I t’s a shame that so few people bother exploring the network of donkey tracks and herding trails that wiggle their way upwards through the centre of the Canary Islands.
Gran Canaria is particularly well-endowed. Beyond the blighted concrete swathes of Playa del Ingles and Maspalomas lies an area of vast uninhabited ravines and canyons, large volcanic craters and rich forests, with 32 ecological areas of special protection. In fact, almost 43 per cent of Gran Canaria is protected Unesco biosphere reserves, awaiting sun-seekers who dare to divert from the Scalextric-track motorway that runs from the airports to the resorts.
From the sterile poolside sun loungers it can be hard to envisage the ecological and cultural diversity that lies beyond. The north of the island is relatively lush with broad, fertile valleys and gentle trails, but the most challenging parts are in the mountainous central region where one can hike for days through a lost world of widely varying landscape and myriad microclimates, heading from one rural guesthouse to another or renting a car and doing a series of circular looped walks.
There are extensive pine forests to be explored in the Ojeda, Inagua y Pajonales Nature Reserve, hellish volcanic craters in the Cuenca de Tejeda Nature Reserve and vast canyons in the Macizo del Suroeste Nature Reserve. The trails can be quite demanding, with steep gradients running from mountainsides to deep canyons, but there’s always a rewarding moment: the vertigo-inducing views from the monolithic Roque Nublo, a flower-decked village of cave homes dug into the mountain, a perfect swimming lake, a sudden bird’s-eye revelation of a volcano and the shimmering ocean, 1,400m below.
The interior has just enough remote villages to ensure easy access to the trails by public transport. Alternatively, there are numerous companies who’ll drop you off and carry your bags to the next destination. With a rental car you can be walking in the mountains all day, swimming in the sea by evening and heading out partying for the night.
Most of the rural hotels will pack a picnic for lunch, but ideally one wants to escape the midday sun in a small village restaurant with a glass of local wine and a bowl of watercress stew or a goat dish. This is food of such local authenticity and flavour that, once again, it is unimaginable from the buffet halls of the beach resorts towering along the coast. The food range is relatively unvarying, but its locality makes up for it. Your waiter can name the family that produced the goat’s cheese, that caught the fish, that grew the coriander and garlic for the Mojo Verde, and the almonds and toasted maize in the dessert.
No one can claim the Canaries are an eco-haven, with their monstrous desalination programmes, their shameful lack of solar energy and their reliance on importing so much, but a walking holiday, staying in local hotels, using public transport and eating local food must make up a bit for the carbon crime of the flight over.