In travelling, I am not sure if my soul has grown, but my backpack certainly has. It holds essentials such as my wheelchair charger, my laptop, my hand cream, a measuring tape and some other tools used to gauge accessibility. I never knew that my wheelchair, once seen as a sign of dependence and a stagnant life, would actually become a tool for change.
I spent a month in the Canary Islands auditing four hotels across three islands as part of a learning exchange with Jo Hendrickx, who has been working tirelessly to make hotels more sustainable and environmentally friendly. This trip was a dream come true for me, because it had the perfect combination of purpose, project, impact and mojitos – all led by two amazingly different women.
¡Hola, Gran Canaria!
It all started at Gran Canaria Airport, where I met Jo for the first time in person, and we hit it off immediately. While in the car, our conversations went from ‘how to save water by making a smart tap’ to ‘stories from The Gambia’ to ‘my life in Pakistan’.
When we paused for breath on the road in Gran Canaria, I looked around, and I felt a little blank – because rather than buildings and people, I saw only rocks and windmills.
I squinted, looking for vegetation or any interesting landmarks, but there were none. As we drove south and got closer to the coastline, life began to emerge with many hotels, malls, and shopping areas near some beautiful beaches.
The Canary Islands are a popular tourist destination. It was refreshing to see hotels inviting us to hear my lived experience as their compass for accessibility, while also being open to learning from Jo where they had been going wrong with sustainability. We experienced each property for almost a week, and my lens would look for loopholes, from guest check-in to the breakfast buffet to the pools.
I audited a 12-room spa at a resort where each area was inviting but not fully accessible, and my job was to offer recommendations on the ‘how-to’ for making fixes. My favourite space was the ‘womb room’, designed to recreate a soothing pre-birth experience, and it had a water bed that my inner child didn’t want to leave. Pun intended.
Evenings on the island began when the workday ended. Stepping outside the resort, the air always felt like a treat – part sea breeze, part melody, and heavy with the scent of local kitchens gearing up for dinner service.
I quickly became a devotee of the local flavours: Canarian potatoes cooked in saltwater and eaten dipped in spicy mojo sauce, prawns in garlic-infused oil, and slices of fried Taleggio cheese finished with balsamic vinegar.
Between the tables, Senegalese hawkers moved through the crowds, their hair-braiding stations being super-popular (with those who have hair).
The northern side of the island, Las Palmas, is visually stunning but physically demanding. While the palm-lined avenues are appealing, the Old Town has steep inclines and cobblestones, which made my wheelchair a carriage without a horse.
I explored the area by taking a ‘walking tour’ with a guide, Maria, who shared many stories about the lives of people who lived there.
I had mixed feelings about Casa de Colón, once a pitstop of Christopher Columbus. It felt deeply ironic. A once-celebrated man with a now-dubious legacy, who only briefly touched these shores, is immortalised in a space many modern travellers cannot fully navigate.
I wheeled around the souvenir shops and vibrant cafés, eventually reaching the shore. There, I left my wheelchair on the sand and rolled into the Atlantic. It was in those moments that I realised that accessibility isn’t just about infrastructure; it’s also about the personal resolve to claim your place, even in the water.
Is this Fuerteventura, or Mars?
I was intrigued about travel between these islands (there are eight inhabited islands in all). One of the options used by the locals is short flights, and this time I headed to Fuerteventura with Adrien, Jo’s associate, to audit two hotels there. The flight was quick, and once we landed, we got a rented car.
To my surprise, this island had a completely different vibe from Gran Canaria, though not seeing anything but rock for two hours made me dizzy. When I shared this with Adrien, he laughed and told me to wait a few more minutes – and he was right. Because Fuerteventura’s turquoise-and-navy waters, contrasted with the sandy beaches and rocky mountains, create a live painting right before one’s eyes.
After the audit, we learned that it’s not only about a hotel’s accessibility, but also the visitor ecosystem around it. To enable us to make good recommendations on transport, tours and recreational activities for travellers with a disability, Adrien and I explored the island on a drive to El Cotillo.
This quiet coastal town feels shielded from the rush of mass tourism, and they want to keep it that way. We wandered its blue-doored, whitewashed streets and met local entrepreneurs. Later, when Jo joined me, she drove me to an Aloe Vera farm and had me try gofio, a toasted grain dip eaten with raw onions.
Fuerteventura felt like the kind of friendship that would slowly evolve… and then you’d find your heart, soul and palate are satisfied with everything the relationship has to offer.
Lanzarote, land of lava
Another fantastic way to travel between the islands is by ferry, and I was pleasantly surprised to see the level of accessibility it offered, from having an elevator to an accessible bathroom on board.
We parked our car on the lower deck and headed to the terrace to bid goodbye to Fuerteventura as we headed to Lanzarote. While Jo and I sipped black coffee, we reflected on the properties we’d visited so far and their openness to making adjustments to become models of change.
Jo managed not only to teach me standards of sustainability at every property, but also to inspire the traveller in me. When I heard she gets up every morning to see the sunrise, I decided to join her every time. And our mornings became a ritual of talking about our lives, goals and funny stories.
In her, I found not just a mentor but also a friend, against the backdrop of travelling around these islands with a mission. Jo did not hesitate for a second to pick up my heavy wheelchair and put it in the car or bring it to me. I realised it was also her space to know about what life is like with a wheelchair user. But with all the challenges, we operated as a team, whether it was finding a parking spot or sharing the iron.
Lanzarote could be the perfect backdrop for an otherworldly episode of ‘Black Mirror’. The whole island was shaped by volcanic activity, and its vast black lava fields with their sparse vegetation created a colour palette I had never seen. Jo and I sang our hearts out while driving through this landscape to our final hotel, a boutique property hosting many social activities. We both developed a very close bond with the General Manager, Natalia, someone truly excited about inclusion and sustainability.
At the hotel, I was introduced to a sculpture by César Manrique, and then to his life and importance on Lanzarote; his presence is everywhere. I was so intrigued that Jo actually took me to see his house, now a museum open to visitors.
Visiting the César Manrique Foundation was a slightly bittersweet experience for me. His home in Haría is a stunning composition of light and open space, but I couldn’t access his actual workshop. One local laughed and said Manrique probably never imagined his home would one day become a museum; otherwise, he might have designed a few ramps.
Another of his creations, the Jardín de Cactus, was a real highlight. The terrain is rocky, but the entire site is thoughtfully ramped, which meant I could wander freely through a miniature forest of cacti. Some stood tall and fiercely prickly, while others looked almost soft and stroke-able, though appearances, of course, can be misleading. I finished my visit at the small café with a berry smoothie and a surprisingly good local speciality: cactus (nopales) served with cheese.
Hasta luego, Canary Islands…
This entire trip became much more than a series of site visits and neatly organised spreadsheets. Over the course of a month, I documented what I came to think of as ‘the good, the bad, and the ugly’ across three islands. I stayed in four different hotels, spoke with locals, and tried the available transport options, from two kinds of inter-island journeys (by flight and ferry) to navigating on my own wheels.
What began as a fairly technical assessment gradually turned into something much more personal: a journey through a landscape that can be challenging at times, but is undeniably beautiful.
