of nowhere, buffeted by wind and inclement
weather. No other school I visited had kids who rushed out to
greet me excitedly in English.
It made it all seem worthwhile.
This man knows his stuff, gets
results and has somehow managed to maintain the energy
for doing a job well despite an
often fatal sideways step into
politics.
Proof is the twenty-six thousand, six hundred and four
overnight stays in Casas
Rurales registered during the
first eleven months of 2014,
constituting a healthy twentyfour per cent increase over the
previous year’s figures.
Cabildo president Casimiro
Curbelo attributes the increase
to what’s on offer on the island,
compared to other Canarian
destinations:
“Tourists come to the island
looking for a series of attractions they are unable to find
elsewhere. It’s precisely in
these areas that we’re trying
to maximise potential. All the
island’s walking paths are in
good condition and well signposted. We’re renovating existing ‘miradores’ (viewing points)
and building new ones. This
demonstrates that we’re continuing to offer quality as our
trademark as a tourist destination”, he intoned, perhaps distracted by past misdemeanours
now gathering as storm clouds.
While the man responsible for
the success story, Fernando
Mendez, says:
“La Gomera is establishing
itself as an increasingly popular destination, thanks not
only to growing numbers of
visiting cruise ship passengers and day trippers, but
also to all those visitors who
choose to spend their holidays here in contact with the
natural world. This is one of
our principal strengths and is,
in part, due to the extraordinary range of rural accommodation offered on the island.
These country cottages are an
integral, legal part, alongside
hotel and self-catering accommodation, of the island’s tourism infrastructure and offer a
very high level of service and
equipment”.
Indeed they do. Come and
n
see!