I have only been hiking in Gran Canaria for 6 days, so I don’t have a lot of experience. But here are some of my impressions and thoughts about hiking on the island.
General information
Gran Canaria is a small island, but close to half of the island is protected. So there is a lot of nature if you just get out of the coast. There are hundreds of different paths. Some are marked, but it does take a bit of work to find your way around. I recommend having a good map to help you with the orienteering. Discovery Walking Maps has made a map of Gran Canaria. You can buy it from Amazon or it is also available on the island.
Guided hiking trips
If you get lost easily or don’t want to but your energy in finding the best routes, there are also guided hiking tours available. We will be running a trip for our Finnish group in November 2016. But if you go there by yourself, you can book a tour from Walk in Gran Canaria. They offer daily tours or also packages with accomodation etc. Have a look at their webpage about everything they offer.
Getting around
There are a lot of places to start your hiking trips and for me the easiest way was to rent a car. The rental cars are fairly cheap. My Fiat Panda was about 20 € per day. The roads are generally in good condition and the traffic wasn’t bad. Some of the mountain roads are very narrow and have a lot of turns. So even if the drive isn’t long in kilometres, it does take a lot of time.
Having a rental car means, that you need to do circular routes or walk the same route back to the starting place. This of course limits your options a bit, but if you are fit and have time it doesn’t really matter.
Where to go
It is hard to choose just a few hikes to recommend. I won’t go into detail about the routes, but here are a few places I liked a lot!
Pico de las Nieves, the highest place on the island. A great place to start a hike. I hiked from here to Roque Nublo and back. Also the place to take sunset pictures, as you can see from this picture and my previous post.
Cruz de Tejeda. Lots of nice hiking routes starting here.
Firgas. A lot of good hikes in this area also. I did Azuaje-hike, but you can find 6 different route suggestions at the local tourist office.
Caldera de Bandama. You can walk on the ridge around the Caldera or you can walk the trail down to the base of the Caldera. I recommend doing both! This area is also famous for the local wine, so maybe you should take the tour with Walking Gran Canaria, which includes the wine tasting. This way you don’t need to drive back to the hotel.
The Guigui beach. You can read all about this in my previous post.
I am very much looking forward my next visit to Gran Canaria, so I can see more of the beautiful island.
