Gran Canaria, Canary Islands Spain

Grand Canary is the third largest of all the Canary Islands and this was our third Canary island to visit on this European trip.  Gran Canaria is often referred to as a miniature continent due it's varied terrain and micro climates. I had not read up much on Grand Canaria so I did not know what to expect. We landed in the dark and flew in one day late from La Palma Island, thanks to Air Europa and its cancellations and delays.  The island looked quite large.  The airport was just outside of a very large city Santa Cruz de La Palma and we drove 35 minutes to our timeshare called Club Cala Blanca in the southwest of the island.  It was a really nice double lane highway all the way. GC1 highway almost goes entirely around the island.

Darren walking on the side walk of the long road that you had to walk each day to get to your car at the bottom of the hill where the parking lot was.  You can see on the left side of the photo where it was.  It was a 12 minute walk down and 15 up the hill.

The surrounding rocks near the resort were quite pretty.

I loved our balcony with ocean views of the Atlantic.

We got up the next day and went and bought some groceries. The area is quite nice, its highly touristy in the south, which I don't love, but with that you get some pluses. We drove around and explored a bit and took it easy.

The next day we drove to Roque Nublo, which is the top of the old Volcano Caldera de Bandama. The surrounding area is part of a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve which is the top of the old volcano and it is now a national park. It was a decently scary drive up the narrow steep roads but quite beautiful scenery. 

The road was challenging, narrow and steep with sharp drop offs and countless hairpins.

We passed many towns that are built into the rocks and hills.

Once you get up high enough the real beauty began.  Canary Pines were thick in areas or rough rock escarpments.  Low lying clouds are always a part of the scenery in the Canaries.

There are campgrounds here and they were
nice to see as we drove by.

The recognizable rock outcrop of Roque
Nublo appears in the middle of the photo.
The grape vines are near the road, there were 
numerous vineyards up in the hills and mountains.

I had to go on an official government site to acquire free passes with URL codes to hike to Roque Nublo.  They control the number of people per day this way.  We parked at Cruz de la Las Llanos parking and waited for the bus which is normally 1.40 Euro.  It was a 5 km bus ride and he didn't charge us, why we don't know?

On the hike.

Some roads down below.

A view of Roque Nublo.

The valley below was stunning!

The trail began with rock pavers, notice the steep side.

There was a town below where we were hiking.  Notice the road that we would soon be driving on.

Thick forest with an Observatory on top of the mountain.

Darren is trudging up the mountain.  It was a fun hike and not very difficult.

  The walk up to the path right away was absolutely stunning. It was prettier than Banff with lots of valleys and gorges and pine trees. The rock here is much prettier than La Palma, La Palma rock is black volcanic rock. This volcanic rock were greens, reds and golds so it's not so dark and ominous looking.  The views all the way up were gorgeous and the hike up took 45 minutes to an hour. I was waiting for Darren a lot and taking a lot of photos. I saw two young girls running up. You could run up and it would take half an hour but we took our time. 

Darren taking a break in the sun.

Very dramatic scenery anywhere you looked.

Darren's knee was being a pain and he needed a knee break.

As you climb higher up in the clouds it does drop in temperature.  There were several hiking options and trails.

Beauty and the Trail.

Yup, we hiked past this monstrosity of rocks.

This rock was pitiful looking.

Roque Nublo was getting closer.

There was volcanic rock art to the left of the photo.  It had a hole in it.

At Roque Nublo there are sides that feel like you are going to blow off the mountain and they're very steep but beautiful. The other side is warm and sheltered and even more gorgeous to look at. 

Roque Nublo was left over from a volcanic outburst.  The surrounding area is lunar looking.  You get some perspective of the size with the 3 people walking.

Once up on the rock the scenery even got prettier.

Darren looking at the Rock.

You had to watch your footing in certain areas because it was dangerous.

The wee houses below in the valley.

The pitiful rock again.

Darren on the shadowed, windy and cold side of Rocque Nublo.

Near the main rock it was quite scrambly to walk and climb over boulders to make your way.

You can barely make out the people on the lunar looking flat section that we had just come from.

