Where the Jumblies live

Far and few, far and few

Are the lands where the Jumblies live…

Edward Lear

'One day,' I remarked to the taxi driver, 'they'll solve this problem.' I try to engage taxi drivers, they're often chatty and enlightening, unless they're weary of foreigners trying to engage them. Some just grunt.

This one was somewhere in mid-range. He laughed scornfully and thumped his steering wheel. 'Nunca!' Never.

'They're talking about it this very week,' I insisted. 'The island council, the town council, the presidents of the other islands…'

'They're always talking about it. They've been talking about it for twenty years. Nothing ever happens.'

Sadly, this was undeniable. We were sitting in a long queue of cars, nudging slowly forwards as holidaymakers strolled past us on the pavements, licking ice creams. This is the normal experience for Gomerans disembarking from a ferry at Los Cristianos in Tenerife. Two lanes of traffic leaving the port converge with other roads at a small roundabout, where we all get shoehorned into a narrow street lined with parked cars, bars, restaurants, sex shops, bike hire centres and emergency treatment clinics for overwrought taxi drivers.

Actually the taxistas handle it better than I do, because they have no choice if they want to continue being a taxi driver. Various solutions have been suggested over the years, most of them showcased yet again in a current spate of high-level angst. The most radical idea is to ditch Los Cristianos altogether, cede it to the sunseekers and their all-day English breakfasts, trips around the bay and cocktails at sunset while we serious travellers sail into a brand new ferry port further along the coast.

There isn't one yet, of course, but there is a proposed location near a small coastal development called Fonsalía, supported by detailed plans of a multi-purpose ferry, leisure and fishing port. Looks nice in the artist's impression. Big, though. Ambitious.

So what did our taxi driver think about that?

In a word: 'Loco!' Crazy. It would add more than 20 kilometres to a trip to the airport or the capital, Santa Cruz, which is already an hour's drive away. And building a new port would take many, many years.

'But,' added the driver darkly, 'you can understand why some people would like the idea.' He did that Spanish gesture of rubbing finger and thumb together: banknotes! Well, yes, a major building project would offer many desirable deals and contracts, as critics with a suspicious nature have pointed out. I don't know and frankly 'Yo no me meto' as they say here, I'm not getting into that. More concerning is that it would open another busy sea route through an important marine protected area along the western coast of Tenerife.

All of which illustrates one of the penalties we Gomerans pay for our doble insularidad, double insularity. The first insularity is common to all the Canary Islands. We are ultraperiférico, ultrapheripheral - a delightful word which is also a technical term within the European community for regions that are an integral part of a particular nation but located far from the rest of it.

The double insularity is that to reach Gomera you not only have to cross two thousand kilometres of ocean from the rest of Europe to land in Tenerife, you then face another crossing by ocean or air before arriving knackered at your destination. It has cost you extra time and money, two factors that are also tiresome if you're a crate of Seville oranges or a new car.

It's not all bad. For one thing, some of the extra costs are subsidised (see Notes, below). And our doble insularidad means that visitors who come to La Gomera haven't just booked a last-minute holiday in any old place as long as it's sunny, they've made a positive choice to visit this very special island.

-------------- NOTES --------------

Far and few are the Spanish Jumblies, found only in two island clusters, but the Mediterranean Balearic Islands are far closer to home than the Canaries.

The Spanish state subsidises personal and business travel between the islands through the medium of the Canary Islands' autonomous government, registered residents paying just a quarter of the normal ferry fare. Also welcome are the lower rates of VAT applied in the Canaries, except that this creates complications for traders. Sometimes it's enough to put them off altogether:

'This item cannot be sent to the address you have specified. Please choose a different address.'

How daft can you get? I'd rather they just said honestly, 'Nah, sorry mate, not worth the hassle.'