La Gomera

La Gomera is the second island of the Canary Islands archipelago that we visited. This small island is home to just under 20,000 residents. The capital of La Gomera is San Sebastian. Interestingly, in 1492, Christopher Columbus stopped on La Gomera, making it his last stop before crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

The biggest attraction of La Gomera, aside from the obvious landscapes and views of neighboring islands, is its unique whistled language. This is an onomatopoeic language in which speakers communicate by whistling. Through tone, length, and accent, they mimic real speech in Spanish. The whistled language was born many years ago among shepherds who, being relatively far from each other, could not communicate normally. Today, whistled language lessons are mandatory in primary schools on La Gomera.