A week in Gran Canaria 27th Jan 2024
This last week has been about sun, sea, and palm trees. We first stayed in Puerto Mogan, Gran Canaria last January, at a time when the husband was struggling to walk very far with his dodgy hip. The hotel promised an easy stroll to the pretty harbour with its bougainvillea covered houses, sometimes referred to as ‘Little Venice’ thanks to the presence of bridges and canals. Despite the convenient location, I still ended up seeing most of the local sights on my own, so now that the husband is skipping about again after his surgery, we decided to revisit.
The reason I chose the particular hotel in the first place is that it was designed around a mini botanical garden and the mature specimens from around the globe (everywhere from South America to India and Australia) are a delight to see.
I could write a blog purely about palm trees from the information I picked up on the hotel’s botanical tour. There are tall ones, small ones, blue ones, and many that I’ve never heard of, never mind seen. As this is a Six in Saturday post, though, I’ll confine myself to including just one palm tree.
Without further ado, here are my six from Gran Canaria.
- My favourite palm
This is the Bismarck Palm or Bismarckian nobilis from Madagascar with enormous blue/grey leaves. On a mature tree, these leaves can be more than 3 metres wide.
2. Fruit
Bananas, pomegranates, oranges, and lemons. And even talk of a blue banana, which apparently tastes of vanilla ice cream.
3. Hibiscus
Always a spectacular flower.
4. Geranium
Not the sort we see in the UK, but a jungle geranium or Ixora coccinea. In India, all parts of the plant were traditionally used to treat a variety of ailments.
5. African senna
I didn’t detect the scent of this, but reading up on it afterwards, it apparently smells like peanut butter, burnt popcorn, wet dog or mouse…..
6. African Tulip tree
There are many of these on the street outside the hotel, looking very colourful when the flowers are in bloom.
Thanks for reading about my week in Gran Canaria. Have a great weekend.
