Where to Stay in El Hierro

Divers stay in La Restinga, walkers and anyone wanting green stay in the El Golfo valley around Frontera, and Valverde suits a short trip or a late arrival — but on an island of fewer than 12,000 people, the real choice is between a village and a rural house rather than between resorts. El Hierro has no resort strip, no chain hotels to speak of and no nightlife. What it has is three distinct climates within half an hour of each other, and your choice decides which one you wake up in.

The island is a tilted triangle. A vast collapsed flank on the north-west side forms the El Golfo depression — a semicircular amphitheatre of cliffs a thousand metres high, with a green shelf of banana and pineapple terraces at the bottom. The high spine down the middle is pine forest and pasture at 1,200 metres, often in cloud. The south is black lava running down to the sea, dry and bright, ending at the fishing village of La Restinga.

Three landscapes, three weathers, one small island. The practical upshot is that you should pick your base by what you came to do rather than by what looks nicest in photographs — and if you are still weighing the trip up at all, our honest verdict on El Hierro comes first.

La Restinga — for divers, and only really for divers

A small white village at the southern tip with a harbour, a handful of dive centres, a few restaurants and a black-pebble bay. It exists today largely because of what lies offshore: the Mar de las Calmas, a stretch of coast so sheltered by the island's bulk that it is flat when everywhere else in the Atlantic is not, and protected as a marine reserve since the 1990s.

The water is clear to depths that embarrass most European diving, the fish are numerous and unbothered, and the volcanic topography gives you arches, chimneys and drop-offs within a few minutes of the harbour. It is routinely rated among the best cold-water diving in Europe, and the detail of what you see is covered in diving in the Canaries.

Accommodation is apartments and small guesthouses, mostly booked through the dive centres as a package with tanks and boats. Be clear about the trade: if you are not diving, La Restinga is a very quiet village on a lava field with limited swimming and an hour's drive to anything green.

El Golfo and Frontera — the green side

The north-west shelf beneath the great cliff is where most visitors are happiest. Villages — Frontera, Tigaday, Los Llanillos, Las Puntas — string along the bottom of the amphitheatre among vines and fruit terraces, with the wall of rock behind and the Atlantic in front. The light here in the late afternoon, when the sun drops below the cliff shadow onto the sea, is the thing people remember.

Swimming is in volcanic pools rather than on beaches: La Maceta and the Charco Azul are the best known, sea-fed basins in the lava where the Atlantic comes in over the rim. They are magnificent on a calm day and closed on a rough one, which happens often. There is a decent scatter of restaurants, a wine cooperative, and the island's most famous viewpoint, the Mirador de la Peña, on the cliff above — one of César Manrique's projects and the best table on the island.

This is also the base for the island's classic walks, including the old stone path that zigzags up the cliff face, and for the drive up to the wind-flattened junipers of El Sabinar, trees bent to ninety degrees by two thousand years of trade wind.

Valverde — the capital, and the one nobody plans to stay in

Valverde is the only Canarian island capital that is not on the coast. It sits at 600 metres on the eastern slope, wrapped in cloud a good part of the year, which is precisely why it is there: the founders wanted to be invisible from the sea and out of reach of pirates. It has the island's administration, its hospital, its best-stocked shops and a handful of small hotels and rooms.

The airport is ten minutes below it, and the ferry port at Puerto de la Estaca fifteen. That makes Valverde the sensible first or last night, particularly on an island where a wrong turn in the dark costs you an hour. It is not somewhere to spend a week — there is little to look at and the cloud can be relentless — but it is useful, and the walk down through the terraces towards the coast is better than the town suggests.

Rural houses: how most people actually sleep here

El Hierro has more registered rural accommodation than conventional hotel beds, which tells you most of what you need to know. Restored stone houses are scattered through the villages of the Nisdafe plateau, the El Golfo shelf and the southern slopes, and they are the island's real accommodation. Expect two or three bedrooms, a kitchen, a wood burner and a view; expect also no shop within five kilometres.

Book early and book direct. The island's total stock is small enough that a single walking group can absorb a village's worth of beds, and autumn — the best walking season — is tight. How these properties work in practice, including the minimum stays and cleaning fees, is set out here.

The island that runs on wind and water

Here is something no other holiday island can show you. Above Valverde, El Hierro built a combined wind farm and pumped-hydro station — Gorona del Viento — that uses surplus wind power to pump water into an old volcanic crater high on the hillside, then runs it back down through turbines when the wind drops. For stretches of days at a time the island has run its entire electricity supply, including the desalination plants that make its drinking water, on renewables alone.

You can see both reservoirs from the road, and knowing what they are changes the drive. It is also a quiet argument about what small islands can do, and it sits behind El Hierro's status as a UNESCO biosphere reserve. The wider question of where Canarian water comes from at all is covered in water and desalination.

Stargazing, and why it works everywhere here

You do not need a particular base for the sky on El Hierro. With 12,000 residents and almost no street lighting outside the three main villages, the whole island is dark. The plateau around San Andrés and the southern lava fields above La Restinga are the classic spots, and there is a purpose-built viewing point on the high ground in the west. Take a fleece: at 1,200 metres in February it is genuinely cold after dark. The practicalities are in stargazing across the islands.

Eating, shopping and the things that catch people out

Restaurants close early and many close one or two days a week. Supermarkets are small and concentrated in Valverde, Frontera and Tigaday; stock up when you pass one rather than when you need one. Fuel stations are few and keep shop hours, so do not plan on filling up at nine in the evening. Cash is still useful in the smallest bars.

The food is worth taking seriously despite the small scale: the island's cheese has won international awards, the wine from the El Golfo terraces is unusual and good, and pineapple and fig crops grow on the shelf below the cliff. What you will not find is international dining. This is an island of a dozen kitchens doing the same honest things well.

Getting there — and why it shapes your choice

El Hierro is reached by a small turboprop from Tenerife North or Gran Canaria, or by ferry from Los Cristianos, which takes a good part of a morning and can be a rough crossing. Flying is faster and, given the ferry's duration, often the sensible choice; the comparison is in flying between the islands. Hire a car before you travel without exception — the island's fleet is tiny and it does sell out, and there is no realistic way to see El Hierro without one.

So where should you stay?

For a first visit of five to seven days, take a rural house or apartment in the El Golfo valley and add two nights in La Restinga if you dive. That gives you the green side, the pools, the viewpoints and the trailheads, with the south as a contrast rather than a base. Keep Valverde for the night you land late or leave early. And whichever corner you choose, allow more driving time than the distances suggest — a pattern you will recognise if you have read what there is to do here.