Adventure #9: Canary Islands

The Medtronic plant closes here the week of Christmas, and employees are required to take vacation - which was fine by us. We decided it was time for some sun, and booked a trip to Gran Canaria, one of the Canary Islands.

Gran Canaria is the third largest island of the Canary Islands, an archipelago located in the Atlantic Ocean 210 km from the northwest coast of Africa and belonging to Spain. The island is volcanic in origin and much closer to the equator; it was around 70 degrees each day the entire time we were there (lovely).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Canaria

We stayed in Playa del Ingles ("Englishmen's beach"), located on the southern tip of the island (the Costa Canaria), where all the other Northern European tourists stay to escape the winter cold. Christmas is the island's busiest week of the year, we were told. Lots of Germans, English, Irish and Scots there. Playa del Ingles was very touristy: lots of tacky souvenir shops, malls, arcades and restaurants that all served the exact same food and drink menus - only the restaurant logo in the corner was changed. But an open-air restaurant on a cliff with unobstructed views can serve whatever it wants, and people will come just for the scenery. We did, and the pizzas and banana splits were great. Playa del Ingles has a beautiful promenade that runs along the ocean called Paseo Costa Canaria. One of the most enjoyable parts of the trip was just walking along the paseo, looking out at the ocean, catching some rays and people watching. The beaches were very pretty - lots of beach umbrellas, windsurfers, kite surfers and parasailors, as well as people walking along the beach down to the sand dunes of Masopalomas.

Masopalomas, just west of PdI, has these amazing sand dunes - the only similarity to Africa we found on the island. It is truly a Spanish island - language, food, people, architecture, etc. After spending Sunday afternoon walking through the dunes, where we found it gets really windy around lunchtime (tradewinds), Damon decided it would be cool to walk the paseo down here on Christmas Eve morning and watched the sunrise. Spectacular!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maspalomas

We lounged by the pool some our first few days too, but it was usually partly cloudy and a little chilly for sunbathing without full sun. We also watched the sunset at Faro de Maspalomas, the site of the island's notable landmark lighthouse, built in 1886, long before the tourism boom. Another boardwalk starts here and runs up the west coast of the island - not sure how far it goes, possibly only to the next town. The camel rides were nearby, where we sadly learned that they simply put you in a double-metal chair (with another person) that hangs over the camel's hump and a guide leads a line of camels on a rope around in a contained pin - so we didn't opt for the 28 euro per person ride! There was also a cool statue here of a person riding a huge moray eel. And lots of nice shops and restaurants too.

A favorite memory of mine - not Damon's - would be the mercados, or street markets. The San Fernando mercado was held on Wednesday. There are great markets somewhere on the island almost every day of the week, but this was the closest one to PdI, located about 3-4 km northwest of our hotel. We walked there, and I bought a couple purses and some bling-bling jeans for Norah from the vendors in colorful tents pitched in a parking lot. We also found a cool gift for Ian.

The highlights of the trip were Thursday and Friday. We realized on Wednesday we needed a car to get out and explore the rest of the island. It took a half a day to find one (almost all were rented), and we finally coughed up 60 euros for a Leon Seat (whatever that is). It was a nice car, and we set out around 9 a.m. on our day-long road trip. Highlights included:

- Los Azulejos - a very cool rock formation in the southwest interior of the island where minerals and oxidization have left these beautiful shades of green and peach on the mountainsides. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuente_de_los_Azulejos

- Anden Verde - the coastal area on the west coast; beautiful drives along cliffs, the coastline, vegetable and fruit plantations, and tiny, charming towns. There were several vista points along the road where we stopped and took pictures; we could even see Tenerife, the next Canary Island west of Gran Canaria, which had a snowpeaked mountain called Teide, which is the highest point of Spain.

- Agaete - a little town on the west coast with beautiful whitewashed buildings and a botanical garden; we walked from here down to the boardwalk of Puerto de las Nieves.

Puerto de las Nieves - a sleepy little fishing village with a small port for ferries to Tenerife. Very quiet, charming - colorful buildings, small beach, surfers catching waves near the rocks. The manmade wall they've created to protect the city from surge during hurricanes was also impressive.

- Roque Nublo - means the "Rock Clouded" in Spanish; a monolith vertical rock that is 80 m tall. It is one of the most famous landmarks in the island of Gran Canaria. The elevation is 1,813 m ranking it second on the island and one of the tallest in the archipelago. It's located in the mountainous interior of the island, called the Cumbre. We arrived here after circling the entire island by car, then driving straight north of Playa del Ingles about one hour into the mountains. Stunning views, and lots of curvy, windy roads, which Damon enjoyed driving along. We hiked into Roque Nublo and watched the sunset. Maspalomas and the ocean were visible through the fog. It was about 40 degrees at Roque Nublo and still 70 degrees at the beach! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roque_Nublo

Our last day on the island, Friday, was fantastic. We took the city bus to Puerto de Mogan, a fishing village known as "Little Venice" due to its network of tiny bridges in town. Brightly colored Bouganveilla - oranges, pinks, purples - covered overhead arches and doorways on whitewashed Spanish-style buildings with tile roofs. Fisherman brought in the daily catches, local boys challenged tourists to "throw money in the water" so they could dive in and catch the coins before they hit bottom. The largely popular mercado is held here every Friday, which I visited while Damon snapped lots of great photographs. We walked along the town lagoon - a beach we wish we had discovered earlier in the week, as it was peaceful with very little wind - then had lunch on the boardwalk before catching a ferry boat that took us on a leisurely tour along the southwest coast before ending in Arguineguin, a working port town where we took the bus back to Playa del Ingles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_de_Mog%C3%A1n

We enjoyed a few authentic Spanish tapas meals, one on Sunday and another on Christmas evening. Tapas Tango and Capaco are run by the same family and were lots of fun - great atmosphere, live music, food, wine. http://www.tapasbarcapacotango.com/ We also had an amusing Christmas Eve dinner at a place called ROMA, that alleged it was Italian, but was really a mix of international dishes - and everyone there was eating steak and potatoes! How sad; we had pizza and pasta while listening to some guy named Lorenzo who was up on a stage in front of the dining room with an electric keyboard and microphone. He looked like a bus driver and sang a song called, "The Pizza Song," which was sadly in our heads all week! It was a really funny night. We found an amazing Italian restaurant later in the week called Il Duomo di Milano farther inland from the beach. Many of the guests were Italian, so we were in the right place. :) Our last meal was at sunset on the Paseo Costa Canaria, savoring pizzas, Spanish wine, great views and fun memories from the week.

We went out to a few clubs on Friday night, but couldn't find a place where anyone was dancing, so we vowed to go dancing in Galway some night soon when we returned home.