Canarias Province is divided between two capitals: Santa Cruz de Tenerife, which represents the western islands, and Las Palmas, the eastern islands. The contrast among them is truly incredible. We already knew the eastern front, but new things always show up underneath the rocks. The islands of La Gomera and El Hierro were the ones we were yet to visit, and the last stops in our adventure.

Traveling, getting to know people and places, learning. Without responsibilities that went beyond taking a good picture or framing correctly a great scene and not wasting any more money than that we had in our pockets. Everything else was just amazing. Although everything, we must say, was extremely difficult.

I have great memories from La Gomera. We hit the nail on the head with a contact there who helped us understand the rhythm of that small island. Everything seemed to be stopped, nobody was in a rush. Everything looked marvellous and so it was.In my notebook, his name was written as ‘Pablo La Gomera:’ that is how it stayed forever. We never knew his last name. He was a key person during our stay. We told him we had already recorded many images of volcanic landscapes and desert scenes, and the first thing out of his mouth was: “These are the western islands. You are going to get tired of all the green here”. He told us he had a friend who worked at the national park and asked her if she could lead us there.

Amparo, his friend, was surprised when she saw us arrive the next morning. She was told it was for a film, and I guess she was expecting to see a huge troupe. As she opens the door, here is two young men with a camera each and no backpack: “Is it just the two of you?” The poor woman had misunderstood Pablo, or he had exaggerated so that she would accept the challenge. We will never know. On the way she told us that she was used to guiding large TV reporting crews immersed in the deepest parts of the park and surrounded by laurel forest and other native species. She was happy to be able to wander with us along the paths that she always had to bypass, the larger groups with lots of equipment get tired.

We arrived at a part of the park that was, according to her, rather untouched, where from a distance you could see a small, somewhat unique construction. I asked her about it and she told us that throughout the island there tended to be this type of rural construction in the middle of the forest or on top of the cliffs. I discovered that given the fact that it is a rather steep island, in the time of the Guanches, the first indigenous people of the Canary Islands, people inhabited caves or this type of constructions. Since moving around the island was quite limited, people communicated using a language of whistling.

These constructions sometimes leave a lot to be desired. In the end, they just meet a need and are a part of our landscape. This is what really catches my attention. From that point on we started to call it archipiecture and every time we saw a somewhat strange building, we would try to stop to look at it more carefully. It actually turned into some kind of a game. We would be traveling in a caravan and once we would see one of these buildings we would go, “Dani, stop! Archipiecture!”

Houses made directly with volcanic rock are pure art: finding the rocks one by one, they would go on to become a small living space. We encountered a few of these in El Hierro. It was interesting to see them up close. Piled up rocks, porous and rough at the same time, camouflaged with its surroundings by their black colour with red hues. Suddenly there was a perfectly square window. And out of the irregularly shaped walls would emerge a perfect hole. Some had sloped roofs to drain the rare rain, whereas others were flat to save the rainwater with hoses that led to some collection drums so that it could be used to water plants.

Each individual behind these works has had to engineer them, think about their own concept of a house, needs and abilities, the surroundings and the climate, the heat and the seasons: all this to be able to build, with minimal resources, their own palace.