Stay Off the Dunes! - a photo on Flickriver

            A running Whatsapp conversation with Nick told me what I’d always suspected about the dunes at Maspalomas.  Trying to find a clean patch of sand where you wouldn’t get shooed away by the authorities would be challenging to say the least.  They’re very protective of the dunes here, with dedicated paths that visitors are strictly instructed to remain upon.  While my friend had grabbed some rather splendid shots of his own down on the dunes here a few weeks earlier, that had come with a considerable degree of surreptitious exploration and a series of mini marathon hikes to some of its more remote corners.  And he was staying at a hotel close to the dunes themselves.  We were a little further away, and having come to the island on a half board deal, it was going to be a challenge to get there without having to hot foot it back for breakfast or bolt down supper and race down the hill before sunset.  It seems you have to walk quite a long way before you have much chance of finding a space untainted by footprints.  I considered going and having a look, but my heart wasn’t really in it.  Hop across to neighbouring Fuerteventura and the dunes of Corralejo are a far easier place to go and photograph pristine sand dunes.  No restrictions, and no footprints but your own once you’re half a mile in.  And they're often blasted clean by the relentless breezes that come chasing in off the Atlantic. 

So despite having earmarked them as a potential outing one evening or early morning, I didn’t bother with the famous dunes of Maspalomas.  Strangely, it was one of those very rare holidays during which we didn’t go to the coast at all, entranced as we were by the hotel complex in the hills and the eleventh floor infinity pool.  We could see them from the eleventh floor terrace in fact - a huge buttress of white between the town and the sea that shimmered like a mirage in the sun's afternoon glare.  But it was so peaceful up here.  Why go down to a busy tourist beach to scrap for parking space and get told off by officials for wandering over sand dunes, inadvertently or otherwise, when you could be nodding off in the lazy hot afternoon on your sun lounger?  No sand in the suitcase on the flight home; no need to have packed that beach towel.  For the most part during this holiday, we stayed in the hotel grounds, coughing and sneezing as if it were darkest December at home.  Having found a deal we couldn't ignore, the Serenity resort was a cut above the kind of places we usually stay in and it wasn’t easy to tear ourselves away from the sun drenched silence of the eleventh floor terrace.

So the only shot I took of those dunes was when I was several miles away from them, up at the Mirador Astronómico de la Degollada de las Yeguas - the name of which I just copied and pasted from the map.  Not that it is a picture of the dunes of course, although they do just about feature in it.  On the plus side, nobody was going to scold me for trespassing all over them up here. The shot was taken as a reactive emergency plan C or D as a fiery pink post sunset glow kicked off in just about every corner of the Canarian sky.  It wasn't what I'd come here to photograph at all, and for most of the last hour and a half the camera had been pointing in the exact opposite direction.  One of those moments where you could do with having at least three cameras operating all at once.  I raced in all directions over the spacious viewing area, falling between the imaginary stools upon which I'd mentally placed those three much needed cameras.  
This one was an easy and rapid grab, with the elegant clean swoop of the tarmac racing down through the vegetation towards the town and the ocean.  Really quite a simple shot, but I knew there was unfolding drama at my back as I hit the shutter four or five times before chasing the next composition.  Within a minute of taking these, the camera was pointing the opposite direction towards those fearsome looking mountains of the interior once more.

Taken in: Spain / Canary Islands / San Bartolomé de Tirajana (show map)

Taken on: May 9, 2025

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Gran Canaria

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Sets appears in: • Gran Canaria 2025

Groups appears in: • Beautiful Canary Islands • Amateur Landscape more » • Flickr Social Club • This Must Be The Place. • Photography Week • Amateur Photographer Magazine • Flickr Social « less

Camera: Canon EOS 200D, f/11.0, 0.8 sec, 29mm, ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon EOS 200D
Lens:	EF-S18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM
Aperture:	f/11.0
Exposure Time:	0.8
Focal Length:	29mm
ISO:	100
Exposure Bias:	-1 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Aperture-priority AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Software:	Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic 14.3.1 (Windows)
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