A beach vacation in winter. It's ideal if you can actually swing it. I never used to crave these because when I travelled for work, my region included tropical countries each spring and fall for about 5 or 6 years, so I never felt the need to go anywhere else that was tropical. But it's been a while since I've been able to go to any of those places, and while London has some gorgeous, elegant Christmas light displays that sparkle brilliantly, winter days in the UK are indeed grey and dull much of the time, so sunshine and warm weather seemed like a welcome break. Nevertheless, we weren't sure if we'd actually get to go. A previous trip to the continent has been postponed twice now due to the difficulties with travel that the omicron variant of Covid has brought, but Spain maintained no requirement to test for Covid prior to arrival, the only requirement being full vaccination. We were surprised and excited by this, and while it meant isolating ourselves for fear that we'd catch something and not get to go on our trip, it was well worth it because we were finally on a plane out of the UK for a vacation for the first time since moving here!
I mentioned Spain, and you might wonder what that has to do with Gran Canaria. If you're not familiar with Western European imperial colonies, Gran Canaria is the second largest island of 7 in the Canary Islands, west of, and on the same latitude as, the border between Western Sahara and Morocco. The islands still belong to Spain. There had been indigenous peoples at the time of Spanish conquest in the 1400s, Berbers that had sailed from Northwest Africa, but little of their culture or way of life are left today as many were either killed or mixed with the colonising Spaniards. The Canary Islands have become a popular tourist destination for British folk, but also, as we learned, for Scandinavians and Germans. In fact, the hotel we stayed at was mainly all Germans. There was a shopping complex across the street from the hotel that made for easy access to car rentals, restaurants, and grocery stores, among other offerings, and almost all the menus and signs were written or available in German, Swedish, and Norwegian, in addition to English and Spanish. The hotel was great, though, for its location. We had a public beach right in front, and it was near a taxi stand as well as bus stops, so everything was really conveniently located to everything we would need or want. It also connected to the coastal pathway, a sidewalk that you can use to walk along the coast for a fair distance. It's about 5km long, and it may have been longer, but in one direction, as we discovered, it had been closed off due to falling rock.
The island is sub-tropical. On the north half of all the islands, you have some greenery due to it being the windward side, the side that the winds sweep up on. On the leeward side, it's mainly desert-like and has a variety of cacti and succulents of different types growing there. If you're interested in learning more about windward and leeward effects on islands, click here. On Gran Canaria, it is indeed divided in half by a mountainous range in the middle. All the Canary Islands were formed by volcanic eruptions millions of years ago. Here and there in my photos, you'll see a photo with an explanation of the geological history. As we enjoyed beach with some dark, volcanic particles of sand, we also explored the mountains and sand dunes, as well as the capital city, all of which I'll write about in separate posts. For the beach, I include some spectacular sunrise photos taken in succession from just before the sun hits the nautical or sea horizon to just after the sun climbs above it. I was thankful we went out the first couple of mornings to view it because the last 2 or 3 days, there ended up being some cloud on the horizon, and we wouldn't have been able to see it just above that horizon line.
I also enjoyed getting to see several new bird species. While I couldn't get photos of them all, I was able to see 11 new species. If you're interested in seeing more details about them and see more photos, you'll have to view them on my bird blog. As not everyone is as excited about birding as I am, I'd rather include these on my bird blog for those people that do want to see more of them. For now, I include one photograph of each bird I was able to capture on film. Not all of the photos turned out the way I would prefer, but I was still pretty happy with what I did see. One noteworthy bird is the Island Canary because it was actually named after the Canary Islands, where canaries apparently originate. In fact, you think that the reason the word "canarias" in Spanish for "Islas Canarias" is translated as "canary," but it isn't. It actually may refer to either canines or Canarii, a Berber peoples who may have inhabited the islands.
In addition to birds, on the morning of the day we left, we had time to check out the coastal walkway opposite to the direction we had used it before, and we saw a WWII bunker on San Agustín beach. That was surprising. When I searched it up later, I found out it was a German bunker and that the Nazis had used the Canary Islands for all sorts of military activity between the First and Second World Wars. In fact, in 1940, Hitler even wrote a letter to Franco asking permission to set up naval bases on the islands. The photo of it is in the album further up. In addition, that walk allowed me to get some last-minute bird photos and also discover some crabs.
I was pretty excited about the crabs because my experiences with sea creatures on the coast have been limited to tiny snails or other mollusks. While these crabs are considered mid-sized, they were the largest crabs I've ever seen in the wild. I believe they are red rock crabs, and it looks like there was at least one other species mixed in there, but I don't know what they were. The bird photo is included in the album above, but the crabs are here!
We were so grateful for this trip. It was a relaxing time and something that we had both needed for a while. Stay tuned for photos and stories from the mountains, the sand dunes, and the city!
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