Tag Archives: Canary Islands

Gran Canaria day 2 – Blown to buggery everywhere

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Saturday March 5 2022 – Jane had, in her usual organised fashion, sorted out an approximate plan for the day, which involved gradually working clockwise round the island.  Our hotel is at about 2 o’clock, just where the hour hand ends, and the plan was to visit places at about 3 o’clock and every half hour thereafter until 6 o’clock. This was an ambitious plan. Very ambitious, as it turned out. Actually, like many of our Lanzarote plans, unachievable. But we had fun trying.

First port of call, then was El Bufadero, a blow hole on the east coast at La Garita. The sea comes in hard there and the blow hole is a rock formation which fills and empties with sea water as the waves pound it. When we got there, we realised that we wouldn’t safely be able to see the blow hole close to because the wind was so strong and gusty (later checking in with the local weather map, it transpired that gusts were up to 80 km/hour). So we stood well back and I tried for some video, which you can see below.  I used a stabilising gimbal, but the wind was so strong that it played havoc with it.  One thing that engaged our interest was what looked like little puffs of steam coming up from a particular hole in the rocks – looking like a mini geysir.  Anyway, the footage is not brilliant, but you can view it here if you like.

Moving a little towards the centre of the clock face took us to the outskirts of Telde, where there is a handsome basilica, the Basílica de San Juan Bautista.  En route, we noticed that there is a distinct tendency to have fun with the roundabouts.

The basilica is quite handsome, if a little sombre in appearance.

and it’s beside a square where parents were bringing small children and clearly Something Was Going To Happen.

We never found out what was going to happen, sadly. The basilica is quite ornate inside, as is  typical of Catholic churches.

Jane found on Wikipedia the nugget that the statue of Christ on the main altar, made from corn dough by the Purépecha Mexican Indians, was brought here before 1550. So, erm, there.

The square (and the town generally, actually) has some nice buildings, many of them featuring elaborate balconies.

We had a coffee in a mad cafe (whose main and flourishing business seemed to be selling a variety of spanish hams, either as sandwiches or simply as ham by weight) nearby and decided we needed to get on, so headed back to the car via the cemetery (we’re odd that way)

a park laid out in tribute to a local man by his artist wife;

and other remarkable statuary.

We found a lot of artwork just generally lying around in our travels today – see later.

Inching round the clock face towards about half past three (via another roundabout, this one a mobile driven by the wind)

took us to Cuatro Puertas, a neolithic site, which put us in mind of the necropolis at Cala Morell on Menorca, although having none of the grandeur of that remarkable site. Cuatro Puertas means four doors, and this comes from the second thing you see as you stumble up the hillside in the howling bloody gale that was still lashing us every time we got out of the car.  The first thing is actually a house, which is magnificently isolated

but still has its own letter box (a hundred metres or so down the track at the point it stopped being surfaced).

There doesn’t appear to be anyone living there at the moment, and I suspect it takes a particular kind of individual to want to live in such isolation.

Anyway, trying not to be blown off our feet by the wind, we made our way to the first of the site’s sights.

As it says on the tin, four doors. Although the rest of the site is not large, it took us a while to explore it.  It was quite impressive (I have lots of photos but will try not to bore you with too many of them); and the wind was a real factor, because the site is basically at the top of a cliff and it felt at times as if there was a real danger of being blown over it. Stumbling up and down uneven rocky surfaces was bad enough – add 50mph gusts and at times it was quite terrifying.

There are some more caves along a path

and the arch on the left hand side would have been the perfect frame for a brilliant photo had there not been a bunch of people having a picnic in THE MIDDLE OF MY SHOT! However, they had every right to be there (I type that with gritted fingers) and we actually found some other great excavated spaces and some markings on one of the walls

which we’re defiantly taking to be neolithic painting rather than modern graffiti.

The site gives some great views over the local countryside, too.

and a local inhabitant was trying to tell us something

but we don’t understand pigeon Spanish, so we ignored him.

Around about 4 o’clock on the clock face of today’s expedition, you’ll find a ravine (barranco in the local tongue) called Guayadeque, which has, at various points along it, restaurants, some of which are actually built into the stone of the ravine.  So it seemed a good idea to aim for lunch in one of these, our favourite prospect being Restaurante Vega at the top of the ravine.  So we started off, and paused en route to take a couple of photos.

But as we got towards the top, it gradually became clear that every other bugger on the island had exactly the same idea, only about an hour earlier than us.  The road around each of the  restaurants was crowded, there was nowhere to park and it would seem that all the places were full.  So, reluctantly, we decided to turn back (actually, that bit was forced upon us by the dead end at the head of the ravine) and find lunch elsewhere.

