I am writing this long delayed piece while in Malaysia, two countries and a third of the world past my time on Gran Canaria, part of Spain’s Canary Islands. Not counting plane stops and brief diversions, I’m now in my eighth country and at the end of my ninth week, two more countries and weeks to go until I return to what I currently consider home.

Trying to put everything in perspective, to put all the pieces together in a way that makes sense and might point to a way forward, has been challenging. I’m beginning to feel that I may come to the end of this journey with no better sense of where I want to land than when I started. But that’s okay, since I now have recent on-the-ground experience to add to my list of criteria, something that was lacking at the outset. And I can say with some certainty a few places I’d rule in, a few places I’d rule out. And a surprise candidate or two.

Lying on Pantai Cenang — Cenang Beach — on the Malaysian island of Langkawi, the late afternoon sun glinting off the waters of the Andaman Sea, and for reasons I can’t quite identify, the words of Paul Bowles, with which he opened his novel The Sheltering Sky, came to me:

“Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don’t know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It’s that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don’t know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.”

There are other words of Bowles that also apply to this journey and what I increasingly see as my soon-to-be future:

“Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another. Indeed, he would have found it difficult to tell, among the many places he had lived, precisely where it was he had felt most at home.”

That last line in particular strikes me as valid for myself. I have always seen myself as a traveler, not a tourist, no less on this journey. But there is a contradiction inherent in it, too. Do I really want to feel at home? Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of this exercise? As I said in previous posts in this series, I want to feel a bit on the edge, not to feel as if I am home, but somewhere that challenges me on a daily basis to feel more fully whatever life remains ahead of me, those unknown number of moon rises of which Bowles writes.

In many ways, Gran Canaria did feel a bit like home. And did challenge me. Did I say any of this would be easy?

The company of friends

I know, I know. That image doesn’t look at all like Florida, my current home. And that is not just an illusion. Set amid the rugged, almost lunar landscape that is Gran Canaria, it’s the fishing village of Agaete on the northwest coast of the island. Like with Botswana, part of the pull of Gran Canaria is that I know people there. I have long-term clients who have become friends who also have sought, and found, a temporary home on Gran Canaria. On meeting, we went to Agaete to begin the process of absorbing life on the island. Interestingly, both in terms of the architecture as well as the style of restaurant life, I was reminded of the years I spent living in Greece more than anything. But this is Spain — albeit, Spain off the coast of West Africa — not Greece, and that is different.

Another difference in my experience of Gran Canaria is that I was joined by a friend from the U.S. We met at the Madrid airport — which was almost a miss due to miscues in the meeting process, after both of us had overnight flights coming from different parts of the world — and flew to Gran Canaria following a brief foray into Madrid Centro. Having someone with me definitely had a skewing effect on the experience of places, and also meant coordinating for two and not just me as a solo traveler. Just one more element to integrate into the process.

It was interesting gaining my friends’ insights into life on Gran Canaria based on their few years of living here. Being somewhat nomadic themselves, it was interesting seeing where our views on different places to rule in or rule out intersected. They appear happy enough living on the island, though might be ready to move on elsewhere in the coming years. Like with me, it keeps life fresh for them.

Juxtaposing utter congestion with barren spaces

That pretty much sums up Gran Canaria. Especially the island’s main city, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, where we stayed, but even smaller places scattered all around the island, are pretty congested. Streets are narrow, parking is almost non-existent, buildings are all fit together, sometimes coming right down to the street, and one gets the feeling that things are compressed to fit in the habitable spaces available. Meanwhile, much of the island is desolate, that barren rugged terrain you see in the photos.

I have always loved the desert, the complete emptiness of a true desert, and that part of Gran Canaria definitely appeals to me. If one can just get away from the people, not as easy as it might appear, I’d be a happy camper. But also having the comforts of life, places to buy food, perhaps eat out now and then, cultural offerings, also appeals. Thus my dual, if split, attraction to GC. If only there was parking!

My first visit to Gran Canaria was about 33 years ago when a girlfriend at the time and I made a day trip to the island from Tenerife, another of the Canaries, where we were spending the better part of a week vacation. Arriving on the ferry — I don’t recall taking the rental car over, but we must have, or we rented another car on the island — I recall big sand dunes, like the dunes of Maspalomas, on the island’s southern coast, in the photo above. I remember there being few structures, just some houses near the beach, and a lot of Germans nude on the sand. I don’t think I am imagining this, but now there is massive tourist development all along that part of the coast, the Germans have been supplemented by British and French and other tourists, and we were almost the only people shedding our clothes on the beach. I don’t see any of this as an improvement, and while I could see myself living in the environment we found 33 years ago, living in a tourist enclave like what exists today doesn’t really appeal.

