Pics and other stuff

evening light change

2012-02-11T01:12:00.003Z

Those two pictures were taken this evening with just eight minutes in between them. Just another demonstration of how fast everything changes when the sun is setting. Of course, the processing might have increased the effect, but the last bits of sunshine disappearing from the Isla de Lobos and the clouds is the most obvious difference

full format of the first pic on istock

Morro Jable

2012-02-06T18:57:00.003Z

Since we moved to Fuerteventura half a year ago, we spent every single night at the same place, not going anywhere, even for short while. It can be explained by the house moving experience killing all possible urges to move anywhere for a goodish while or by something else. Doesn't matter really. This weekend we finally took advantage of yet another religious celebration that shut both schools for two extra days and went to the other end of the island, to a small village Morro Jable.

It takes less than three hours by bus to cross the whole island. Big road ends in Morro Jable. There are smaller roads afterwards, one of them leading to the beautiful Cofete beach, but I don't like the look of those roads. I learned to drive in East Anglia, I like my roads straight and flat, and roads past Morro Jable don't satisfy either of those requirements

The village feels a lot smaller than Corralejo, and the ratio of (mostly German) tourists to locals seems higher. It is no Benidorm of course, but the excellent sandy Playa del Matorral is backed by side-to-side bahamut-sized resorts, so it's best to to look towards the sea, not towards the land (and I have a whole rant ripening about all-inclusive resorts, watch this space).

Resorty part of Morro Jable is stretched along the beach, so for a goodish while the configuration is the same - water, sand, wildlife protection area covered in salsola, bicycle multi-path, promenade, wide street that is a continuation of FV-2 motorway, cafes and restaurants and then first-line resorts. If there's anything behind those resorts, it is obscured by them quite effectively.

There's nothing much to the village itself. There is a small grid of streets perpendicular to the shore and on the top of the hill. Right now most of those streets are dug up, not sure what for, maybe simply for resurfacing. If it is resurfacing, I can't explain why they dug up so much at the same time, it doesn't appear to do local businesses any good, especially eateries seem to suffer.

Still, the beach is clean and wide, the sun was shining, the road is beautiful in that peculiar stony-desert Fuerteventura fashion, so it worked out as a nice long weekend

There is a small zoo roughly opposite from Morro Jable lighthouse. They have a fair selection of birds and a few llamas, every other aspect of animal kingdom underrepresented somewhat. Many of the cages were empty, so maybe there are more animals in high season. The ticket is valid for a week though, and they do some minimal shows there, so if you are there with kids on holidays, it makes sense to buy tickets and pop in there from time to time.

When we were going past their enclosure, Yuri started to giggle at the German version of the name of this animal. I also find it funnily overdescriptive to call it SouthAmerican NosyBear. Coati sounds a lot better. On the other hand, latin name Nasua nasua (Nose nose, or Nosy nosy unless my latin fails me completely) if both funny and descriptive - it is an actively moving critter that sticks its longish nose everywhere

Unlike peacocks, Flamingos are not closely related to chicken, but the same utter madness shines in their eyes.

Suzi Q by a sandpiper and other sandy things

2012-01-14T14:55:00.003Z

Small local sandpipers (or are they turnstones, maybe?) look quite amusing when caught in mid-step. This one looks like he's doing a Suzi Q. He's running around a beached jellyfish - we a have a small-scale plague of them at the moment.

There were some strong winds and big waves recently, and they left their marks on the flag beach. Above is relatively unusual tide pattern on the sand. Little rivers formed by the water going away are normally not as deep as this. It looks like miniature canyon walls

And this is more normal, but forming a perfect wind-swept tree pattern

Corralejo Flag beach on shutterstock

Floral Betancuria

2012-01-11T22:31:00.003Z

I've just looked in Wikipedia and discovered that Betancuria proudly bear a "city" label in there. Well, I don't know. The population of the whole province was 721 in the latest poll, and not all of them live in Betancuria, so calling it a city seems just a tad excessive.

It's a pretty place, whatever it is. There aren't many real sights to see, and they've been photographed to death. You can hardly blame the photographers - apart from scattering of windmills, Fuerteventura doesn't have many historical architectural landmarks, compensating, of course, for this lack with its natural beauty. In any case, I decided to sort of skip photographing architecture - after playing a bit with a borrowed wide angle lens around the church.

So, here are just some floral things from Betancuria.