Elsewhere turned out to be Agüimes, which is around about half past four on the clock face. Because every other bugger was up the bloody ravine, there was actually a parking space available in the town, and so we headed down towards its centre and treated ourselves to a lunch of local grilled black pig, which was actually pretty good.  The restaurant was just by the parish church of San Sebastian.  For a parish church, it’s quite substantial

and quite impressive inside.

Its square features statuary at each corner

and the town wouldn’t be complete without a statue of the eponymous San Sebastian, complete with his arrows.

I also took this photo of a building in the town, which I find satisfying for no real reason.

The day was getting on by this stage, so we thought we’d better cut out a couple of intermediate items on the plan and head straight for 6 o’clock on our clock face – the dunes of Maspalomas.

These are, erm, sand dunes at a place called, erm, Maspalomas.  The south of the island is a hotspot for the beach-loving kind of tourist; generally the weather in the south of the island seems to be better than in the north, probably because the prevailing wind is from the north and expends much of its venom on the northern half, with the central mountain taking the sting out of it for the southern half. (A similar pattern exists on La Palma, another of the Canary Islands, which has a central mountainous spine – the leeward side of the spine generally has much gentler weather.)

The Maspalomas dunes area is very popular.  Again, by another miracle, we were able to park and we made our way down towards the sandy bit, past lots of beach-holiday-type apartment buildings. The initial sight of the dunes is quite impressive

and it’s a pleasant walk to the mirador which is the centre of the attraction.  There, one finds lots of people behaving like tourists

and it’s quite popular for people to walk among the dunes.

It was much less windy here, but there was clearly enough wind to shape the sand into characteristic ripples

and I can imagine it might be possible to have quite a zen moment out there.

But you won’t catch me doing it, that’s for sure.

Anyway, we were at 6 o’clock on the clock face and the real time was also 6pm, so it was time to wind our way back (see what I did there?) to the hotel for a Nice Cup Of Tea.

So, we hit quite a few of our planned targets today, but there are still some places to visit in the south and so we’ll focus our energies there tomorrow. Apart from anything else, the weather in the south of the island is forecast to be much nicer than in the north, so we’ll hope for sun later when we go anticlockwise on our visits.  So, check in again tomorrow and see how we got on round the island’s clock face.

Lanzarote Day 7/8 – Bin to Lanzarote; Binter Gran Canaria

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Friday 4 March 2022 – Changeover day!

Yesterday was spent doing Not A Lot; five days of relentless tourism and 500 km of purposeful driving around Lanzarote, we decided, Was Enough, and so we contented ourselves with simply driving over to El Golfo in Il Fiat Hybrid and had a nice – and very substantial – lunch in a restaurant called El Pescador.

I made the mistake of starting with a tuna stir fry which turned out to be an entire meal even though it was in the starters section of the menu; so when the huge lump of grilled Fish Of The Day turned up for main course I could only finish half of it. It was all good food though. The only other thing we did there – apart from discover that the restaurant which had been recommended to us was closed on Thursdays – was to revisit the green lake to see if it had increased in verdancy since our previous visit almost a week earlier. It hadn’t really, but it was nice to see it again.

Near our car in the car park was one that was decked out rather fetchingly in a design by That Manrique – further evidence of his lingering influence over the islands.

The rest of the day was spent in mundane activities – checking in to our Gran Canaria flights, catching up with the news and other bits of the papers and saying farewell to the lovely Dominica in the hotel restaurant.

Today was mainly spent getting from Lanzarote to Gran Canaria. We left the Casona de Yaiza at about 0930, got to the airport, dropped off the hire car, had coffee and got on a flight with the idiosyncratically-named Binter Airlines which took just 45 minutes to get us there. Once there we were greeted by not one but two Castaways reps, which was fine, because one of them could speak no more English than I can Spanish, i.e. almost none. The other, however, did a fine job of making sure we had a map of Gran Canaria and some suggestions as to places to visit whilst here. More importantly, the pair of them navigated us through a huge underground car park to the Cicar rental office where it eventually became apparent that they hadn’t quite got a car ready for us. It was thus great having locals to argue our cause and after a short wait we ended up with a Peugeot which we think is probably a 308; whatever, it’s a lot bigger than the Opel Corsa to which we were entitled, and it seems like quite a posh car.

From the airport to our home for the week – the Hotel Rural el Mondalón. This looks like it’s going to be a nice place to stay; it’s a working farm as well as a hotel and it’s quite swish.

We have a ritzy room above a lovely little courtyard

with a small balcony that has a view over part of the farm.

We arrived at 2pm, and its restaurant was still open for lunch, and we were told by the excellent Augustin at reception that it had just reopened, so we counted ourselves lucky on our timing.

