The best way to see Gran Canaria is hire a car for a day or three. Whilst we have a fantastic bus service to many larger towns and resorts, getting to the smaller ones takes time without a car. All of the islands roads are well looked after and signed posted, there's motorway driving along the entire east and north coasts and even those windy roads up through the mountains are an easy drive...... in most places.
Everyone loves going to the beach and if a beach has a Blue Flag flying it is the sign that you have arrived at one of the very best in the world. In addition to having beach weather almost every day of the year we also have some very nice beaches. Gran Canaria currently has (as announced 15 May, 2015) 13 blue flag beaches, more than any other Canary Island and additionally the marinas at Pasito Blanco and Puerto de Mogan have also been awarded the blue flag.
There is one certainty if you visit the Canary Islands and that is that you will see a cat within minutes of your arrival at your resort. Cats are opportunistic animals and take advantage of the climate which allows them to season and produce a litter 3 times a year, the generosity of tourists and the abundance of leftover food, not to mention volcanic soil that closely resembles cat litter. A single female, producing 2 females in each litter 3 times a year can give rise to a population of 22000 cats in 5 years.
The good news for travellers is that from April 2016 EU "Roaming" prices are going to drop considerably and as from June 2017 there will be no more roaming charges within the EU. Unfortunately this is not a world-wide decission so countries not in the European Union will continue to charge what they like. Currently phone companies are allowed to add 19 cents a minute to your outgoing calls, 5 cents aminute to incoming calls, 6 cents for a text message and 20 cents for ever MB of date used. In April 2016 those priceswill drop to 5 cent for calls, 2 cents for SMS and 5 cents per meg of data. Already a good deal. Then in June 2017 you pay the same in any EU country as you would back home.
The two main companies with their own system are Movistar and Vodofone/Ono. Both companies are installing their own fibre optic system to provide land-line speeds of up to 300MB. There's strict laws about setting up new telephone masts so currently almost all are owned by Movistar and the other companies are able to use them too. As far as landlines go, the other companies (other than Ono) all use Movistar.
Gran Canaria is known as the continent in miniature for it's diversity, a physical diversity that couldn't be achieved without such a varied climate. The south of the island is officially a desert most of the time (receiving less than 250 millimetres of rainfall in a year) and enjoying the hottest temperatures.
