From place to place ...: January 2010

If you're not familiar with the Swedish winter, you should know that it is made up of 4-5 months of cold weather and not enough sunlight (some people simply call it - 'the dark'). This starts in November, more or less, and it lasts until the end of March, more or less.

Having already experienced the Swedish Christmas in this setting, we decided it was time to take a break and travel to warmer places. So, we decided to get away from the cold and say 'hello' to some sun.

After a few days of searching, we concluded that Gran Canaria would suit our purpose the best. And all said and done, we decided to spend the week over Christmas in the warmest corner of Spain at that time: Maspalomas, Gran Canaria.

The trip there was quite a hassle; the flight was delayed with 2 hours due to stormy weather and when we finally got close to the island (after a 6 hours flight), the plane shook us for all our spare change before landing, due to strong winds.
The plane's pilots got my respect though, for getting us safe on land.

I wish I could say that the experience was singular, but it happened again on departure from the island (delay, rocky take off), due to the same reasons (strong winds).

Aside from that, the hotel was a 30 minutes drive from the airport and the beach was 5 minutes away; not a bad deal at all...
We stayed there for about a week, enjoying the sun, the food, the hotel's wellness center, the surroundings... this place was just like a balm.

It would have been too boring though, to just go to the beach every day.
As we had a rental car, a map, a GPS device and lots of curiosity, we decided to go around the island... which turned out to be quite an adventure.
It didn't seem like a very big place; too quick to judge, if you ask me :)...

The places we managed to see were unique in their own way and showed us what the island and its people were really like.
During our stay, we visited the capital (Las Palmas), drove mostly on the coast (saw the banana plantations and took in the amazing views), made an attempt to reach the mountainy center of the country (we visited the wonderful town of Teror), enjoyed the mini desert with its spectacular dunes and even got to learn a bit about the history of the island in a wonderful and understated museum, in Galdar.

It's definitely a place to revisit and made us curious about the rest of the islands of the Canarias archipelago.

Puerto de Mogan