Once we got to the restaurant, it was indeed reasonably clear that they had indeed just reopened, as it looked like they were sorting through minor teething troubles on an ongoing basis. Also, it’s a meat-focussed menu, and we ordered the fish, which arrived looking splendid on the outside but undercooked (well, raw, actually) on the inside. They bunged it in the microwave for a short blast and it returned rather better cooked. It was actually a good fish but one of the accompaniments – a fried plantain – was unrewarding to eat. But it was overall OK, even if it looks unlikely that we’ll rush back for lunch every day.

Whilst the Casona de Yaiza in Lanzarote was quirky in appearance and very comfortable, it had a couple of things that I missed: a lounge where one could just sit and order a drink whilst, e.g. writing the day’s blog; and facilities for making a Nice Cup Of Tea – the only mugs of tea we got were at breakfast. And, look, I know that’s pathetic, but when you get to our age this sort of thing begins to matter. So we were delighted to find that our room in Gran Canaria (named “Albillo” – a type of grape; every room was named after a grape variety) featured not only a kettle but also a fridge! This meant that a trip to the nearest supermarket was high priority so that we could procure a selection of life’s essentials – gin, tonic and milk. The nearest place was nearly a mile away and down a busy road with no pavement, so we drove there, bought the goods and hightailed it back to the hotel for a delicious cup of tea. Or three.

I took the chance to wash out a few smalls and hung them out to dry on the rack on our balcony put there specifically for that purpose. That is why it then started raining. Quite heavily, actually.

And that’s about it for the day, actually. We seem to have fallen into a pattern of having a big lunch and no evening meal, so the rest of the day has been given over to relaxing and, on Jane’s part, thinking about expeditions we can make on the morrow et seq. Not a lot to report in this posting, but hopefully lots to come over the next week, so do check back in and find out what we get up to.

Lanzarote Day 5 – It’s That Man(rique) again

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Tuesday March 1 2022 – Long read alert – lots of photos!

We had formulated a plan for the day. Remarkably, the plan held together up to but not including lunchtime, after which we fell back into the old ways of making it up as we went along. Jane’s rather good at that, so we’ve had a good day and I have lots and lots of photos to share with you. There, I bet that makes you feel good.

The Plan, such as it was, was to get to a tourist tick box at the extreme north of the island,  and work our way basically southwards with a couple of eastward diversions.  The starting tick box was the Mirador del Rio, one of the many César Manrique landmarks which can be found across the island, and a very popular site, hence wanting to get there fairly early, before it was overrun by bloody tourists. That bit of the plan worked well, and the car park had plenty of space when we got there. (It filled up quickly and newcomers had to go to an overflow area)

It’s deservedly popular.  You buy your ticket and go into the building there, and the first thing that greets you is a coffee bar with very striking panoramic windows.

As you’d expect in a Manrique creation, there are typical touches all over, including the coffee bar’s light fittings

and a curved seating area with a porthole view over the car park. (The porthole is the only building feature you can see from the car park.)

From the coffee bar, you go outside and get blown to smithereens by the bloody wind are immediately presented with a splendid view over the neighbouring island of Graciosa.  You can then climb a spiral staircase

to a higher level, where you get an even more impressive view.

Upon leaving you are offered the chance to follow a narrowish road that follows the clifftop for a couple of kilometres.  The views are spectacular, but the track is sufficiently narrow that it can be difficult to stop to take photos, so we didn’t.  However, courtesy of the “Walking in Lanzarote” book, we’d read about a path that led off to a “stunning picnic spot”, so we thought that might be worth a punt.  I’m glad we did.  It was a short walk to what did indeed look like a convenient place for a picnic.

and it did indeed offer a splendid view.

If you look closely at the piece of mainland closest to Graciosa Island, you can just make out some salt flats (Salinas del Rio).  I only mention this because one option at this point would have been to continue down the mountain on a very perilous-looking track and walk to the salt flats and then back – back up the perilous track.  This walk is described in the book as “very strenuous”, to which my reaction is “no, really?”

Our route took us next to the town of Haría, where César Manrique made his final home, which has now been turned into a museum.  As we approached Haría, we had no idea how big the town was, whether the museum had parking or how crowded the place would be.  So we followed the first signs to a car park that we saw, which led to a frankly rather scruffy car parking area in a rather scruffy-looking area of town.  But at least it was somewhere to leave the car, and so we set off in search of the museum.

It was a mile away. On the other side of town.

However, as we discovered during the walk, there are many handsome buildings and pleasant sights in Haría; it’s not all scruffy.

We eventually found the museum.

It has a car park.

