El Jardín Canario – circular walk

Today's contrast program: in the wetter northern part of Gran Canaria, we visited an oasis with lush vegetation. Wonderful shade under palm trees, few visitors, also an oasis of calm.

Take bus 30 from Playa del Inglés to San Telmo and then take bus 302 to Jardin Canario

Beautiful botanical garden, the largest in the Canary Islands. It seemed to us as if we had already seen most of the plants on our hikes in the wild.

I would take the upper entrance again, as you can get some great views and get a good overview. There are a few steps to climb. If you have a stroller, use the lower entrance.

A really fantastic botanical garden. The cacti were all huge. And at the very end we were lucky and the lizard posed especially for us ❤️. And now we're going to the beach 🏖️🙋🏼‍♀️

Today, Sunday, there was another opportunity to go down to the capital (everyone who lives there wants to go to the mountains - the traffic on the oncoming lanes was extreme). We drove to the botanical garden, photo session. Unfortunately breakfast only starts at 9 a.m., so we were actually too late. Nevertheless we were quite successful ... The botanical garden is quite large and has two areas - below (at about 300 meters above sea level) the trees and desert plants as well as some ponds, above then the mountain landscape (it's very steep up the steep slope - if you don't want to walk: there is one above) second entrance). Unfortunately, some of the trails are currently closed, but you can still see a lot at the top. Below we started at one of the ponds, where we found what we were looking for: a turtle and dragonflies, plus various butterflies. The pictures with butterflies and caterpillars are funny! Above, the highlight were two huge geckos that are very reminiscent of Chuckwallas (quite large iguanas that can be found in Florida and in the southwest of the USA). Only the "Giant Gran Canarian Lizards" are significantly larger, they can be almost a meter long! Our candidates here were "only" half a meter long, still at least twice the size of the geckos typical of the Canaries ... From the front, the guys sometimes look like alligators, they are also reptiles! The bigger one wasn't shy at all, first of all wanted to impress the "competitor" (the reflection in the camera). When we got back down there were more ponds. There I "caught" a red and a blue dragonfly in one picture, nice too! In addition, a few of the lizzards in their natural surroundings and frogs. Through the cactus landscape we went back to the car, because in the meantime (after 2 p.m.) it was very crowded in the park and also very warm. Incidentally, De Park does not cost any admission. But it closes very early (4 p.m. or so) and is closed on vacations and public holidays.

If you don't just want to go on a beach holiday, this little tour of the flora and fauna of the Canary Islands is a nice change. You can discover many plants, especially cacti, in the wild that you only see in tropical houses here. The variety and the size of the cacti is terrific. In places the park appears to be landscaped and in places natural, the paths are easy to walk on, but in many places there are no railings to protect them. At the end of the tour you can make yourself comfortable in the restaurant and if you get a seat by the window you can see the park from above again.

If you're in the area, it's worth a visit, especially since admission is free. Otherwise, the garden appears somewhat neglected, with the ponds, in particular, overgrown with algae.