Hola! We are just back from our holiday in Gran Canaria. We had a fantastic time, and it was nice to be back in the sea and mountains again.
We had an eventful start to our trip... We spent the Friday night with the Johnston family (I really must sign a tenancy agreement!!), and on the Saturday Brian drove us to Gatwick airport. Just as we walked into the airport, I said to Jase..."I presume you have your passport"..... Oh dear.... a quick phone call to Abby back at the house, and it was confirmed that his passport was infact in his computer bag in the bedroom! To cut a long story short, we managed to get a car service company to pick up the passport and drive it back to Gatwick in the nick of time! 10 mins to spare before the check-in closed.... close call, but we were indeed going on holiday!
We arrived in Gran Canaria at around 8.30pm, and caught a taxi to Parque Cristobal (a large camping type resort, but filled with bungalows) in Playa del Ingles (translates to Englishman's Beach - we think it should be Playa del Deutsche - there were mainly Germans there).
Since it was late, and I was starving (due to missing my pre planned feast at Gatwick Airport! - and only being able to have tomato soup on the plane as that was all that was GF).... Jase quickly hurried me to the nearest restaurant.... I do tend to get a little furious when I am hungry!! To my amazement, just about everything on the menu was marked as gluten free, and they even brought me out my own loaf of GF bread to start! As we later discovered, this is the best place in the world to go out for GF food! Apparently it is because of the large Scandinavian influence in the Canary Islands - and the Scandinavians have problems digesting gluten. Perfect for me!! Even the McDonalds here had GF burger buns on offer!!
We spent most of our days down at the beach, swimming and sunbathing. The surgeon had told me that I would most likely be able to dog paddle, but he was less convinced I would manage breastroke. Turns out I could infact dog paddle - so I would set off for my dog paddle each day, and by the end of our stay I could almost do breastroke too! No doubt I looked like a clown as I dog paddled puffing like mad as it was hard work on my puny little arm! I didn't really care though - there were many many many more alarming sights than a woman dog paddling up and down the beach!
Which brings me to my next point.... I have never in my life seen so many obese people. It was disturbing to say the least. They lay around smoking, drinking, and eating all day - no joke! Oh and to make matters worse, they did it without their tops on... and further down the beach in the nudist section, all was there for public view.... Jase made the comment that walking through the nudist section should be quite enjoyable, but instead he stared straight ahead - too horrified to glance either way!! It is actually disturbing that only several hundred km's away in Africa (the Canary Islands are off the coast of the Sahara) people are actually malnourished and starving.
The photos above show Maspaloma's beach and the famous Maspalomas sand dunes. They were pretty awesome and reminded me of the sand dunes where I grew up (Ngataki - 60km from Cape Reinga). The first photo is of me attempting to flex my bicep outside "Biceps Gym" - the gym I joined for the 2 weeks I was there (only because all the equipment in the Parque Cristobal gym was broken - no joke - all of it!!). I even managed to increase the girth of my upper arm by nearly 3cm while I was there! (it still has another 3 to go, but I am getting there). The gym was a hilarious experience - mainly due to one man who attended religiously (no pun intended!). I nicknamed him 'Jesus of the gym'. He wore long black trousers and a tee shirt, with a large wooden cross around his neck (which he removed whilst exercising). He had long grey hair and a beard, and greeted everyone with a loud "Hallelujah". He kind of sang it..." Haaaalaaaaayyylooyah". Since I was the only woman in there most days (other than the woman who came in now and then to stand on the fat vibrating machine!), I became well known to most of the local gym goers. Jesus would greet me every day with "Haaalaaaylooyah Young Laydee" or "Haalaaaylooyah heeeelllloooo laydee". It always made me laugh. Then one day I decided to do some intervals on the bike to spare some boredom. Everytime I sprinted I heard... "yeeeeeehoooooo" in a high pitched screetch from across the gym. Sure enough I glanced up to see Jesus cheering for me and waving his fist in the air!! Pure hilarity! Quite hard to laugh when you are puffing also!
The other photos are taken around the island. We hired a car one day and ventured into the mountains. The impressive looking large rock, is the icon of Gran Canaria, and is called 'Roque Nublo'. We also drove to the highest point on the island (Pico de Las Nieves - almost 2000m high) where on a good day you can see the often snow capped mountain on Tenerife (Mount Teide - Spain's highest mountain at 3718m). Unfortunately for us, the cloud had just rolled in as we arrived, obscuring our view of the mountain - bummer! We did purchase a post card though! We also saw one cyclist ascending the mountain - it was an awesome climb that just went up and up. We were so envious.
Gran Canaria is so dry. We asked a local how much rain they got, and he said Playa del Ingles and Maspalomas and other regions of the southern coast of the island, have their own micro climate. He said it probably rains about 12 days per year, and each of those days would be made up of about 10mins continuous rain!
We flew back into London on Saturday 29th... well actually the early hours of the Sunday as our plane was delayed. We didn't actually get to the Johnston house until 4.10am! Unfortunately the dogs heard us and started howling - so we didn't manage to sneak in quietly as planned! Jase was supposed to attend a meeting in central London on the Tuesday, but that all fell through when he got a good dose of food poisonning - a bit of a disappointing way to finish the holiday. He is all good now though - just a bit tired.
I head back to London in about 10 days for my 12 week follow up with the surgeon and ultrasound scan. I am feeling really positive that all is going well, and I am now getting alot stronger and more mobile.
Adios for now
J
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