Detour #167: Fast & Furious in the Canary Islands, Spain
Photo Universal Pictures
It’s the year-round sun and sand that attract most visitors to the Canary Islands, but in 2012 Dom, Brian, Letty and the gang took a typically explosive trip to film Fast & Furious 6. Here’s how to trace their tyre tracks.
The crew island hopped between Tenerife and Gran Canaria and to follow the script you’ll need to start on the cliff-hugging TF 445 between Buenavista del Norte and Punta de Teno. It’s here that Brian (Paul Walker) and Dom (Vin Diesel) race side-by-side in their Nissan GT-R and Dodge Challenger. It’s just a little more than six miles, with the first half a nice slow and sinewy build up until the road reaches the coast and turns into a crazy series of curves that threaten to throw you off into the sea. Get through unscathed and you’ll have a new-found admiration for the stunt drivers who absolutely flew through this insane stretch which barely seems wide enough for a one car, let alone the parallel piloting seen in the opening sequence of Fast & Furious 6.
Later we catch up with villainous Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) and his stolen armoured convoy hurtling along the TF 1 highway between Adeje and Guia de Isora. At the time of filming the road was still incomplete, leaving the FF team to conduct a crazy chase involving cars as diverse as a 1974 Ford Escort RS2000, a 1969 Dodge Charger, a 1969 Ford Mustang and, er, a Vickers-Armstrong Chieftan tank. The TF1 is the longest motorway in the Canary Islands, linking the capital Santa Cruz to Santiago del Teide – a distance of around 65 miles with sea views all the way. It’s not an especially challenging drive, unless you’re trying to stop a tank, but a scenic and swift way to cross the island without tackling its volcanic interior.
Photo Universal Pictures
Catch a ferry to Gran Canaria for a thrilling climax to your Fast & Furious adventure. The GC-210 from Los Cardones to El Majuelo is known as the loneliest road on the island and takes you through 32 hairpins into the middle of nowhere. The FF crew used sections of this 22-mile climb to 1,250m in the opening scene and frankly it’s even more treacherous that the cliff road. Prone to landslides, sudden torrential rainstorms and with a decidedly low-grip form of asphalt it can be quite the wild ride, so whatever the opposite of Fast & Furious is, that’s how you’d be advised to drive.
