food for thought and other things: Vacation on Gran Canary Island, Playa de Ingles

Get ready for boarding and take a flight. The trip starts at Nuremberg airport. First a short flight to Dusseldorf and then with a larger plane to Gran Canary Island. From there with the taxi to the apartment (hotel).

Once we have arrived I'd like to welcome you to the report of my vacation travel this year, 2012, to Gran Canary Island, Playa des Ingles.

Sit down on this bench at the ocean, listen to the waves and relax.

Both sand sculptures I saw on the day I hiked through the dunes from my apartment hotel to the lighthouse. The artist sat close by watching for donations and spraying the sculptures with water from the orange insecticide tank you can see on the second photo. And, yes, she did remove money from the red cardboard ever so often.

Faro lighthouse, Maspalomas - too tall and pier too short to get it on one photo straight.

View from the balcony of the apartment down to the beach on the 3rd day. The clouds didn't make it much cooler. But the waves were fantastic - high enough for body surfing.

View from the beach back to the apartment hotel - right behind that tall tree.

And although the promenade with the restaurants was only about 10m away - there was a kiosk for cool drinks at ice cream 5m away.

waves at Faro - stone beach as a gigantic wave some years ago took most of the sand away there

Sunrise was all that I could take photos from the sun - the apartment looked south-east.

On the first morning - later sunrise time than in Germany.

After about a week "calima" set it -- that fine dust that looks like fog.

But still the beach was full of people. Many, too many were "fried" a deep dark red. Some even had blisters on the skin from too much direct sun. And still they kept going to lay in the sun all day - unprotected.

I avoided the sun from 11.00 to about 15.00 and even then used high sunscreen lotions - and didn't get one burn; just a little tan.

During the midday hours was the time to visit the supermarkets - small shopping centers close to the hotels. With a nice layout and park like feature (3 different locations, photos only from one):

Walking there was no problem - no cars on the wall above the beach part. All for joggers and leisurely walkers and those that only wanted to go to the beach (down about 1200 steps at least at various places in the wall):

Some hotels along that walk way have a "cactus garden":

The park like entry to one of the shopping markets:

The entry to the "CITA" (a different one than the one above) with copies of European sightseeing highlights:

There I met her, one of the many cats:

Such blue eyes!!

Yes, food (aka restaurants and snack bars) is the most important thing for the tourists - next to the souvenir shops:

But - with the economic crisis and lack of interest for keeping things in shape (tourists come here for over 40 years now) many corners of the supermarkets looked like this:

Empty stores and sale-outs for a few Euros in most of the markets. All nightclubs and discos had closed too - music and dancing was done only at the beach promenade. Yes, things have changed a lot since the hype of tourism.

I also spend a day at Palmitos Park - that will be another post (soooo many plants and animals deserve their own post).

Lastly, I want to give you a few impressions of the apartment hotel and the cats that lived there: