Gran Canaria has a reputation problem, and it is largely the south coast’s doing. If you’re looking to have a good time in Gran Canaria, the resort strip from Maspalomas to Puerto Rico will oblige without complaint, and there is nothing wrong with a week of sun loungers and cold beer four and a half hours from Gatwick. But that strip is a sliver of the island. Drive inland for forty minutes, and you are in pine forest at 1,200 metres. Drive north, and the desert turns green.
One number explains most of it. UNESCO designated the whole centre and south-west of the island, around 43% of its land area plus a wide marine strip, as the Gran Canaria Biosphere Reserve back in 2005. That is not a tourist board slogan. It is the reason the five places below are still quiet in February, when Playa del Inglés is anything but.
Hike The Barranco De Guayadeque
Guayadeque is a ravine so deep it functions as its own country. It runs between Ingenio and Agüimes on the eastern side of the island, and the GC-103 follows the valley floor past Cueva Bermeja to Montaña de las Tierras, where people still live in houses cut into the rock. Two of the restaurants are literally caves.
It is a protected Natural Monument, and it is also one of the most eye-popping hiking trails on the island. The archaeology is what most visitors come for. The cliffs are riddled with pre-Hispanic dwellings, burial caves and grain stores cut into soft volcanic tuff by the Canarii, the island’s indigenous population, and the ravine holds an unusually high concentration of endemic plants that grow in very few other places.
Be realistic about the walk. The circular route from the car park at Montaña de las Tierras is roughly 14 kilometres, which sounds manageable, but it climbs around 840 metres and takes most walkers five to six hours. The ascent out of the valley is steep, loose underfoot in sections and almost completely unshaded. That combination, rather than the distance, is what catches people out. Start at first light, carry at least two litres of water per person, and wear boots rather than trainers. If that sounds like more than you fancy, the valley floor is beautiful on its own and the cave restaurants are worth the drive by themselves.
Walk To The Untouched Beaches Of Güi Güi
Güi Güi is not one beach but two, Güigüí Chico and Güigüí Grande, sitting beneath enormous cliffs on the west coast inside a Special Nature Reserve that the Canarian government also protects as an Area of Ecological Sensitivity. There is no road. There never has been. That is the entire appeal.
You have two ways in. The trail from the hamlet of Tasartico climbs to the pass at Degollada de Aguas Sabinas, roughly 460 metres of ascent, then drops about 630 metres to the sand. It is around five to six kilometres each way and takes two to three hours in each direction. The alternative is a water taxi from Tasarte, La Aldea, Puerto Rico or Puerto de Mogán, which is the sensible choice in high summer or with children.
What nobody tells you is that the return leg is the hard one. Everything you cheerfully descended in the cool of the morning becomes a 630 metre climb in the afternoon sun, and there is no shade on the trail, no water at the beach, no kiosk and no lifeguard. Swimming here is entirely at your own risk. The water is glorious, and the currents are not always obvious, so read ABTA’s advice on swimming safely on holiday before you go, and treat an unmonitored beach with the caution it deserves. Go early, carry far more water than feels necessary, and tell someone where you are going.
Lose The Signal In The Tamadaba Pine Forest
If the ravines feel austere, the northwest offers the opposite. A walk in the woods can be found at Tamadaba, a natural park of some 7,538 hectares spread across Agaete, Artenara and La Aldea de San Nicolás, with a core of around 2,000 hectares of Canary pine sitting on top of a rugged massif that falls away to sea cliffs.
The trees are the story. Pinus canariensis grows nowhere else in the world. Still, this archipelago, and its thick insulating bark, lets it resprout directly from the trunk after fire, an ability very few pines possess. That is why the forest is still here at all. A major wildfire tore through roughly a third of the park in 2019, and walkers today pass blackened trunks with fresh green shoots pushing straight out of the bark, which is a far more interesting sight than an untouched wood.
Tamadaba is one of the core zones of the island’s Biosphere Reserve, and most of it also falls inside the UNESCO World Heritage area covering the sacred mountains. Practically, the approach roads are narrow, winding and exposed, so leave the hire car in a low gear and take your time. The Llanos de la Mimbre picnic area and the La Bandera viewpoint give you the overview, and on a clear day you can see Teide floating across the water on Tenerife. More often you will look down on a flat white sea of cloud, pushed up against the north of the island by the trade winds and sitting several hundred metres below your feet.
Stargaze In The Cumbres
British visitors underestimate this one badly, largely because nobody sells it on a beach. Gran Canaria’s Biosphere Reserve has been certified by the Starlight Foundation as a Starlight Tourist Destination since 2018. That is a tourism accreditation covering sky quality, light pollution controls and visitor infrastructure, and it sits alongside the full Starlight Reserves held by La Palma, Fuerteventura and the Teide area of Tenerife. In practical terms, the skies are outstanding, and the island has actually built for visitors, with observatories at Temisas in Agüimes, Roque Saucillo in San Mateo and a newer facility at Tasartico.
The deeper layer is what makes a night up here different from a night under any other dark sky. Risco Caído and the Sacred Mountains of Gran Canaria were inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2019, and the reason is essentially astronomical. Cave 6 at Risco Caído, near Artenara, has a channel cut through its roof so that sunlight and moonlight fall on engravings on the inner wall, moving across them through the year. Whoever carved that was watching the same sky you will be standing under. The cave itself is protected and not open to casual visits, but the interpretation centres in Artenara and Tejeda explain it properly and are worth an afternoon.
Dress for it. Pico de las Nieves stands at 1,949 metres and winter nights up there can approach freezing while the coast is still in shirtsleeves. Take a proper coat, a hat and a flask, and check the forecast for calima, the Saharan dust haze that periodically drifts over the islands and turns a brilliant sky into a beige smudge.
Taste Real Island Life In The Agaete Valley
The Valle de Agaete, running inland from the little port of Puerto de las Nieves, is where the trade winds dump their moisture, and the island turns properly lush. It is also home to the only commercial coffee plantation in Europe, and the most northerly on the planet.
Finca La Laja, which also trades as Bodega Los Berrazales, has been farming here for more than two centuries and grows Arabica Typica alongside oranges, mangoes, avocados and vines. A tour costs a few euros and ends with a tasting, and the coffee is genuinely good rather than merely novel. This is the useful correction to make about Canarian food culture: it is not tapas transplanted from Andalucía. It is papas arrugadas with mojo, goat’s cheese from the Cumbres, gofio, and wines from the Gran Canaria denomination that almost never leave the island.
Time your visit well, and you get more. Agaete’s Fiesta de la Rama falls in early August, when the town carries branches down to the sea in a procession widely thought to descend from a pre-Hispanic rain ritual, and it is one of the liveliest events in the Canarian calendar. Go with some care, though. These are working farms and lived-in villages rather than attractions, so buy something, park sensibly and take your rubbish home.
Practical Notes For UK Visitors
- Getting there and the clock. Direct flights run year-round to Las Palmas from most UK airports, typically four and a half hours or so. Better still, the Canary Islands keep the same time as the UK throughout the year, so there is no jet lag in either direction. A long weekend is a genuinely viable idea.
- Borders. The EU Entry/Exit System is now fully operational, which means biometric registration of fingerprints and a facial image in place of a passport stamp. ETIAS, the separate pre-travel authorisation, has not launched and the EU has withdrawn its earlier target date, so British passport holders currently travel with a passport alone. Check the UK government’s Entry/Exit System guidance before you fly, and ignore any website offering to sell you an ETIAS.
- Health cover. A free UK Global Health Insurance Card gives you state healthcare in Spain on the same basis as a resident. It does not cover mountain rescue, private treatment or repatriation, which matters a great deal if half your holiday involves ravines. Buy travel insurance that names hiking specifically.
- In an emergency. Dial 112 for the emergency services, or 062 for the Guardia Civil if mountain rescue is needed. The FCDO’s Spain travel advice covers beach flag systems, hill walking and driving rules, and is worth ten minutes before departure.
- Driving. Your UK photocard licence is valid. What will surprise you is the pace: mountain roads here are narrow, steep and full of hairpins, and a 40 kilometre drive can easily take ninety minutes. Budget accordingly and do not attempt the Cumbres in the dark on your first night.
- Weather. Check warnings from Spain’s state meteorological agency, AEMET, particularly for heat, high winds and wildfire risk in summer. Conditions in the mountains bear almost no relation to conditions at your hotel.
Point Of Going
Gran Canaria rewards people who are willing to drive for an hour. The island packs desert dunes, laurel forest, pine highlands, cave villages and an entire roadless coastline into something smaller than Norfolk, and the overwhelming majority of visitors never leave a ten kilometre strip of it. You do not need to be an expert mountaineer to see the rest. You need a hire car, an early alarm, more water than you think, and a willingness to be somewhere that has not been arranged for your convenience. That last part is the whole reward.
This article is intended for general information only and does not constitute travel, medical, financial or legal advice. Trail conditions, road access, opening hours, entry requirements and protected area rules change without notice, and hiking in remote terrain carries inherent risk. Always check current FCDO travel advice, local weather warnings and your own insurance cover before travelling.