Arenas de Guanarteme- by Henrypole Home

One of those things that we should not miss during our stay on the island of Gran Canaria is a visit to Las Dunas de Maspalomas, a little piece of desert accessible to be crossed by anyone, in which we will even find a brackish lagoon at the where a large number of bird species come to drink water and a palm grove that seems to be the oasis in proportion to the Saharan sands that we can walk through here without danger and with the blue of the Atlantic Ocean as the background horizon. In its 400 hectares of extension we can only travel through the trails marked, since it is a nature reserve and despite the fact that the dunes are changing structures with the influence of the elements, we must not interfere in their natural evolution.

If we are interested in the history and more specifically that of the original settlers of the Canary Islands before the Castilian occupation in the north of Gran Canaria, next to the town of Guía, one of the oldest towns in the archipelago, where we will find the Cueva Pintada, one of the largest Guanche sites with an interpretation center in which the pieces found are explained and informative materials on the Canarian aborigines are exhibited. Also in the surroundings of San Bartolomé de Tirajana we find the Archaeological Park of Maipés, an ancient necropolis that has more than 700 burial mounds, most of which can still be seen, despite having been affected in recent history by some volcanic lava.