Tag Archives: Canary Islands

Gran Canaria Day 5 – Revisiting Time

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Tuesday March 8 2022 – After three days of relentless tourism – and buttock-clenching roads – we decided that a more leisurely day would be nice. The opportunity to revisit a couple of places from the first full day we had here, when the wind and gloomy conditions really affected our enjoyment at the time, seemed a good way to fill the day.

The first of these was the Guadayeque Barranco (Ravine), which is reputedly lovely, but was all full of people when we visited because it was a weekend and the place is especially popular then. There are some interesting buildings along it, and some great-looking places at the top; but parking was all but impossible at the weekend, so we weren’t able to get the best out of the place.

Today was much calmer; fewer people, less wind, more sun. So we were able to get a good look at the places built into the rock as you go up the ravine

and see some of the restaurants at the top.

We stopped for a coffee break at the second of these, La Era, and it was an unusual coffee stop in that it featured no coffee, since their machine had broken down. However, I got a beer whilst the staff discovered this, so all was not lost. The terrace at La Era features a great view

and several cats.

Behind it is a path leading down the side of the hill, which was actually closed at one point, but we walked along it from the other end as far as we could, and learned that it led past accommodation which could be booked

and also featured a souvenir shop.

Another feature at this top end of the ravine is another restaurant called Tagoror, whose car park seemed to offer a convenient space – so Jane booked us a lunch table whilst we wandered around the other bits here. From the outside, it looks like any other restaurant with an outdoor terrace. But inside it is very unusual,

including some little cavey bits for groups to dine in.

It’s all entirely artificial, of course, but one has to admit that it’s fairly unique. The lunch here was workmanlike rather than posh, and served by a waiter who seemed to have a schtick about how hard put upon he was. But he was (almost) perfectly efficient and so we had a decent meal. Jane had curried goat, which she said was very good, even if at first it doesn’t seem a natural fit for a subtropical island’s fare.

We had timed the lunch so that we should, we hoped, arrive at the second revisit of the day at about the right time. This involved consulting the tide tables, as the place in question was El Bufadero, the blowhole on the east coast by La Garita. This was the scene, last Saturday, of winds so violent that not only was it not safe to go anywhere near it, but also my video gimbal couldn’t stabilise footage in the frankly alarming gusts of wind.

Today was utterly different. The sun shone, the breeze was gentle, and we had judged the tide right. There was still a barrier to dissuade us from going near the blowhole, but we laugh in the face of danger when it’s safe to do so, and I joined the various people who also had the same idea down by the blowhole. The resultant footage was very satisfactory.

So, after two such signal successes we decided it was time to head back to the hotel for a celebratory gin or two, having had another good day.  On the way back, there was a decent view over Agüimes, which we’d visited a couple of days ago (the windy day!)

You can see the very distinctive church of San Sebastian.  In the distance, you can also see a forest of wind turbines.  We’d noticed that there were a lot as we drove round the island’s main road towards Maspalomas, and, because she’s like that, Jane later consulted Google Maps and counted them up – there are over 140 onshore wind turbines in that south-eastern patch of the island.  Here’s a section of Google Maps to give you an idea.

The turbines are shown up by their distinctive shadows.

The final thing I did was to walk down the road from the hotel to take a photo of the towns below the hotel.

The reason I did this was because during the first couple of days here, we formed the impression that the buildings we saw near the main roads tended to be of rather dull, sludgy pastel shades – yellow and red ochres, and dull pinks, for example. By contrast, the villages and towns we saw up in the mountains featured, we thought, a lot more white buildings.

I think there is some merit in this view – it’s certainly true that the hillside villages we’ve seen have largely featured white in their palette – but also I wonder about the effect that the rather gloomy weather we experienced in our first couple of days had on our assessment; also, we’d just come from Lanzarote where the building code practically mandates that all buildings should be whitewashed, which perhaps made the contrast more noticeable. In the sunshine, the Gran Canaria colour palette doesn’t look so scruffy, that’s for sure.

