Igueste de San Andrés: mangoes and avocadoes

I once met a person who said that on her final day she wanted to be buried in the cemetery of Igueste de San Andrés. Surely Igueste cemetery is the most romantic and Mediterranean style graveyard in the island of Tenerife.

It has an inevitable resemblance to the cemeteries of the Greek islands or the Italian islands of the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is a white compound, alone, at the outskirts of the town, halfway up, on the cliff, above the blue sea, in one of the most eastern end pieces of land of the island of Tenerife.

One arrives at Igueste de San Andrés through the (TF 121) road, which is the way that takes you to the famous Playa de Las Teresitas and continues until the east end of the island.

It is a coastal, winding, narrow road, one of those roads that you know that lead to one end, and that is, indeed, what Igueste de San Andrés is about, one of the ends of the island. One of those places where the road ends.

As in many corners of the island, uncontrolled urbanization of cubic oversized and ugly houses, have ravaged what was, in its day, a wonderful and remote village in a fertile and narrow coastal valley.

Yet, still, as so often happens in this magical island of Tenerife, the beauty of the terrain and the lush vegetation, counteract successfully, the unfortunate buildings of the latest Canarian generations, who seem to be still ignorant of the immense appeal and harmony of their traditional architecture.

And so Igueste de San Andrés due to its mango and avocado trees remains very attractive, remains as a place of rest and reverie, a small little town within a narrow and fertile valley at the end of the road.

The magnificent feeling that produces the transit through the small roads sowing the mango and avocado plantations in its course towards the sea, is something that is hard to forget.

The whole markedly Tropical atmosphere of the valley, so much more typical of the island of la Gomera than of Tenerife, can pass unnoticed for the traveler who reached the end of the road, does not step down to walk through the village first and the groves after.

Therefore, It is essential to park the car, go towards the Gothic revival style church of Saint Peters, built in 1909 and follow the path to the pebbled beach of the town, returning though the communal village paths that will take you through a beautiful walk along the mango and avocado plantations, absorbing the essential and relaxed atmosphere that only the remote places have.