We spent two days on Gran Canaria, arriving on Tuesday 19 November at 8.00. Gran Canaria is another volcanic island and there are still lots of volcanoes here although the last eruption was 2,000 years ago. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria is the capital of the Canary Islands, and tourism is huge, much of it from the UK. There are 383,000 inhabitants. Bananas and sugar cane are the two most important crops and the sugar cane factory is the oldest in Europe. 

Our first stop on our tour was Arucas, a municipality built entirely of Arucas stone and the quarry is the only one still open. The stone was used for building the Parish Church of St John the Baptist (it's dark stone and looks a bit dirty!).

We passed vineyards on our journey. They grow more readily than those on Cartegena but still bear no resemblance to the vineyards we are used to in New Zealand and Australia. 

Teror, a truly gorgeous town, was our next stop and is 600m high in the mountains. It's a beautiful place with lovely streets and colourful shop fronts.  Because of its height, Teror has water and is agricultural, even sporting a rain forest. Rum is distilled here and I tasted the Guanche Arehucas rum in a tiny shop with a blue frontage. The shop sold knick-knacks, and we had been told to ask to taste the rum which appeared magically from below the counter.

The bus driver was a genius navigating all the hairpin bends both up to Teror and then on to the Bandama Caldera at Santa Brigida, close to Tamaraseite to see the lava. The last eruption on the north of the island was 2,000 years ago. This caldera is 200m deep and 1km wide - not the biggest on the island - is 1.5 m years old and last erupted 5,000 years ago. Cacti, but not much else, grow out of the lava rocks. Santa Brigida nearby is a very close commute to the city. The area has had almost no rain for four years - so different from Teror in the hills.  
This was the end of the Spanish leg of our holiday and it was sad to say goodbye to some of the lovely friends we had met, particularly during our fun quizzes, at dinner, or at bridge. It was particularly sad to say goodbye to Joanne and Liz from Glasgow, two redoubtable quizzers pictured here, and to Jeff and Candee from Columbia, Maryland who will appear in a future post, our frequent dinner companions, but we will be keeping in close touch with all of them in the future. 

And so it was that we left Gran Canaria at 6.00 pm on the 20th, bound for Africa.