We bought our tickets and went in.  You’re not allowed to take photos inside, something which annoys me, as I can’t see what the justification is for the prohibition beyond selling you a book with photos in it. And actually the place was, unlike the Fundacion location in Tahiche that we’d visited yesterday, quite prosaic. It was just a home, not a work of art – and a very obviously 1990s home, at that. Nice enough but really not that striking (except the bathrooms – Jane thought that he gave great bathroom).  The outside is pleasant though.

and you can visit his studio

where I risked the anger of The Authorities and grabbed a quick illicit shot as I left.

Overall the place might be of great interest to a Manrique devotee, but I’m not one. That, and the photo prohibition, left me less than impressed.

And it was a mile back to the car.

But there were some more handsome buildings and nice sights to see en route, so it wasn’t too bad,

and it appears that the Aloe thing reaches even out here.

Miradors abound in this neck of the woods, and we wanted to visit the next significant one, Mirador de Haria, as it offered (as well as a view of Haria, as might be inferred from the name)  glass walkways over a precipice, just to give you that extra fillip.  Sadly, too many other people had had the same idea and there was nowhere we could leave the car safely to go in.  So we carried on to the next, somewhat higher, viewpoint, which is called Mirador de los Helechos.  Parking here was easy, and it was clear that a decent view would be forthcoming.  The turnstiles to access said view required a €1 coin, which was a bit of a facer, since we had no coins at all.  We went into the restaurant to try to get some coins, and it became clear that if you were to buy a coffee they would let you out to the view. So we treated ourselves to the second coffee of the day and accordingly got out to see what is indeed a great view.

If you look closely you can just spot, on the left hand side, the Mirador de Haria.  Here, let me show you:

You can see how inconveniently small the car park is.

There’s a view over the towns of Haría and Máguez, which you can see to the right here (I’ve left in the other mirador for context)

and the towns present a bit of an optical illusion of a witch riding a broomstick, with the upper part, Máguez, being her hat.

It’s interesting to see the extent to which the land is  cultivated, and this viewpoint gives a good insight.

You can see that terraces have been created from bottom to top of hills.  It must be back-breaking work to cultivate them but it’s clear that this is the way of things.

By this time, lunch was calling, and this is where our plan basically came unstuck. We had hoped to lunch at another viewpoint, Restaurante Mirador de Los Valles, a bit further along. But by the time we got there, it was full.  We would have phoned to book, but since we had no idea what time we’d get there we thought we’d try our luck.  Since it was by now 2pm – prime lunch time in these here parts – our luck was out. The staff made a desultory attempt to put us at an outside table, but since the wind was gusting around and they didn’t even come for several minutes even to ask if we wanted a drink, we decided to move on and try our luck elsewhere. So the improvisatory nature of this holiday came once again to the fore and Jane suggested we go to the nearby town of Teguise. This turned out to be an excellent idea.

Teguise was at one stage the capital of Lanzarote, and it shows.  There are many fine buildings and plazas and a general sense of Being Something.

On a hillside overlooking the town – and closed for obvious reasons when you see the photo – is something that simply had to be photographed – Santa Barbara Castle.

(I guess you have to be of a certain age to appreciate the significance of the name.  If you’re not, then look it up, OK?)

One place we wandered past had a blackboard publicising tapas on a roof terrace, so we thought we’d give that a shot. The first impression was a bit strange – it was dead quiet as we walked in. But a waitress encouraged us up the stairs and there was a nice terrace; in the shade and out of the wind.

We noticed that there were water bottles jammed into the eaves of the roof.

On reflection, we thought they were probably there to dissuade roosting and/or nesting by the doves which were in plentiful evidence.

The menu was handwritten on a notepad, but included some tapas and they also offered gin, so we stuck with it and it turned out to be a very nice lunch, particularly once a noisy family with kids had left.

The place was actually the Social and Cultural Centre of Teguise – a very quirky and slightly odd building

but handsome from the outside, like so many others in the town.

We walked around the town after lunch, admiring the place, and I tried my hand at some Arty Photos,

and a few other views of the place.

We saw a couple of unusual statues. The first was of a typical musician who might be part of a local troupe.

The second is a masked monster, to do with Carnival time – and, unplanned, we’d arrived on Mardi Gras; a complete accident of fate.  Amusingly, as we walked back to the car, we saw a chap dressed in a similar way to the statue for Carnival celebrations that very evening.

Because we never cover as much ground as we plan to, there were still many, many tourist boxes to be ticked in the northern reaches of the island – too many to attempt at this point, so we decided to head back to the hotel; after all, we’d had a full day. Just look at all them photographs!

So the morrow will see us back in the northern part of the island, where there’s aloe and cochineal and salt, and caves and cactus, and probably a whole load else.  So you’d better check in and see what we managed to cover, eh?