Gran Canaria
We went on holiday last week to Gran Canaria one of the Canary islands just off the coast of Morocco and the Western Sahara. The islands have been Spanish for a long, long time so, despite being geographically in Africa, they look and feel like Spain. Chris Columbus stayed over for a while in 1492 on his way across the Atlantic to what turned out, to his surprise, to be America. Gran Canaria is a smallish sort of island, round in shape and about 50kms in diameter. The island is volcanic and hilly. If you think of it as the summit of a volcano sticking up out of the blue grey ocean you'd be about right. It has a motorway system joining all the main towns on the coast and a mish mash of little roads twisting up hillsides to connect the hundreds of small settlements inland. We drove around the island in an underpowered and hired VW gawping at banana trees, sugar cane plantations and the carpet of spring flowers before stopping to eat wrinkled potatoes with a spicy sauce. It was ...