Pretty valley.  Some Europeans just come to the Canaries for the sun but they are missing out on all of the beauty that the Canaries has to offer if they don't venture out and up into the mountains and National Parks and UNESCO Biospheres.

The sunny side of the rock.  
Darren is painting on his IPAD.

The clouds began to roll in and it was time to go.  You do not want to get caught up that high with thick cloud cover, it would be cold and dangerous.

That is seriously pretty, seriously.

We sat for about 10 minutes and Darren painted for a bit and I took some pictures.  It was a good thing we only sat that long. We got back in a really good time. I think it probably took us 35 minutes to get down. We only had 10 minutes to spare before the hourly bus came.  It was getting cold up there at 3:30 pm because you're high up in elevation and as soon as the cloud comes then you're a little bit wet and it's misty and it does drop in temperature quite a bit.  

On the way down, the pants were slipped on as the weather was getting chillier.

There were a few scramble areas and these tend to be my favorite.

There was one area that almost blew 
your wig off.

On the drive down we chose a different way back to Taurito where we were staying.

This is an amazing view to have from your house, don't you think?

I was happy that we caught the bus and did not have to wait long because we were a bit damp from the cloud cover. 

We wanted to take the way back through Mogan, which was the shortest route but there was a road closure most likely due to a landslide. Two days before we arrived, it rained hard and they had an awful storm, storm Emelia.  Unfortunately for us we had to take a narrower, steeper more nightmarish road back through upper Maspalomas area.  To this day I thought La Palma roads scared the s*** out of me the most. But this road won for the scariest EVER.  There were a few times when it was down to single lane width but it was a two-lane road and we had no idea what was coming on the other side of the upcoming hairpin and we were slowed down because there were three cars in front of us and these were very difficult roads to traverse.  You're trying to maneuver your car up hill around a hairpin and then turn the opposite way on a steep incline, if you can imagine driving up a hairpin and then turn the other way and you have not completed the hairpin yet?  These roads are absolutely crazy!!!!! These roads should be illegal, they would be against the law in Canada. I mistakenly looked down a few times on the driver side, stupid mistake on my part, it was like 3,000 ft into nothingness. There was a guardrail but guardrails are really not going to protect you from falling to your death. I'll never be on that road again unless I'm walking.  We did thankfully make it back safely, thanks to Darren's driving skills on those roads.  We did stop for a break at a lookout. At that point I wasn't breathing well and close to tears and Darren wanted to look around at the beautiful valley he had safely maneuvered out of. The valley was gorgeous. It was stunning to look back and see where we had driven from.

We were coming down a section of the road and we had to stop and take a photo of the cactus at the bottom of the photo and the valley and clouds.

Dramatic hilltop towns dotted the landscape.

This rock escarpment had a cool erosion pattern and looked a bit like the Badlands of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

This was the traumatic area of the road for me.  Straight down the cliff and no shoulders to the road.  If we would have stopped in the scary-ass section I would not have been able to open my car door, that was how close the guard rail was to our car.  Honestly, I still get a bit jittery when I see these photos.

This was the other half of the upper photo, the steep cliff descended down into a deep gorge.

We had stopped here at this rest stop and viewpoint.  I did not know that there was still more fear to come.  It was the never-ending road from hell.

We made it back to the rental and we relaxed, made supper and ate. I went to bed early because I was exhausted mentally from that bloody road.

Looking through the pretty kitchen window in our rental.  It was going to be a nice sunset.

I wanted to go to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria which is the capital of the island of Gran Canaria and it is at the north of the island. Its just over an hour away, there was a traffic snarl and not for any particular reason like an accident or anything. There are just too many cars on the three-lane highway and it's a lovely highway, but it set us back 25 minutes being stuck in this snarl. We found a parking spot in the old center of this old town of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria which was settled in 1478.  Christopher Columbus was a big part of the history here. I decided that we should go to the Casa de Colon Museo, which is the Christopher Columbus museum and it was in an old Palace or Casa and Darren paid 2 Euro and I was 4 Euro. 

