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Having never visited the island before, we are looking to tap into the STW travel knowledge again which has always proved useful.
Girlfriend and I have just booked a week stay for the end of the month, being based in Maspalomas (the South having better weather apparently?). Tried to book further along the coast (Puerto Mogan/Rico looked nicer) but couldn't find decent accommodation for our dates, so Maspalomas it is.
-Recommendations for food? Cafe for breakfast perhaps, restaurants for dinner, some tapas in the evening, somewhere for a decent paella on a Sunday afternoon?
-Car hire? Will this be worth the hassle to go explore the island further? Any places we should definitely visit? Stick with the big name hire brands?
-Bike hire? Free Motion have a shop near by. Considering hiring a road bike for myself for a ride into mountains. Not looking to do anything mega, but are any routes considered unmissable? What kind of distances are the typical loops coming in at?
But yeah, any hints/tips welcome 🙂 cheers everyone!
Maspalomas is the sort of "default" tourism choice although personally I hated the place. It's just mid-rise tourist apartments, hotels and a lot of big flat roads heading into / out of it. It's warmer down there but more windy than the north - or at least more exposed to the wind.
You'll need a hire car or a bus (actually the bus service from airport to Maspalomas is very good, in fact the whole island is well served by cheap buses). Usual car hire places at the airport. HIre car is very useful if you want to drive north for a while, get into some proper terrain and go for a ride from there.
No idea about restauarants and cafes there but from the very limted area I saw it was very much the tourist catering. All menues in English kind of thing.
FreeMotion have the monopoly on bike hire in the Canaries but they're a good shop, knowledgeable staff and a decent range of kit. They can do guided rides or sell you route maps too. The proper mountains are all much further north, you're looking at a minimum 80km loop to even touch the mountains (although on the plus side it's a nice downhill run all the way back to Maspalomas!)
Follow this guy on Strava:
https://www.strava.com/athletes/250141
Raymond Leddy - he's a local cycle guide. He's got loads of routes on his profile, you'll see the sort of riding. Cyclist Magazine did a route out there a while ago too if you dig through their archives.
Have fun - it's a great place!
Was there in Feb.
- Maspalomas was several degrees warmer than Las Palmas in the north
- Las Palmas is well worth a day, the bus is quick and cheap
- Hiring a car would be good - there are some really nice little towns and villages up in the hills, old churches and cave houses to visit
- use a big car hire company and DEFINTELY NOT Autos Sansu in Las Palmas
- My favourite food tip was the market in Las Palmas - you can just get a dish from any stall and either eat at the counter or take it away and get another tapas dish from a different place. Good fun. But sorry, that might not be very accessible for you!
I've been to gran canaria loads.
You're right about the north / south weather divide. It can be overcast and cloudy up at the capital Las Palmas but roasting hot down in the south of the island where you are going to be.
Maspalomas and Playa del Ingles are right next to each other, about a 4 or 5 euro taxi journey between them.
Maspalomas is quite nice for a wander and bite to eat / drink / relax.
Playa del ingles has loads of restaurants, pubs, clubs.
We were there a couple of months ago and found that one of the restaurants we used to go to all the time on the shoreline in maspalomas (grill faro) had changed hands and gone from brilliant to awful, genuinly, dont waste your money in it. All the recent reviews on tripadvisor are 1 star.
Just behind the nice hotels in maspalomas are a line of shops and restaurants / cafes that are also quite nice too.
In playa del ingles there are a good few nice places to eat, El Rancho being our favourite for steaks, ribs etc... but there is also a fantastic Greek restaurant called "Greek Village" that I would also highly recommend.
We hired a car once, just from one of the places advertised around the area and used it to go into the mountains which are stunning. As long as you dont mind twisty roads with stomach churning drops at times! Bearing in mind though you can also get bus tours that will take you around the same roads for about 30 euros you might just want to do that, we did that last time just for something different.
I hired a nice cannondale road bike from freemotion in playa del ingles last time there (they also have a pick up point in maspalomas) and took a trip up into the mountains with a route i'd downloaded onto my GPS. About 40-50 miles will get you a nice loop with about 7500 feet of climbing and views / downhills to reward you. The insurance you take out with freemotion lasts a week so it was expensive for my 1 day hire but i thought it worth it just incase i cycled it off a cliff. I found the climbs to be a lot nicer than expected and I can only assume the nice weather made a difference!
In the main resorts you will struggle for tapas but if you go up to the capital las palmas you should get it there as its for the locals and not really geared around tourists. Its a nice city for a wander around, has las canteras beach with its walkway etc. Costs about 8-10 euros for a return ticket from Maspalomas on the bus (45 min journey approx).
You'll get Paella from most restaurants, i'm not a fish eater so couldn't recommend a decent one.
Puerto Mogan (south west coast) is also a nice wee place, has a weekly market that is 50/50 nice stuff and tourist junk. Id actually avoid the market day as it was just too busy unless that doesn't bother you.
