Canaries a fool’s paradise

Gran Canaria was as exotic as I had pictured it. The potential for adventure ... and misadventure ... was everywhere.

The clear water of Puerto de Mogan, on Gran Canaria, Spain ... just watch for the sharks behind fishing boats

If you picture the island of Gran Canaria as a clock face 50km across, its capital, Las Palmas, sits at about 1 o’clock. It was my home for a couple of years in the early 1980s while I taught English to university students.

The Spanish government program offered a choice of posts, but the Canary Islands caught my imagination. The archipelago sits 100km off the coast of Morocco, and Las Palmas was Columbus’s last stop before he crossed the ocean to the Americas in 1492.

Gran Canaria was as exotic as I had pictured it, packed with life. The potential for adventure was everywhere and, in a time before everything fun was banned, there was a delicious element of risk to almost everything you did. One weekend those elements coalesced into a perfectly stupid day.

Las Palmas was a substantial city, Spain’s busiest port, but the rest of the island was rural. Banana plantations sprawled across the north, and in the tiny towns old men sat outside the cafes, eyes filmed to near-blindness by their homemade rum.

Down south the tourism industry was beginning to grow, but the west coast was still empty and wild, its dirt roads running along cliffs that fell down into the Atlantic. Few people travelled those roads, and then only if appropriately equipped and experienced.

So four of us set off without a map in an open-topped Suzuki Jimny, me at the wheel, laughing as the warning cries of the rental operator — “No bad roads in the Jeep!” — faded behind us.

This machine boasted about 25kW of power, so it was a long crawl up into the mountains. Our plan was to head across the centre to a fishing village called Mogan, diagonally opposite Las Palmas. We assumed there would be a decent road into it, but no.

The dusty road snaked around ravines and through sparse forest, clinging to steep mountainsides with no barriers. After a few hours the fuel gauge was dangerously low. There was no chance of petrol before Mogan, but at least we were heading downhill.

I don’t remember whose idea it was to save fuel by coasting down the mountain, but I was happy to knock the gearstick into neutral and ride the squealing brakes.

It was, however, my idea to see how far we could go with the engine turned off.

It worked beautifully until the first corner, when the steering lock engaged and we slid towards the cliff. I was standing on the brakes, but they’re not much use if you’re going sideways. We stopped less than a metre from a sheer drop on to the rocks 200m below. “Very funny,” said my friend Rivero. I looked away so he couldn’t see the terror in my eyes.

An hour later we reached Mogan and pulled up at the port, a postcard of brightly coloured boats and amazingly clear ocean. We were all a little sunburnt so we headed straight for the water, ignoring a few old wowsers telling us to keep out of the harbour.

A few minutes later we understood why the old men had been shouting at us. Lucia, a superb swimmer, was first to notice. “Fuera, fuera!” she screamed, and flashed like a marlin towards the steps. I couldn’t see what the fuss was about. Sure, there was a fishing boat coming in, but it would miss me by 10m at least.

Lucia was still screaming something unintelligible from the dockside above me and pointing at the fishing boat, which I now saw had two bluefin tuna hanging off a gaff at the back. The huge fish had been cleaned and their entrails were dripping into the sea, to the delight of the mass of sharks weaving behind the boat.

“Of course,” I thought, mentally slapping myself, “Tiburon! That’s what she was saying.”

The dock wall was too slippery to climb so I inched my way towards the steps. A couple of big sharks, maybe 4m long, passed close enough for me to touch their fins (no, I didn’t) but glided on, focused on the scraps the fishermen were throwing over the side.

As I clambered out of the water, I saw they were hammerheads, so not particularly dangerous, but they were getting more excited as the blood was sluiced off the boat’s decks. Not a frenzy, precisely, but not the kind of party you’d want to be in the middle of.

Two really stupid mistakes in one day, I thought as we drove back to Las Palmas, but I’d got away with both of them.

That night, feeling extra alive, we headed for a notorious bar in the mean streets near the docks. It was packed with local criminals and foreign sailors, music thumping through the smoky darkness. One minute we were having a wonderful time, the next we were captured by a sudden brawl that exploded out of nowhere.

The Guardia Civil, in weary anticipation, were parked nearby, and within seconds had everyone lined up, examining their ID ­papers. I had cleverly decided my passport would be safer at home, so was arrested for having no documents and taken away in the van.

My department head, deeply unamused, came to the police station to vouch for me at seven the next morning. As the cell door was unlocked I determined not to take any foolish chances ever again. And I’m happy to say I never have.