THE guide books to Gran Canaria are a bit on the skinny side: always a gratifying feature of any holiday destination when all you secretly want to do is crash out by the pool. Still, for the committed archaeologist I’m sure there is ancient history and grand antiquity galore if you know where to look.
The Romans and Greeks passed through, as did Christopher Columbus, and the centre of the island is dominated by tropical forests and magnificent snow-capped mountain ranges, scored through with green canyons.
Then there’s the dinky capital, Las Palmas, with its half- Gothic, half Neo-Classical cathedral, its pretty Doramas park; Casa de Colon (house of Columbus — he got everywhere), colonial barrio — and a sprinkling of quaint fishing villages, all on an island you can drive around in three hours . . . or then again, maybe not. For despite the best efforts of the charmingly efficient, hard-working Canarians to rebrand their group of islands, culture and ancient ruins aren’t really why most people come here.
Not that there aren’t ruins aplenty. It’s just that most of them are six months old, unfinished, executive haciendas dotted among the dunes and rocks, rather than the lost city of Atlantis, although rumour has it that it is lurking somewhere around here as well.
But I digress. The reason that people still flock to Gran Canaria with the dedicated intention of familiarising themselves with the bar — albeit a five-star bar with posh, sea-salted crisps and tapas — rather than drinking in the local culture and antiquities, is because its resorts are so slick and accommodating.
We arrived, husband Paul, daughters Kitty, 10, and Flora, 8, by chauffeured limo (courtesy of our hotel) at Maspalomas, the island’s main resort in the south, about 30 minutes from the airport, with every intention of exploring the valleys and mountains in the centre of the island. How marvellous, we exclaimed, that such variety could be contained within such a compact island. Let us hire a car instantly. Then we discovered the pools.
A day or so later, with our fearlessly intrepid explorer spirit only marginally dented, we dragged ourselves away from the hotel buffet and spa and finally summoned the energy to step beyond the lush hotel grounds with the superhuman goal of crossing the narrow street to the sea, where we discovered Maspalomas beach.
I use the verb “discovered” loosely, since technically speaking several hundred people had got there before us. Not that anyone was squashed. Maspalomas beach is 6km (3.7 miles) long, and at some points, 1km wide. Then it runs into Playa des Ingles, which is of lesser, but still impressive, dimensions.
St Tropez it is not. Do not expect to run into picturesque coves or Jack Nicholson in Maspalomas, although Julio Iglesias is a regular, and may well qualify as a picturesque cove in his own right, depending on your taste. But it’s not Magaluf either. Essentially Maspalomas is sea, a handful of five-star hotels and liberal quantities of Ambre-Solaired Germans.
The nearest land mass is North Africa. I don’t suppose anything in the area is much more than 30 years old and it’s mildly disconcerting to find that you are the oldest person on the beach, which is why I was hoping to spot Julio.
But the sand is golden, clean and liberally studded with pristine sunbeds and parasols and edged with tiny pizza shacks, plus a warren of (well two, anyway) shady, restaurant-fringed lanes, which at night become host to street vendors selling hideous shell configurations and fake tattoo artists. Kids’ heaven, in other words.
Better still, from our vaguely guilt-ridden point of view, Maspalomas offers all the aquatic adventures you could hope for. Right outside the Palm Beach Hotel. Which is one of the reasons we chose it, though by Day 2 any claims that we’d been seeking an action-packed holiday were looking frankly fraudulent.
But lo, on the third day, just as the onerous task of flagging down a waiter became all too much, Richard, a sun-burnished piece of human linguine from Poland, turned up poolside with his diving equipment and teaching certificates.
