January 2024 | Gran Canaria, Spain

The background:

In my opinion, there’s no better way to kick off the new year than by taking a hike; even better, when it’s somewhere warm and sunny.

Post-Christmas, we headed to the Canary Islands in Spain (off the coast of Morocco) to visit some family, but also to spend time exploring and soaking up all that we could this time of the year. While I could write a whole post on my time on Gran Canaria, I’ll focus on the two hikes we planned for this day. You could easily hike them both in the same day (like we did) or, you could spend more quality time at one or the other and make a full day of it.

It was my first time visiting these islands and I could not believe the diversity of landscape - from the beach and boardwalk to meals and shopping in the city to breathtaking desert mountain landscapes. It sometimes might get a questionable reputation for being touristy, but if you look beyond the beaten path, you will find hidden gems and that there is SO much more to be discovered outside of the main cities. I was pleasantly surprised and can’t wait to go back one day.

Getting to the Canary Islands from the US:

First, since many US readers may not be as familiar with the Canary Islands, I do want to share how we got there. We had a connecting flight from JFK -> FRA -> LPA (Gran Canaria) which worked out great for us via Lufthansa. However, there are so many different flight combinations you can take, as there are many direct flights from Europe daily to the majority of the islands (minus Hierro and La Gomera. See my post about La Gomera here.)

Note: There used to be a seasonal direct flight from Newark ->Tenerife but they have since discontinued it with no mention of it ever returning :(