Fuerteventura pics on shutterstock

wide angle mirador, spirit of the stones etc

2012-01-10T19:00:00.002Z

Today I went around with friends who are here on holidays in their rented car. While fully understanding the benefits of not having a car (we all are a lot healthier after those six months for a start), sometimes I really miss driving. It gets you there a lot faster than public transport, biking or walking, and sometimes it just gets you there, full stop. I am not about to bike to Betancuria, for instance, while I am still sane.

On the other hand, once the car is there, you feel tempted to drive it even for small errands, and that's not that great.

Anyway. The view above is taken from Mirador de Morro Velosa with Sigma 12-24 borrowed off one of my friends. I know what to add to my (suddenly almost-empty) wishlist now (benevolent universe: hint hint?)

This is one of the windmills close to El Cotillo. It's in quite a good state and seems to be meant for postcard-perfect pictures, with even a semblance of car parking area in the front and some cacti planted (though not doing that great) around it

On the empty field opposite from the mill somebody build a few cairns, and we shamelessly adopted one of them for photoshooting purposes. Here is my friend Volodya in a role of mischievous stone spirit. Here you see him

And here you don't

Fuerteventura pics on shutterstock

school schedule and full moon

2012-01-09T22:01:00.002Z

The calendar on the Yuri's school website displays, among other things, stuff like full moons. Reasons for that are best known to the developer, but that means that we are less likely to miss it.

Kids are back at school finally and the moon is full. Overall, a good day

full moon pics at shutterstock

Lucky king

2012-01-07T22:45:00.000Z

Yesterday a friend of ours gathered a few people in her new dance studio to celebrate its approaching opening. Since it was also King's fiesta, she bought special ring-shaped cakes - called rosco de Reyes, that you are supposed to have on the day.

The guy who was cutting the cake told us to be careful, as there are two small hard objects in each - a little figurine of the king (or a wise man), bearing gifts, and a bean. If you get a king in your piece, you are the lucky one, get a little paper crown and, far as I understood, will be lucky all year round. If you have a bean though, you have to pay the price of the cake to the person who bought it originally - something that our hostess immediately dismissed though saying- no, that was her party and she was paying.

It was good that we were warned - Kirill found this cute little king in his piece. Despite the warning, he almost did some damage to his teeth. He was lucky that it was only "almost", so I suppose the sign works in a way. He also got the paper crown.

And here is our king going for a little walk or something

Today was cloudy and not particularly warm. This strange-looking patch of clouds went past at some point. I especially liked the wavy line below center to the right.

Timur's abstract and things

2012-01-06T11:59:00.001Z

Yesterday me and Timur went to the post office to pic up yet another parcel from Amazon - two more Terry Pratchett's books for Yuri and me, we have the full Discworld collection I think.

Picking up stuff in the post office is a sort of quest here. I really miss UK in this respect - I loved it when my parcels turned up at my doorstep, accompanied by a cheerful postman and his wireless digital signature panel. Now I go to post-office, take a ticket out of the machine and wait till my number comes up. Yesterday the waiting list was over 60 numbers, so we walked around with Timur, making little purchases and trying to occupy ourselves as best as we could. At some point I gave him my camera and he made a few snaps of a windmill - and above is the close-up of its door

Some of the beaches around Corralejo have been closed for a few days already, because pinkish smallish jellyfish turned up en masse. When they are out of the water, tentacles are not visible, but in the water you can see they are quite long. Fish seems to try to avoid the contact with it - check the video about 10 seconds in - so maybe closing off the beaches makes sense.

Yesterday evening we went to see Cabalgata de Reyes Magos - arrival of the Kings, or Magi (ones that brought presents on the 12 day of Christmas). We never saw it before. The main components seem to be the Kings themselves, on camels in our case, and sweets, thrown by kings to the kids in the crowd. There were other elements to the procession, which in case of Corralejo wasn't a particularly long one. Still, it featured no less than four different samba bands, so it was a fairly noisy affair.