At least Las Palmas is a real city where people live and work (at least they must, though they spend an awful lot of time in cafes and walking about on the streets and are out until all hours of the night, not unlike in Greece). We looked at some other places not far outside Las Palmas, too, so somehow combining a relatively urban existence while still having those desolate places close at hand appeals.

If you’d like to listen to what the rocks sound like as they are washed by the Atlantic waves on Playa de Triana, one of the remaining undeveloped beaches along the southern coast of GC, click on the image below. It’s an amazing phenomenon and worth a click. Remember to back click when you’re done to return here and see what else I have to say.

Navigating the wilds of Gran Canaria

We took some days and navigated the wilds of Gran Canaria, eventually circumnavigating the island. Once one is away from the major population centers and the more traveled corridors along the east and north coasts, one finds oneself on narrow, winding mountain roads, often so narrow there is no center line painted on them. Do not be mistaken that this might encourage caution on the part of your fellow drivers, many of whom seem pressed to make that board meeting several towns away for which they are late. And of course there are the motos and bicycles one also must pass, or be passed by, ostensibly avoiding fatal encounters. Not everyone succeeds at this, as signs posted in certain places give the fatality count for that stretch of roadway.

That’s Ophelia below, standing beside our rental car on one of the rare pulloffs, alongside a stretch of road wide enough to have a center line. Don’t even get me started on how moronic new cars have become. That Opel drove us mad with all the beeps and boops and other sounds it made, thinking stupidly that it knew more about driving than I do, and turning them off often proved futile since they would turn themselves back on. Who would buy such a car? No one I’d want to share the road with, that’s for sure.

Anyway, tucked away in the interior of the island are many picturesque villages and towns, one of which is Arucas, home of what is called the Black Cathedral. A most imposing edifice, that’s it in the next photo.

The civilized side of Gran Canaria

On our first full day on Gran Canaria, at the restaurant in Ageate, my friends introduced me to what immediately became my favorite dessert, a local specialty called polvito Uruguayo. I’m not sure what the connection is to Uruguay, but it’s a most yummy concoction, creamy sweet and with an intriguing mix of flavors. I would describe it in more detail, except every time I ordered it on the island — six times in total, in various forms, in the course of the week — it was different each time. I can say I have become something of a polvito authority, if authority consists of grading each different polvito. The one below was served at a restaurant along Las Cantares Beach in Las Palmas, and was one of the better — and certainly more elegant — polvitos I had. As I write these words, the shirt I am wearing still bears the stain of rich chocolate sauce that topped a different polvito I had one night dining out with my friends. What one will do for a good polvito. Polvito Uruguayo is almost grounds for deciding to relocate to Gran Canaria.

Along with the modern parts of Las Palmas, there also are historic districts, such as the Vegueta section in the southern part of the city. That street scene is a block or two from the Casa de Colón, the house of Christopher Columbus, who retired to Gran Canaria after his various voyages to America, before it was known as America. These are mainly walking streets, and the echo of footsteps on a rainy day, such as the day depicted here, fill the passageways.

Finally, I would be remiss in not mentioning that Ophelia and I spent a night and good part of a day in Madrid in between flights on our way to the next destination, Thailand. While I’d been to Spain before, I had not been to Madrid and so wanted to give it a look on the outside chance I might want to relocate there. I can say there are many interesting and beautiful parts to the city — we spent some hours in the famous Prado Museum admiring the works of Greco and Velázquez and other famous artists, which was a nice respite from the search for a place suitable for relocation — but I also can say it’s not a city I think I’d want to live in. We found a kind of imperiousness to many Spanish people, the kind of arrogance often attributed to Parisians, and this was most pronounced in Madrid. While facades faded quickly into smiles and friendliness in Las Palmas, it seemed less the case in Madrid. That’s a Saturday afternoon street scene in Madrid Centro a few blocks from the Prado.

It could well be that I end up on an island. It was my island experience — having lived on the islands of Manhattan, Key West, Montreal, and Sint Maarten — that landed me my first post in the Foreign Service, in Fiji. I can handle island life. So while I haven’t ruled it in, I haven’t ruled Gran Canaria out, either. More of those decisions, decisions . . . decisions. And those words of Paul Bowles on my mind, as the clock of life keeps tick-tick-ticking away.

Now on to my next destination. Keep following this quest, this voyage of rediscovery.

Featured image, the road comes down by the sea near Playa de Triana

White buildings of Agaete

The dunes of Maspalomas

The rocks of Playa de Triana

Stopping in the wilds of Gran Canaria

The Black Cathedral of Arucas

One version of polvito Uruguayo

On the walking streets of Vegueta

Saturday afternoon in Madrid Centro

All images and video by the author

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