Edit: bring your own cycling shoes, freemotion will fit various pedals to your bikes, spd sl etc... but don't supply shoes.
ooh - one thing we really wanted to do was this - https://www.astrogc.com/
but they'll only pick up from the South of the island. Looks good though 🙂
Stayed near Las Palmas fpr a week a couple of years ago. Was good though I'm not in a hurry to go back. You need a hire car to explore the hills, which are worth exploring. It's busier than the other islands, Las Palmas is a big city, and the roads up that end are busier than I'd expected. We stayed in a posh place on a dead volcano, which was nice, round the crater was a good running route, and there were obvious mtb trails.
Freemotion are a slick operation. Rented a roadbike for a few days from the playa ingles shop, you can easily ride into the proper hills from there and the road riding is good. Also went on a guided mtb ride - this was late April I think, so out of the cycling high season - anyway, the group was far too mixed ability and the riding was landrover tracks, basically. Still fun. In high season they run multiple groups and more interesting riding, apparently. The bikes I hired were both spot on. As usual, take your own shoes, helmet and bottles to save buying/hiring.
I know how this sounds, but playa ingles etc is the kind of concrete highrise package place I'd avoid. Hey ho, But keep on going west along the south coast and there are some nicer quieter places (el pajar? )
Have stayed in Porto Mogan and Melonares, both nice but in different ways. You can walk along the coast from Melonares to Maspalomas (and vice versa) which is pretty nice. I did notice there were no (jimmyJimmy's) in Melonares but literally where the path went from one town to the other lots of folk selling all manner of tat. It transpired that when Melonares was built there was a by law introduced to stop them and make it an arrestable offence which the police like to enforce. Don't know how true it was but certainly noticeable.
<span style="font-size: 0.8rem;">Anyway, had a great meal in Lolita's on the front between the 2 towns which I have no problem recommending. Excellent tapas and the wife agreed who lived in Spain for 15 years so is a tapas officienado, if you go just promise you get the fried aubergine in honey.....</span>
I stayed in Playa des Ingles a few years ago on an extended family holiday and rented a Cannondale Synapse from Free Motion and rode a few routes. My favourite was climbing the Tauro Pass to Mogan - fantastic climb with a loop of around 90km. There is a nice cafe about of a third of the way up the climb and a fruit/drink stall about 2/3's up.
https://grancanariaroadcycling.wordpress.com/2017/04/10/tauro-pass/
Free Motion were good - the bike was well maintained and they let me have it the evening before the rental officially started.
Stopped in Puerto de Mogan a couple of times and just back from Playa del Cura - just down a bit, much quieter but easy access to Mogan and Puerto Rico for evenings out.
Anyway, not much to add to the above and unfortunately haven’t ridden there yet...but the have driven some of the mountain roads and would love to ride there one day, lots of Spaghetti roads 🙂
Awesome. Loads of info up there to get us on the right track. Thanks again!
On the other side of the coin.
Visited San Augustin in Jan this year and the weather was crap. 5 days of rain, biblical at times. We'd hired road bikes from Freemotion so tried to make use of them by riding along the coast roads as there was snow in the mountains! Found the road to Mogan very busy and drivers not bike tolerant. The road was closed by a landslide just before Mogan and the only alternative was through motorway tunnels where bikes were prohibited. I believe this is still the case. Did a ride up to San Bartolome but got caught in torrential rain, there was a foot deep river coming down the main street. Found food average at best and Playa del Ingles is a shit hole.The dunes at Maspalomas are where the 60's cult tv show Robinson Crusoe was filmed and are quite nice. I guess living in Cataluña has spoiled us as the roads are very quiet and well surfaced but I won't be returning to the Canaries anytime soon.
El Churassco Meloneras restaurant on the seafront in Maspalomas is a good shout for an evening out.
We did a decent road ride heading out of Maspalomas past the water park swimming place taking the minor road up into the mountains past a couple of nice tapas places.
Apparently at the top you can either bear right and go offroad over the damn and reservoir and head back into town via good rocky doubletrack or as we did stick to the road and head up left winding to the top of the pass and return to the main road passing the water park. Freemotion in town will be a good place to get route info
Cicar are good for car hire. All the Canaries tend to be cooler and cloudier in the north (the prevailing winds are the NE trades) but the more interesting towns and scenery is in the middle and north. The south of the more developed islands is where the tourism is concentrated. The windy parts tend to be the south east corners where the terrain accelerates the wind between the islands. It can be very windy but more so in the summer.
Was also there in Feb / March but stayed in a little village in the north mountains called Teror. Fantastic, would go back in a heartbeat.
There's way more choice of roads in the north but some of the surfaces are pretty bad. They're all good surfaces in the south.
Valley of The Tears is a fantastic climb. Certainly lives up to it's name, and then some
Found the road to Mogan very busy and drivers not bike tolerant. The road was closed by a landslide just before Mogan and the only alternative was through motorway tunnels where bikes were prohibited.
Coast road is still closed. There are other bike alternatives to avoid the motorway - go up Soria valley and descend the Tauro pass into Mogan, Its a lovely climb and descent with stunning views both sides. There is a little shop/cafe just before the climb, and also a cafe in the village at top .. no reason not to really.
I fly out there in the morning!