Gran Canaria

March 2019

We established a bit of pattern in having a winter break in some warm island, and this year we opted for Gran Canaria, our base being the little town of Agaete.

We usually have active holidays and were hoping to get some good trekking here too (we figured out the island would be similar to Tenerife and Madeira in terms of steep and busy roads, so that we abandoned any cycling dreams before even getting there). We used the Cicero guide “Walking in Gran Canaria” to get inspired, and the even more useful “Gran Canaria Tour and Trail” Discovery walking map, which turned out to be very useful for driving around too. We soon found out that reaching the start of the walks by car, mainly located in the interior, took way too much time, and the public transport from Agaete was not that good either. This means we didn't do as much trekking as we wished, we should probably have followed the GR 131 across the island, sleeping in a different place every night, but overall we are happy with what we came up with (it did feel like a holiday for the first time). The good news was that there is an excellent and demanding walk starting in Agaete (which we did 3 times!), I loved the fact that we could just walk out of the room and start going up without cars and buses!


We stayed in the Harizan apartment, and loved our stay there.The place was central (Agaete is not big so that everywhere is central...), clean, with a beautiful view of the mountains, sea and town, and it came with absolutely anything you can think of, even a washing machine a 2 bottles of wine!

Tamabada (walk 41) - 23km

Agaete is at the feet of the Tamabada National Park, so that on day 1 we went for the 1400m ascent which started outside our flat, and what a walk! The weather was not the best (cloudy and windy) which was great as we didn't have any suncream with us and we would have burnt alive otherwise. We started on an arid and rocky climb, which then became a flattish and green path cutting through a cliff, and then a stony steep upsent to reach the tree level at about 900m altitude. Suddenly we felt we entered a different dimension as the forest was lush and peaceful without wind. It was a pleasure to walk up there! We kept going for a bit up to the picnic area and the casa forestal, and then reached some top (we were a bit confused by the sings, as we thought Tamabada was a mountain rather than the park itself...

Woodpecker in the tree

The psychopathic look in front of a climb

Risco Fananque - 26km

This is basically the same as the one before, but from the casa forestal you need to keep walking for 3/4km more and you will find yourself on top of the most prominent cliff from below. 

 

Agaete and surroundings

Agaete is really a small town with no much to do. Apart from the Botanical Gardens (where you can only pay by card, even if the entrance is 1€...) and an archeological site, the only thing to do is to have a tapa in a bar, or walk the km down to Puerto de las Nives for some more food options, and a great promenade along the roaring ocean.

View from the sofa

On out last day we also found a nice walk to Punta Juncal, just a few km away. 

 

Roque Nublo from Degollada Becerra - 15km

 

On day 3 we decided it was time to start the exploration of the island. We selected this walk up to Roque Nublo and despite the 3h drive to get there and back it was really worth the trip.

It was a crystal clear sky, but when we went off the car the wind was freezing and was about to carry us away. We soon went back to the car and put on any clothes we had, ready in our Scottish outfit we set off along the ridge and thankfully the path turned into a nice zig zag trail down the sheltered valley to LaColeta, by which stage we were back in shorts and t-shirt... We then started climbing up the forest on a loop which would bring us up to Roque Nublo, funny enough we didn't meet a soul all the way,then suddenly we were surrounded by herds of people as the road would pass 1km away...it was a bit of an anticlimax but the views made up for it. El Teide, the volcano we climbed the year before in Tenerife, was a constant presence all the way through and definitely enriched the experience.

We kept following the patch down back to La Coleta and then we retraced our steps to the car. We originally wanted to walk to to Pico de las Nieves, the highest mountain of the highland, but the thought that the road goes up there put us off so that we slowly returned to Agaete for a delicious ice cream in Puerto de las Nieves.

Risco to La Aldea (walk 17) - 15 km

Not keen on driving again, we went for the bus experience. From Agete you can only get buses to Las Palmas and La Aldea, and we found out a walk from Risco, a tiny village on the road to Aldea, to La Aldea along the hills behind.

At 8am sharp we were in front of the church optimistically waiting for the bus, and run into quite a few characters...(that's why I love taking public transport abroad!). On the bus we got the grumpiest bus driver ever, who was shouting and insulting people quite badly, almost as badly as he drove on that twisty and insane road! It only lasted 30min but by the time we got off our tan turned into a corpse white colour...we really hoped he wouldn't be the same on the way back!

This path doesn't go as high as the other, reaching only 800m, however it was good to see other barrancos, and the bit along the cliff really made Paul happy! The last bit to get into town was a desert, and the town itself, despite being bigger than Agaete, looked like a ghost town. Still, we enjoyed our smoothy in a terrace and happily got the bus back (with another bus driver!)

The trauma of the bus journey