Gran Canaria

First part of the island that we explored was the area around the marina. We wanted to find some shops, maybe some restaurants and see the North beach that is just across the narrowest part of the island. We had luck and the first week in Las Palmas was windy, but very sunny and warm, ideal to walk around.

This is the view to the marina from a small hill in the town.

North beach is huge, has showers and a nice promenade with plenty of restaurants. Towards the East the beach is protected from swell by some reefs and this is where most of the swimmers and sunbathers are ...

... and to the West the swell gets into the bay and that's where the surfers are.

On Thursday we rented a car for two days, the prices for cars are as those in Lanzarote pretty low. Years ago we already saw the touristy South part of the island, so we decided to drive to the Norh side and into the hills. We drove by the colourful town of Gualdar...

... and made a stop on the North coast at Los dos roques. There is not much there, except vast banana plantations and a nice beach...

...and this concrete pool, that is flooded during the high tide. It is quite big and there's plenty of fish in there, and I imagine that water gets warmer there at low tide as well, and at high tide fresh water gets in and fish can swim out.

Our next stop was Puerto de las Nieves. It's a small fishing town with small port with marina and lots of restaurants. It's biggest attraction was a Dedo de Dios, god's finger, the spiky rock in photo, which upper part unfortunately broke off in hurricane several years ago. Now it's just a rock in the sea, without the finger pointing to the sky. There is also a small anchorage there, maybe for two boats, but only when the swell from North is not too big.

We continued along the NW coast along the cliffs and stopped wherever there was some space.

One of our stops was Mirador de balcon. It is a balcony made in the cliffs above the sea...

...with pretty nice view to the South..

...and to the North. The place in the distance is Puerto de las Nieves.

Then we drove to La Aldea and turned East into the hills. The road was not very good, at the beginning we thought we got lost. But then it was a bit better, but still very narrow. Luckily there was very little traffic there and most cars were honking their horn when approaching the bend. But the scenery was beautiful.

There are several lakes with damms there.

This was our nice car, almost new, not too big and not too small and with enough horse power to easily manage the hills and the bends.

More hills and rocks

The ride was such a joy, but road was really narrow, chiseled into the rocks.

Another lake. There was obviously more water in there in the past.

We followed the road towards Roque Nublo, there were parts of it where it was so steep we were driving in first gear all the time.

We again stopped at every point we had the chance to. At some places one could see the different materials and colours of rocks of which the hills are made.

Nice view over the hilltops. To the right of the photo is Roque Nublo.

The road where we came from.

It looks rather dry in the hills, at least in the SW part, but there are still interesting things growing - like this lichen..

...and other plants adapted to dry environment.

There are also some villages almost at the highest hills.

This is the view to the West and the white plastic covered plantations are where the La Aldea is, where we came from. And if you look carefully, you can see the peak of Pico del Teide on island of Tenerife above the sea and clouds, some 60 miles away. Mountain Teide is 3.718m high and the highest mountain in Spain.