So, here we are, drinking gin and eating crisps and starting to think about Passenger Locator Forms and all the other pre-requisites for an orderly return to the UK. But we still have two full days here and at the moment we have no definite plans as to how we’re going to fill them. If you’d like, please come back and find out how we got on.

Gran Canaria Day 4 – Moments of Teror in the mountains

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Monday 7 March 2022 – While the hotel we’re staying at is a very nice environment, I think we might need to Have A Word Or Two about some of the catering.  The restaurant on the day we arrived was a little patchy in its service and food prep, and the breakfast today was not properly organised; the lady in charge was too busy behind the scenes to notice that items on the buffet needed refreshing until someone pointed it out. We might give the restaurant another chance; after all, it was only its first or second day after reopening. But it’s a shame that such a lovely environment lacks a bit of care and attention in places.

Never mind – we managed to construct a reasonable breakfast and then headed out for the day’s travels.  The weather forecast promised that early cloud over the mountains would dissipate and so we headed out with the idea of making the central peak, Pico de las Nieves, the central part of the day, then head over to the west before wending our way back home round the north of the island.  Because of its geography, or possibly geology, or indeed maybe both, the best way to cover any significant distance on Gran Canaria is to drive round the major road which rings the island to the point nearest your intended destination and then head inland.

Let’s do a worked example.  Our first port of call today was a town called Teror. Our last, before we hightailed it back to the hotel was a village called Agaete.  To do that as efficiently as possible, Google maps suggests this:

basically 39 km in 39 minutes – 60kph.

On the other hand, you could go over the middle of the island, and this is the route we took.

According to the god of online maps, that route is 85 km, and would take 2 hours and 12 minutes, which equates to 39kph. And that, reader, would be going some; the Sunflower book of Gran Canaria walks and tours suggests a planning assumption of 15-20 kph on the mountain roads.  It would take fierce concentration and sphincters of steel to average 39kph.

Anyway, we took all day.  It was still buttock-clenchingly tense at times, but we escaped without any accidents and with several photos, to see some of which please read on.

We started in Teror, because it held the promise of some handsome buildings with an interesting variety of balconies.  And it delivered on these promises, erm, handsomely.

Here, for example, is the Calle Real de la Plaza.

As well as some lovely balconies, it has some interesting buildings, such as this one, which is covered in tiles.

The church is an imposing building

(sadly closed on Monday mornings for cleaning) and there are plenty of other interesting sights.

Among all this interestingness we noticed one thing which seemed a bit unusual; everyone was wearing masks all the time, even outdoors.  It didn’t seem compulsory. We started walking around maskless and no-one, not even a chap dressed in official-looking uniform, asked us to mask up or motioned that we should.  But the discomfort we felt at being the only unmasked individuals was greater than that of wearing a mask, so we completed our walking around wearing masks.

Jane had read about a particular thing, a water feature, she wanted us to see, so we trailed about looking for it, and….

it wasn’t running. We consoled ourselves with a coffee and then headed back to the car, past the very imposing town hall

before heading out.  It wasn’t long before we came to the first viewpoint of the day, the Mirador de la Vuelta de los Pájaros

after which we carried on further up into the hills.  The original plan had been to head to the highest point on the island, but that depended on the clouds clearing, which it began to look like a distant prospect.

The Canary Pines in the photos above had been the site of pretty significant fires in 2017 and 2019, and you can see the demarcation between the areas affected and not. We read that the pines are pretty resistant and should survive.

A little further on, another “astronomica” viewpoint on the way persuaded us that perhaps heading any higher would be optimistic

and so we rather headed down; soon after the above scene, we saw this

which is pretty much the view we would have had from the formal viewpoint, but you can see where the cloud starts.

Having decided to avoid going higher, we headed off across the island, with the distant destination of La Aldea in mind.  En route we passed some attractive scenes.

Above is Candelaria, which is very attractive but utterly remote. We wondered how the people who lived there managed for schools, shops, doctors and such.

