I went to see the Maspalomas sand dunes yesterday. I was looking forward to chilling with camels and getting that Sahara vibe here on the island. I didn't actually make it to the dunes in the end, but that's a story for another post.
The Charca - a Marshland along the way to the sea side and sand dunes, is a sanctuary and nature reserve populated by wild birds and various aquatic lifeforms. It's kind of an oasis right next to the desert landscape of the Maspalomas sand dunes.
I didn't spend enough time there, as I was diverted to do something else by a very skilled salesman, so I didn't get a chance to photography the wild birds. I did, however see quite a lot of fish and what looked like turtles in the water.
It was quite early in the day but already the temperature had soared to about 29 degrees Celsius. There was a gentle ocean breeze that made it feel a little less hot, but you could still feel the sting of the sun. It reminded me so much of Dakar, Senegal - which is a peninsula city in the same body of water just a bit to the south east of here on the mainland of Africa.
Most of the islands in the Atlantic are volcanic rocks that were sanded over centuries by the great African Sahara. The air blowing over the oceans carrying the sand settled bit by bit until now. I remember a couple of years ago in London, we got a massive wave of that sand in the air. The sky was a golden brown and we all thought the end of the world had finally arrived :)
I had an interesting conversation about that with the taxi driver in my minimal Spanish. Actually it happens my Spanish is better than I thought it was. I find it easier to speak to Latin American Spanish speakers as well as Canarians. I find it a lot harder to understand speakers from mainland Spain. Apparently this is a common thing.
I was basking in this incredible view of nature when I suddenly got really frustrated by the sight of a plastic bottle floating in the middle of the water. This is definitely not the only piece of litter that's been thrown into this oasis. I'm sure people have casually thrown banana peels, orange seeds, even paper, into the water. All of those, however, would have either been eaten by the marine life, decayed and decomposed by bacteria into the bios or disintegrated. Plastics don't do any of those. They will forever be there until removed.
While it may have been an accident, or blown into the water by the wind from a bin site, or whatever, it highlights the need to address the single-use plastic issue.
What do you think can be done to resolve this problem? Do you even think there's a problem?