Nicole schreibt...

Gran Canaria 2022

After the wonderful trip to Lanzarote a few years ago, I felt pretty much done with the Canary Islands, but it was my Mom’s wish to return to Gran Canaria, an island she had visited eons ago on her own. And since I know by now that a winter trip to the islands doesn’t really hack it (plus, my winter is pretty much tied up already), I suggested we make it a late summer trip instead... so here we were on a flight with shoddy German tourist airline Condor amid the usual set of godawful German package tourists like the inconsiderate fat idiot beside me who kept invading my space and the dim bulb in the row in front of me whose text exchange with the equally dim bulb boyfriend seated elsewhere on the plane was absolutely hilarious. At least things looked up at Las Palmas Airport where we immediately took possession of a nice rental car and headed to San Agustin on our own without any obnoxious coach transfer.
Gran Canaria had been one of the first Spanish islands to open up for mass tourism in the 60s and 70s with the long sandy beach of Playa des Ingles (literally “Beach of the English”) besides the dunes of the Maspalomas earmarked for development – which in those days meant horrific huge concrete bunkers for hotels that catered to masses balking at “them foreign foods in the south” and consequently turning into tourist hell central. Thus we opted for a nice hotel in the slightly more upmarket resort of San Agustin and its Playa las Burras further along the coast, but it was nothing as gorgeous as the beautiful area we had chanced on in Lanzarote. A first dip in the ocean after arrival was followed by dinner in the nearby dingy shopping center and an early night in.

As has become tradition on these shortish holidays, the first full day was spent chilling on the beach, which was lovely enough, albeit rather crowded, as it was Sunday and lots of locals came streaming to the beach (and turning the dire parking situation into an inferno). In the late afternoon we drove to Maspalomas for a walk in what’s basically Europe’s only proper desert dunes (where “Europe” is really stretching it, since the Canary Islands are in front of the African coast), although of course mass tourism has managed to despoil the area as well, turning it into a huge cruising area at night. Still, in the late afternoon, it was pretty lovely to walk around and making you feel like in the middle of the Sahara for a few moments.

The second day was "exploring the island" day, which on Gran Canaria doesn’t mean all that much. It’s a round pancake-shaped island with the center dominated by volcanic mountains, so we drove up there all the way to Roque Nublo, a famous landmark in the interior, though didn’t hike the final 1.5 kilometres to the actual top. Since I finally got to drive, I really enjoyed the long drive up and down bendy roads through what reminded me a lot of the Grand Canyon and which made a nice difference to the flat eternally congested city streets back home. Our final destination was the oddly named Teror, a small town in the north of the island which is famous for still looking like a proper little Canarian town (and how sad really that this gets you mentioned in tourist guides now!). It was pretty small with just one main street and little to see beyond the church, but nice enough all the same and finally a place for a decent authentic Spanish tapas lunch. From there it was back to the south on the highway that hugs the coastline and was utter madness after the quiet and calm of the island interior.

Another half-day was put aside for a trip to Las Palmas, the capital in the North. Since we had already visited it during the cruise some years ago, it was basically retreading our steps – visiting the cathedral Santa Ana and then the Casa de Colon, the house where Columbus stayed before he set off to find a new western route to India and bumbled into the new world. Half of it had been closed during the first visit, so it was nice enough to see the full thing now, although the so-called replica of the rooms on his flagship Santa Maria was really just half a bland room that could have been any ship of the era. More interesting were the maps of his voyages, especially the one showing where Columbus THOUGHT he was and how spectacularly wrong he was (what's with men unable to ask for the way...!). Another interesting bit were the treaties and agreements such as the one between Columbus and the Spanish Crown that financed his lark and the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas divvying up the New World between Spain and Portugal (with Portugal getting the shitty end of the stick with some islands in the Atlantic and most of what's now Brazil, while Spain bagged everything else).

There wasn't really more to do, so we returned to the south and our hotel (you can see it in this picture, the only bigger building in a sea of vacation apartments) for the rest of the day and the following final day on the beach. As you can tell perhaps, the trip wasn’t half as enchanting as some of the more recent ones to Santorini and Lanzarote, both very interesting islands with plenty to see and do. Gran Canaria, or at least the south with Maspalomas, Playa del Ingles and San Agustin just felt bland and stuck somewhere in the worst days of package tourism, which even the rather lovely hotel couldn’t make up for. In the end I was rather glad to pack up and leave. Well, I guess not everything can be a roaring success and you need the odd disappointment to appreciate the good stuff again – and I’ll admit that it served as a good reminder, just as with booking shows, to only book holidays I myself am fully behind and don’t do them just to please someone else. For now at least I have two really exciting adventures to look forward to...