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Two at Large in Gran Canaria
... away from the beaches and German dangly-bits
The Canary islands might not seem the first choice for an away-from-it-all holiday. But fortunately, the vast majority of the holidaymakers who flock to its beaches and concrete jungles of grim hospitality remain riveted to the sand, the restaurants and the bars. Which leaves the rest of the islands, small though they be, to you and me!
Thus, having been alerted to the joys of walking in Gran Canaria by an article in Trail magazine, we arrived on New Year's Eve with high hopes. We were put by Airtours in a "resort" which was right on the edge of town, was miles from anywhere, had miserable staff and would have been a nightmare for those with children, whose only escape was either the hourly bus to the beach or expensive taxis. Not recommended, unless you want to spend a week in a smoky bar eating chips.
Ralph was making the most of a headcold, which he'd nursed all the way back from Goa, so we spent New Year's Day tourist-watching, making a circular walk across the dunes of Playa des Ingles and back along the long concave curve of the beach.
The dunes, though beautiful, are of course bounded on their inland side by the concrete cliffs of the hotels of this holiday honeypot. The sand is pockmarked by thousands of footprints. And at regular intervals, naked naturist Germans with large brown bellies aim their dangly bits at the sun. Most are men in their fifties, and they sport and even tan, which they achieve by standing and rotating slowly. This also ensures that any passersby get to appreciate various interestingly-varied lengths of grey-brown gristle.
The beach was as crowded as we could imagine. The restaurants that cluster greedily at its edge appear to possess identical menus, irrespective of whatever culture from which they claim to originate. Everything contains meat...lots of meat. Good job we are self-catering, although the supermarkets aren't great sources for non-animal food. Ho hum.
So, having discovered that everything was well beyond walking range of our hotel, we managed to hire a car, a pretty-well exhausted Opel Corsa which lacked power steering, something that was going to be a slight disadvantage in the days that followed. It also leaked petrol fumes, but it got us where we wanted, which was into the hills.
And what hills, well, volcanoes!
Our most spectacular drive was on the last full day, when we drove up the east coast on the motorway, and they twisted out of Las Palmas to Teror and then across to
We managed eventually to find the well-signposted path at the point where it left xxxxx, and then almost immediately took the wrong turning, but discovered our mistake
August 6th 2002
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