The landscape has also shaped our traditions. With mountains and ravines making travel difficult, shepherds used silbo, a language of whistling, to communicate. It is still taught in schools on the island of La Gomera and has been declared UNESCO intangible heritage of humanity. I would like to stress the importance of the link that the Canaries have with the rest of the world. To understand this, I always quote the adage that goes, ‘If you're talking politics, you're European; if you're talking geography, you're clearly African; but if you're talking culture, you're Latin American.’ Before setting out to conquer the New World, the Spanish made a stopover in the archipelago, reflected today in urban planning. Here we discover the beginnings of the great Latin American cities, for example Santa Ana Square on Gran Canaria, considered the first Plaza de Armas." "What makes the eight Canary Islands so different from each another is their microclimates. We're in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, where the dust of the Sahara meets the trade winds. This explains the diversity of the landscapes, with cactus, euphorbia, and forests of humid laurel trees – the last in the world, sheltered in the Garajonay. On the Teide volcano, in Tenerife, we also have unique flora, which has adapted very well to the dryness. The tajinastes, for example, can grow several metres high. It is like being on another planet! If you like lunar, vegetation-free panoramas, Lanzarote is paradise. Some volcanoes are more than 20 million years old, others 200 years old. In La Palma, the earth is still hot after the eruption of 2021. This is a stopover that guests particularly enjoy. Aralia Loiterstein Lorente is a native of Lanzarote, official tourist guide, social educator, writer and PONANT guide-lecturer. She depicts the Canary Islands as a polychrome archipelago, marked by its natural contrasts and cosmopolitan heritages, with unsuspected influence. 46The Canaries, combining ocean blue and volcanic black Through the eyes of Aralia Loiterstein Lorente
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