I found quite amusing the precision with which a delay of half-hour to the proceeding was predicted. Parade was scheduled for 5pm. Everybody whom we talked to about it, with no exception, said it won't start earlier than 5.30. We came the by 5.30 and it was precisely the moment when the movement started for real

Fuerteventura snowflakes and noodle soup

2012-01-02T21:06:00.002Z

There is very little chance of real snow here, although you never know of course. We made this garland before Christmas and it was hanging for a while over TV. Today I decided to take it off and throw it away, but first we went to the roof to photograph. Presence of one unwalkable shoe in the picture is explainable, but it will take too long, so let's say it's just holding the garland in place

This is the only time of the year when you might want to have something to warm you up. We make mulled wine fairly regularly, and I made us wintery garlic soup once, but didn't photograph it - while being a lot more Spanish, garlic soup didn't turn out nearly as photogenic as this one. It went down very well indeed with a rose from Lanzarote

New Year fireworks in Corralejo

2012-01-01T12:47:00.003Z

We all like fireworks, and there were some planned, so we debated for a while were to go for New Year midnight, and eventually decided to go to the tip of the pier in Corralejo. I was hoping to get some nice "across the water" shots. We took the essentials - grapes (Timur hated them and Yuri loved them), tripod and cameras.

The position we choose was probably the best one - we could see all Corralejo fireworks, plus Playa Blanca and Puerto del Carmen displays on Lanzarote - but I must say that it was not really impressive. I don't know what is the reason - lack of money seems like the most likely one though - but the only place that put up a longish display was RIU hotels, far way away from where we were. I got just a handful of good shots, one above being my favourite. It it was nice low-key New year though, something different for a change.

Now I am seriously considering going to Madeira for next year. Their fireworks is something else altogether. We saw them once and I didn't take any pics, but if I ever going to be there again, I will :)

Happy New Year :)

fireworks pictures at shutterstock

Blanket, jedi warrior and knitted ghost

2011-12-30T12:43:00.002Z

Ok, that blanket I was knitting turned up to be veeeery long, so we can cover ourselves with it all four of us when we watch TV or something. It can also be used for fun photoshoot :)

Same round needles I used to knit and the remains of the wool used to assemble my jedi cape

Well, Ok, I guess the reference for the ghost will be clear only to russian who watched "Карлсон, который живет на крыше" animation series. "Дикое, но симпатичное" :)

Ok, and this was feeble attempt at knitter's strip-tease sort of stuff, but it didn't really work - I have no heart to unravel it, and folding very quickly produces a bundle, not a neat diminishing square

that's all for now :)

Colors

2011-12-28T13:20:00.000Z

Even now, in winter, Fuerteventura's sun is strong and colors striking. And here is Timur, in his bright t-shirt, sitting against blue-grungy wall background, and completely disinterested in being photographed. How unfair is that, I ask you?

One more, for good measure.

Ok, that's not then most beautiful structure I ever photographed for sure, and location's not that great either. But sun and colors somehow hide the unsightly truth and turn a carpark into abstract.

And here is a car we know, in complete color harmony with her surroundings. It seems that Fuerteventura's diet is not conductive to a svelte figure, at least in cats

First Christmas on Fuerteventura - just a few pics

2011-12-25T23:17:00.001Z

Apart from being first Christmas, it was also a first time we all went on our bikes together. Mine is blue :). This is Corralejo Flag Beach again, our nearest good beach. Kids read and chatted and we engaged in accumulating a stash of userpics :)

Above the hide tide mark there is some dead seaweed (black bits on the first pic) but there's none in the water. Water was quite chilly to paddle in, but I am told that swimming was good today

And here are our gnomes admiring our panettone :)

And a little video from the beach

Gnomes, pimientos de padron and sparkler tornado

2011-12-24T23:14:00.001Z

On Christmas eve, gnomes bought for Yuri in Stokholm found their way on our patio table :)

And here they are again, plotting something I reckon.

Pimientos de padron - one of my favorite tapas. Very easy to make, too, you just fry them and sprinkle with coarse salt (with chili on this occasion). There is one thing that puzzles me about them though. When I was looking for recipes, I I found in literally all of them something like "although most Padron peppers are mild, some are hot". Some recipes went as far as mention "approximately one in twenty peppers is hot". Even wikipedia mentions that some of those peppers are hot, and gives a proverb to confirm (Os pementos de Padrón, uns pican e outros non).
Well, by now I ate a few hundreds of them, and let me tell you - none of them was hot. None at all. I don't know how to explain this phenomenon. It might be, of course, that there is some variation and what is sold here is a completely mild variety. Another possible explanation is that over the years of cultivation, hotness was selected out of them, but proverb survived, and alleged hotness gets the mention everywhere due to inertia. As to "one in twenty", I'd say it's propagated by the usual cut and paste method.

