Clustered on a small flat shelf base of immense cliffs beside a deep harbour, Garachico was, along with La Laguna and La Orotava, one of the first crop of important towns on the island. The town's narrow cobbled streets, rough fisherman's cottages and grand town houses were once part of Tenerife's most important sixteenth-century port, until a series of natural disasters plagued the town and ultimately ruined its harbour. But at least for visitors the results of this drama - lava rock-pools in the town's bay and charming old streets frozen in time - are engaging and picturesque.
Originally both town and harbour grew up on the grant of Genoese banker Cristobal de Ponte who developed the land that he'd received as payback from Alonso de Lugo for financing the island's conquest. Thanks to a deep natural harbour, the town blossomed as a stop-off for numerous ships to the Americas, and a point of export for sugarcane and wine from the north. But in 1645 natural forces interrupted the good times, when a volcanically induced landslide spread over the town, sinking forty boats and killing a hundred people. Undeterred, the town quickly rebuilt its houses and port, only to see much of it destroyed again in 1706 when two slow-moving prongs of lava crept into town. Though no-one died in this eruption, the harbour was mostly filled in and so rendered useless to large-scale commercial traffic - a death knell for the commercial concerns, which moved on to Puerto de la Cruz to the east. In 1905 an earthquake reminded locals of the continued threat posed by nature, while more recent studies of satellite images have revealed worrying and as yet unexplained subsidence of up to 20cm around town
The Town Garachico's few landmarks aren't exciting sights, though the walk around its small centre is well worth it for a closer look at old fishermen's houses as well as ostentatious town houses with ornate and typically Canarian balconies.
One of the town's oldest and most striking buildings is the stocky little harbour-side fort Castillo de San Miguel . Built in the sixteenth century to protect Garachico from pirates, the fort was one of the few buildings to survive the 1706 eruption and is now home to a vaguely diverting rock and fossil collection (daily 10am-6pm; Euros0.60). More engaging are the views from the castle ramparts across the village and out to the Roque de Garachico, a lone rock monolith in the bay.
One of Garachico's unique attractions is a series of rock pools behind the Castillo de San Miguel. The lava here is part of that which closed off the harbour and ruined the town in 1706, but locals have made the best of it by creating paved walkways between the natural bathing pools. Formed as lava cooled on contact with the sea, these are fed and cleaned by the tidal action - making bathing possible only at low tide during calm seas.