I took this picture at a mirador called la Atalaya.  Overall, the views were not that  fabulous, but I liked what looked like a fringe of single trees on the horizon, like injuns about to spring an ambush (can one say that sort of thing these days?).

Very soon, the very twisty and often nerve-rackingly narrow road took us into some Big Scenery – Very Big Scenery.

We passed a viewpoint called the Mirador del Molino, mainly because it had the remains of a mill there.

More to the point, it had rather a spectacular view over a lake called Presa del Parralillo.

If you look at the left side of the photo, you can see the road running downhill towards the dam at the end of the lake.  When you get down there, you can look back and just about make out the mill.

The road led past the dam

at which point, some 25km into this precipitous, narrow and winding road, The Powers That Be put up the most spectacularly uncounterintuitive sign.

Mind you, they might have been referring to the cyclists, who were alternately toiling up and whizzing down the road in completely lunatic fashion.

We stopped for a late lunch in La Aldea and I tried my hand at yet another arty photo of the scene just by the café.

Then we carried on towards the end of the mountainous part of today’s excursion.  Not, it has to be said, without some more buttock-clenching moments.

This lorry was one of what seemed like an endless stream of heavy vehicles headed in the opposite direction.  We think it has to do with creating a tunnel to bypass the twisty bits.  The tunnel is complete in places, and I must say that it’s a lot more relaxing to drive in than the roads it is due to replace.

La Aldea, where we had lunch, is the centre of the fruit and vegetable growing part of the island, and as we took the road out of it, we got a sight which shows the extent of the area given over to growing stuff.

The whole basin of the valley is covered in vast areas of netting to protect the crops – an extraordinary sight.

We rather thankfully headed towards the tunnel, but, before we went into it, diverted to a noted viewpoint, the Mirador del Balcón. Actually the view from it was so disappointing that I didn’t bother to take any photos, but it seems that its main purpose is for people to behave like tourists on it – who gives a crap about the actual view when you can arse about in front of it, eh?

Before we hit the final stretch of the main road home, there were a couple of interesting vignettes:

Above, the village of Gáldar, clustered round the base of a volcano; and, below, a couple of shots of parts of the town of Algaete

including this slightly strange complex of buildings.

And that completed the day’s touring – some lovely views, big scenery and terrifying roads.

We’ve covered quite a lot of ground over the last three days, but there are still lots of possibilities for new and exciting things to do tomorrow – Gran Canaria certainly offers a varied mix of scenery, history and culture to be explored. We haven’t decided what we’ll aim for tomorrow, so you’ll just have to come back and find out for yourselves what we got up to, won’t you?

 

Gran Canaria day 3 – It all depends on your viewpoint

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Sunday March 6 2022 – The day dawned with a great deal more sun in the sky and a great deal less wind in the air, which meant that the plan that Jane had formulated for the day looked a good’un. The idea was to hie ourselves swiftly down to the south of the island, taking up where we left off yesterday, and head up towards the central peak, taking in viewpoints and other items of interest on the way. As usual, we had a lot to get through.  As usual, we didn’t achieve it all. As usual, we had a lot of fun trying.

The journey down to the south of the island takes about 30 minutes, during which I managed to get almost entirely to grips with the cruise control on the Peugeot without, I’m glad to say, causing any accidents, at least none that I noticed. Having got back to Maspalomas, we headed northish to something that Jane had spotted on Google Maps, which was an aqueduct built out from the rocks, which looked like it might be quite interesting.  So we drove up to the point where the road became a track and then walked up the track.  It was so beautifully not windy that I could actually wear a hat as protection from the sun, which was obligingly shining fit to split any paving stones it happened upon. After a short walk, we saw the aqueduct, which  was indeed built out from the rock on to arches.