And the sparklers games again

baking, knitting, eating and making cairns

2011-12-23T15:48:00.006Z

Those chocolate cookies work with local ingredients just as well as they did with others :) Baked a batch today and want to do another one tomorrow

You can see our first "Christmas tree" in the background - made of stones from the beach and dried root found in dunes. More on the subject of Christmas "trees" later.

Ahhh, seafood. I haven't yet decided on the family menu for Christmas, so I am thinking - maybe seafood paella?

I am finishing off an enormous woolen blanket, so we decided to do a mini "knitter on holidays" photoshoot. Kirill made the pic. My eyes _can_ go even closer together, in case you are wondering :)

And finally - today's Christmas cairn project. Kids lost interest pretty quickly, but it wasn't a big one anyway :)

UPD - oh, nearly forgot. When we were building the cairn, a youngish guy with a camera came up to us and started saying something along the lines "I wonder if you would like some pictures? What I am doing here is..." - at which point I interrupted him, saying "Look, I have a bigger camera'n yours in my backpack, so no". I meant it to be a joke (well, not my best, granted), but he didn't take it like one and went away dejectedly.

Now, me being me, I am now feeling a bit guilty, thinking maybe I was too short with him. For all I know he might even be fellow stocker, looking for pictures-for-model-release deal, or a student on a project task, I didn't give him a chance to explain really. Just hope he wasn't upset.

not much to report

2011-12-18T19:41:00.001Z

There's nothing much to report recently. We kept unpacking and finding places for our stuff and I am proud to say that finally all the books are on their shelves. Now it's pictures turn - and we have a lot of those.
Fish above is scrambling for a piece of bread - there was a guy on a pier yesterday who kept feeding pigeons and fish in turn. Pigeons can't swarm like fish though, that's for sure

Below is a little video of the same fish

We went to the dunes today to try to make some pictures for 2012 calendar. It was sunny and very windy. Timur walked ahead, throwing his sandals in the air and then walking towards them. It rather reminded me of the movie "Stalker", where Writer says "вы бы хоть гаечку туда бросили, что ли..." (apologies to non-russian speakers, explanation would be very long and involved, so I won't)

sparkler games

2011-12-04T20:00:00.001Z

Today we finally found sparklers for sale in Corralejo. Not that we were looking very hard before, of course, but there weren't any in first two likely-looking shops we asked. Third time, in a basement "shopping center" off the main street, they have some - short and thin ones, unfortunately, so they don't burn for very long, but it's a start.

Now we need to make some preparations and research and go and make some "3d sparkler sculptures" by a friendly water feature, to catch both the sparkler trail and the reflection. Ocean's good, but it tends to jump at you mid-shot if you come too close, so maybe we should consider a swimming pool first

unpacking essentials - 2

2011-12-01T12:59:00.002Z

We are still unpacking and will be doing it for another while. Main problem is not so much opening the boxes, as finding a place for everything to go to. We have already found a lot of things that were managed to forget about, but haven't found some that we are specifically looking for.

Timka's soft toys were given a wash, and survived it nicely

If I am not mistaken, this bear is the one Timur used to call "baddy bear" (as opposite to "goody"), for the reasons best known to himself then.

Observe the chromatic aberrations at the edges of all those pics and strange way the clothesline looks in the first. These are all due to my new toy - "fisheye" extension to existing lenses. It halves (approximately) the focal distance, so when it sits on 50mm lens I end up with 25mm approximately + "fisheye" distortions. Below are the startrails taken with the same extension.

The lights are Corralejo pier and edge if town. There are some side-light artefacts on the picture, I think I will have to fashion a lens hood out of black paper next time, but I am pleased, it is starting to look more interesting

assorted Sunday

2011-11-29T10:53:00.001Z

This cat, although different in color, in attitude and expression is a spitting image of Muta from "The Cat Returns". From his position of perfect safety he was observing the street, mostly right in front of him, that is, not bothering to even turn his head.

Except sometimes

For second Sunday in a row, we went for lunch to Avenida. First time we took what we assumed will be tapas - and each dish proved to be main-sized affair, very tasty. Little research shown that the place is more famous for their paellas, so we went again to check those out. And our seafood one was excellent. Yes, I know - the rice is not right (they use simple long-grained one), and color is probably due to safflower rather to more expensive proper saffron, but it was very good anyway. Although the restaurant is out of the way, lunchtime is very busy there, and place is full of locals, too - always a good sign.

Address and more places to eat - in a special section of Kirill's blog

Lovely color. My next vehicle will be red or yellow, haven't yet decided which.