A pretty stone gazebo in Old Town.

Beautiful clean walking streets greeted us.

The architecture was pretty.

This church was quite large and I had
to zoom out on my phone to get it all in.

The Casa de Colon was such a pretty Casa with Arabesque Mashrabiya balconies.  The cobble stones in the Old Town were almost as pretty as the natural blue cobble stones of San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The back stairs of the church.

Inside the Casa.  Darren was not near me to snap a photo of me next to a door in the Casa.  I would have been an Amazon in the 1500s.

The old well and cobble stones in the inner courtyard of the Casa.  The stones were laid on their round ends just like in Rhodes Greece Old Town.

The ceilings alone were worth the entry fee into Christopher Columbus's Museum.  I had never seen anything like them.  They were all carved decorative wood pieces and orignal.

Another inner courtyard of the Casa.

Another gorgeous ceiling.

This large shuttered window had a cute little seating area.

A mock up of Christopher Columbus's ship.  With the Woke movement, CC has been given a bad reputation without the historical context attached to it.

The Casa didn't take long to blitz but my primary objective was to go to the bathroom. It was either sit down at a restaurant and have a glass of wine and use their washroom or go to this inexpensive museum. Most of the museum was in Spanish, a lot I couldn't read but I actually got more out of the architecture in the Casa and it was quite pretty.  There was an old original well in the center of the outdoor courtyard, which I thought was cool. They also had a mock-up of the inside of what Christopher Columbus's ship would have looked like. That was cool. 

We left and walked around and saw a few of the buildings in the Old Town, the church was quite pretty and it was a neat area full of cobblestone streets. We tried to find a restaurant and the few in that area I didn't really like the menus so we got in our car and left.

Decorative sculpted window frame.

Another side of the Casa which was also quite stunning.

Old Town architecture.

The Catholic Church is always the center of the Old Towns in any Spanish speaking town or city.

Ay yiy yiy, this was so pretty.

We originally were going to go and drive to the main beach in the area because it's supposed to be pretty and three kilometers long. But it was going to take another 20 minutes to drive to and it honestly would have taken a shorter time to walk there and our car only had a 1 hour time limit on it. We just drove back towards home and went to Dunas de Maspalomas which are the sand dunes and they are quite cool. They make you feel like you're in the middle of the Sahara Desert.  Just out of the blue, there are these sand dunes. I don't know how they got there? Many kids were running up them and somersaulting and rolling down the sand dunes. We just took a few pictures and left and had found a really good ice cream place that was a reasonable price and had some of my favorite green ice cream which is pistachio and we made our way home. 

Surrounding Old Town often higher up on a hill for defensive purposes.

A different angle of Old Town with its varied colored houses.

The Maspalomas Dunes are very pretty.  You can take a path to the ocean if you had felt inspired to walk in deep sand.  We were not inspired that day.

Undoubtedly the dunes are quite extrodinary and pretty.

The kids thought they were fun and 30 years ago, I would have too.

Look how lovely they look up against the blue ocean of the Atlantic.

Another great sunset of Gran Canaria Island.

We wanted to do another hike the next day and there are quite a few hiking trails in the area that we were staying in.  We we're surrounded by mountain cliffs, we chose to go up this old road. It was asphalted and then there was probably too many landslides and it was just too dangerous and they just closed the road and let the road go.

Darren looking back at me on the old road trail.  I was too busy taking photos.

Check this out, what a great example of the different lava flows over the 'who knows', maybe millions of years.  I could barely count the different textures, colors and layers.  I thought this was awesome to look at where the volcanic rock was sliced away to show this cross-section of history.

This was a palestinian flag that was painted on the rock but I loved that it was painted over again with the Jewish Star of David.  I would do the same if I were a Jew.  There was an abundance of refuse up on the old road and the refuse was from the failed construction project of the hotel/condo.

It was an interesting and pretty hike up that mountain road.  You can see the port of Puerto de Mogan in the distance.

Climbing down the old road to another trail that led to the closed current road.