That was the thing we’d come to see, but whilst I was scrambling across the terrain to capture the photo from this particular angle, only getting lightly injured in the process, Jane had noticed that a little further up the track the aqueduct went across some further arches.  So we walked up and examined them, initially from a distance

and then decided that it might be possible to scramble up and take a look at the water course itself (Jane had seen a photo of water flowing along the aqueduct).  So, scramble we did, and we managed to get up to the arches, at which point we saw

that the water now flowed along a pipe rather than in an open channel.  While it makes a great deal of sense in terms of saving on evaporation and being more efficient, etc etc, it was a little disappointing to find.  However, getting up there enabled us to get a better view of the very enormous rock processing facility across the way,

and heading back down gave us some more photos of and through the arches.

On the way back down to the car, we noticed that there were some caves by the track.

We’re not sure of the provenance of them, but they look like they might have once housed people.

Our next stop was at a viewpoint a bit further up the into the hills, with the grand title of Mirador Astronómico de la Degollada de las Yeguas. It being a Sunday, and the mirador being up a twisty mountain road, it was very popular among the local biker population.

The use of “astronomic” in naming the viewpoint comes from its popularity for watching the stars – not like The Ivy or the Wolseley, I mean the night sky.  It apparently gets dark at night without getting cold, which makes it a good place to gaze at the heavens.

But even during the day, you get a pretty staggering view. It’s a huge panorama.

Our next stop was a necropolis.  Sorry about the focus on death here, but it can be interesting.  Just up the valley, near the village of Fataga, is the necropolis of Arteara.  This is not a vast and impressive spread like the one we saw yesterday or in Menorca, but we thought it worth investigating anyway.

There were signposts to the site, but it turned out that the necropolis itself is quite subtle and not at all easy to spot until you know what you’re looking for. There is a track of sorts, which leads you to a viewpoint

from which, an information board tells you, you can see many many tumuli (burial chambers) among the rocks.

No, we couldn’t spot them, either. However, once you know what you’re looking for, you  can begin to distinguish them.

There’s one pretty near the centre of the photo above – look for a hole in a pile of rocks.  Here’s what it looks like close to.

Bodies were laid out on cists (platform slabs) and then covered with more rocks.  The local reddish stone is easy to break up to be able to do this, we are told.  After a bit, you can see tumuli all over the place.

and you can begin to understand how it is that there are over 200 tumuli in total across the site.  Jane had seen some pictures of a neolithic cave network, but we couldn’t find that.  What we did find instead were some traditional beehives, constructed from the trunks of palm trees

and some very fine views over the area.

The palm trees are further evidence of the neolithic community that once lived here.

The nearby village of Fataga had a couple of restaurants and so we thought we’d try our luck at getting some lunch.  Remarkably, we were able (a) to park the car and (b) to get a table in a very busy restaurant called  El Albaricoque. They managed to fit us in and served us a decent lunch with, mirabile dictu, plenty of vegetables, a constituent that has largely been missing from most of the meals we’ve had here; and we’re of an age where getting one’s veg is almost as important as getting one’s Earl Grey tea.

The restaurant was next door to an art gallery which looked like it would have been fun to visit, had it not been Sunday and therefore closed.

Time was beginning to motor on by this stage and so we decided we’d better do the same, therefore ditching a couple of the optional sites to visit in favour of basically hightailing it back to the hotel across the middle of the island.  Since the middle of the island is a fucking great very substantial mountain, we had quite an intricate journey along roads that Jane is fond of calling “intestinal” – narrow, twisty and occasionally making one shit oneself. However, the route went through an attractive town called Santa Lucia, and I couldn’t resist stopping to take a few quick photos.

And as we wound (a very apposite description of the roads) our way towards home in the setting sun the light gave us some absolutely marvellous views along the way.

We arrived back at the hotel well after sunset, and, as ever not having quite hit all the targets we had originally planned.  But it’s been a good day and I managed those twisty roads without damaging the car in any obvious fashion, which is good.

Jane’s plan for the morrow involves going to the north of the island.  Hitherto, the weather in the north has not been brilliant, but the forecast for tomorrow is good, so we shall sleep well and optimistically tonight with the prospect of another good day tomorrow.  So please come back to these pages soon and take a look at how we get on.