Gran Canaria Tourism Guide - Gran Canaria Car Hire

Driving in Gran Canaria with Car Hire

As with all the Canary Islands and mainland Spain, driving in Gran Canaria is on the right hand side, with seat belt wearing including back seats legally required. Speed limits on the big GC1 motorway are 120km/h, although watch the main roads in Gran Canaria which are currently undergoing considerable construction work at the time of writing (2006). Many of these have speed limits down to 80km/h, with numerous speed cameras watching and large number of police patrolling. Be caught speeding and you could end up with a fine of upto 300 euros, so stick within the speed limits!

Main motorway roads on Gran Canaria are the big GC1 which runs from Las Palmas all the way down the east side and round to Puerto Rico. There's also the GC 2 running across the north of the island from Las Palmas to Agaete. Other interior mountain roads can be extremely challenging and time consuming, although very rewarding fo beautiful views and stunning landscape views. Many of the torturous looking roads in the interior of Gran Canaria were built by Prisoners of War from the Spanish Civil War in the 1940s, and gruelling work it would have been to build them.

Give yourself ample time if you're driving up the west side from Mogan to San Nicolas or indland around Tejeda and north around Teror and upto Arucas. If you don't fancy the challenging mountain driving but still want to explore the interior, book yourself on a splendid Grand Tour of Gran Canaria and let the expert coach drivers do the work for you! (see the Gran Canaria excursion tour section for details).

The main GC1 motorway though makes it easy to get to Las Palmas from the southern resorts, and indeed across to Galdar and Guanche territory with it's painted Guanche caves (well worth a look). Breath tests do tend to be carried out by local police on Gran Canaria. Other legal requirements include the wearing of crash helmets on motorbikes or mopeds, and using mobile phones in cars on Gran Canaria is banned. Also an important legal requirement in Gran Canaria is that children under the age of 12 years are not permitted to travel in the front seats of cars!

Car Hire Gran Canaria - the process

When you hire a car in Gran Canaria, if you're picking up in either the airport or your Gran Canaria resort, you'll need to make sure you bring along your driving license (both card and paper documents). The car hire firm will ask to see this. You'll also need a credit card - even if you've pre-paid they'll take a copy of it! They will also ask to see your passport, plus they'll usually want the address of where you're staying.

If you're picking your car hire up at Gran Canaria airport, the car hire firm will give you usually a rather good map of the island, plus point you in the right direction to collect your car. In Gran Canaria the rental cars are situated directly opposite the terminal building. Then you're away.

Driving on the main motorway in Gran Canaria is much like driving in Tenerife - they like their cars on both islands, and main roads are busy. Take you're time, and watch out for lower speed limits on parts of the main roads undergoing construction work (usually down from 120kmph to 80kmph. In towns and cities around Gran Canaria the speed limit is 50kmph, and the same parking rules apply here as in the rest of the Canaries. Blue lines mean a parking fee is need in usually nearby machines.

Yellow and white lines mean no parking, and unmarked are usually fine.