We found this quite interesting and it was quite steep. It was good exercise and we came across this abandoned half finished hotel or condo complex.  We were trying to figure out why they stopped construction? Did they go bankrupt or were there just too many landslide issues in the area?

Looking back at our resort while on the hike.  We were staying in the blue and white complex in the middle of the two rows of hotels.

A common looking cliff side in the Canaries but was the one on our hotel side.  You can see the road but there was no way in hell we were taking that again.  We accidentally took it when we were trying to find the hotel and made a wrong turn.  It was in the dark but I knew it was one of those shoulderless roads from hell. 

Who knows, but that was kind of interesting and we continued to walk up and then it linked down through a narrow path down to the current road that goes around the cliff towards Puerto de Mogan. This is the road that also has been closed but it has been literally walled off from the other side due to danger.  We walked up to that and Darren looked down over the guardrail and it was a thousand feet straight down into the ocean.

Darren peering over the edge which was straight down to the ocean.  My risk-taker husband wanted to climb over the wall and continue the hike to Puerto de Mogan, Dah!

 It was very dangerous and they closed the road down.  It used to take 2 minutes to drive from our town of Taurito to Puerto de Mogan, now it takes 20 minutes because you have to enter the highway GC1 and back track or drive the opposite way and then come back and then exit into Puerto de Mogan, which is a beautiful little picturesque town that is very touristy. It has an inner Island that links up by bridges and you can go shopping on the island. It has a beautiful beach and natural rock outcroppings and then this harbor that winds around.  I decided to walk all the way out there and take some pictures of the harbor and that was very pretty. 

They had a gorgeous beach made prettier by the rock outcropping that I was taking the photo behind.

We found a restaurant on the island and it was very good and fairly inexpensive. I had a nice glass of wine and some really good fish that melted in my mouth.  We walked around and looked in the stores a bit. If it was a warmer day I think I would have went swimming there, it was only 21 degrees. 

Super pretty port area.

Poinsettias were everywhere.

This photo reminded me of Capetown
South Africa.

It was cool to look from Puerto de Mogan area up at the cliff side that we had been walking on that day and we're stopped by the barricade because it's been walled up. Honestly it looked even more treacherous looking up at it from the beach of Puerto de Mogan.

I highlighted with a pink arrow where the road closure of the current road was.  That was where we had to stop our hike.  When I was up there, I had looked over the edge and saw nothing but water, it was literally straight down.

I zoomed out to get this massive cliff side in the photo.

This is a zoomed in photo and you can see the wall to block off the road.  Once again these roads in the Canaries are Crazy!

We took a day trip to Puerto Arguineguin which is a seaside town close to where we were staying in Taurito.  You can drive the cliff side road in minuets to it or the highway GC1, of course we took the highway which was 5 minutes longer.  There was a promenade walk that took 40 minutes past natural swimming holes, beaches and restaurants.  It was a nice leisurely walk.  

A google map version of our walk.

It is interesting to see the different colors of sand on every beach on Gran Canaria.

This beach was quite a light caramel color and quite large.

Along the way I spotted El Teide Volcano on Tenerife island, where we drove the scary roads to the top of it.  It was covered in snow where it reportedly snowed a few days before at those elevations.  Tenerife is the next island over and El Teide Volcano was in glorious view looking quite fake seemingly floating in the mist.

How fake does that look?  It definitely does not look real.

I took 4 photos of it trying to capture the best picture.

Was this my best photo?

Or was this my best photo?

We stopped for a drink and then walked the 40 minutes back.  We tried to find a restaurant but nothing appealed and we drove to Puerto Rico the next town over and went to Mogan Mall which is a beautiful outdoor mall and went to a Thai restaurant for dinner.

Overall this is a very nice island to visit and the south of the island where we were was very sunny and warm every day.  There is a lot of beauty to see and the Canary Islands are a very unique group of islands to explore.  I was really impressed with the 3 Canary Islands that we visited this Fall/Winter.  There is so much more to see than I realized.  They are a hiker's dream and if you are into volcanoes like I am then they are oh so interesting.  I still have plans to come back and visit Fuerteventura and Lazarote Islands, two more Canaries that we did not get to.