Those fishes reminded me of russian anecdote about the fisherman whose hands were bound at the wrists, so he couldn't show how big was that fish that he caught. For those of you who don't know - he opened the palms of his hands as far as they'd go and said "and its eyes were thiiiis big" :)

When it got dark, me and Yuri went to photograph the startrails over Isla de Lobos. I don't know why, but so far I can't achieve a photograph with not too much noise. I am not sure if all the pics that have startrails in them have a lot of it - after all, noise is bound to appear when exposure is long, but it seems unsatisfactory to me.

I will carry on trying with different apertures, ISO is already set at minimum

kites and Christmas lights

2011-11-27T12:49:00.001Z

Yesterday we went for a walk in the dunes with Yuri. The intention was to go to the "proper" dunes - ones that don't have any vegetation, with nice wind patterns on them, but when we came up to the border of the nature park, we spotted an unusually large group of kites over Flag Beach. So we turned towards it. Unfortunately, by the time we got there (takes about 25 mins walking), surfers were already closing the shop so to speak - it was getting late.

There was still a lot of them drying the kites, letting air out of them and so on, so we hand around for a bit

Like those bandana-ed skulls.

Later on, they were switching the Christmas lights on in the El Campanario shopping center. The announced times was 8pm, but there was a few short performances first, so they switched the lights on about 8.40 or so. Strangely, I was not ready for fireworks that followed (later on I remembered that Kirill mentioned that there were some last year), so no pictures of those.

I can photograph fireworks though :) - see the shutterstock collection if interested.

Even more unexpected, fireworks were accompanied by a shower of styrofoam balls which serve for snow around here. Now we find them in pockets and bags

unpacking essentials

2011-11-18T19:06:00.001Z

yesterday, after nearly four months of travel, our stuff finally turned up. And I went from having no fully functional lenses at all to having three of them.

We started with unpacking essentials - such as those two birds. I made them er... about fifteen years ago at pottery courses. They held surprisingly well, I think. And now they go to see the world too, with those piercing eyes.

Well, to be honest, we didn't mean to unpack those specifically. But they were mixed with kitchen stuff, so here they are

I think we unpacked about 10 boxes out of 85 so far. Were are we going to put all that stuff, I have no idea

Lilac evening - and my lens is back

2011-11-16T20:46:00.001Z

Today I was reunited with my main lens. It took just over three months for it to be fixed (and involved it being sent to Barcelona), but finally it's here with me and I am a happy bunny again. Next time, though, I might want to fly to Barcelona myself, it will probably be cheaper considering the lost time. Not that cropping 21 mpx to 10 wasn't fun, but sometimes you need all of your pixels.

To celebrate, we went to the beach and took a few long exposure shots. We got there a bit too late, though, it was getting really dark. But moving water is always beautiful

Picture above is a wider crop of the first one

the smudged ghost on the stones to the right is a fellow photographer

Festival de Cometas

2011-11-13T18:52:00.002Z

Today there was the last day of kite festival. This year they weren't very lucky with the weather - out of three days in the dunes, only today was sunny and warm, with at least some wind to keep the kites in the air. But never mind - today was great.
What with the background of sand and blue sky, the bright sun, large but weightless objects in the air and small figures underneath, it was all very Dali-esque.

a lot more in public facebook album

editorial images for sale at shutterstock

more dunes, new pair of shoes and observation about postal services

2011-11-09T19:17:00.001Z

Here Timur's doing what he likes to do best.

And here is me in my new shoes (received them at the post office yesterday, and done just one cycle trip and one thai-chi lesson), standing next to the old pair of shoes. If you are thinking that they look the same, it's because they are the same. Some time ago I realized that converse shoes are exactly the right shape for me, and so far I never had any surprises with sizing either. So I keep buying a new pair now and then, once the old one start loosing tread and trim.

Nobody pays me for this nice post, more's the pity.

About the postal services - so far they are a bit unpredictable. Or rather, there are elements that are completely predictable - for example, you have to go and pick up your parcels at the post office, regardless of how expensive the postage was or how heavy the parcel, and there are elements that are a mystery. Occasionally they try to charge us something that is probably tax (?) but the logic of what is taxed and what is not and on which level is not obvious. Sometimes instead of delivering to Fuerteventura, they deliver to Gran Canaria and then ask us to explain what's in the parcel first (via email, which is a blessing, telephone conversation will be a struggle). Then they send it on to Fuerteventura, adding about a week to overall delivery time.

So far nothing gone missing, but the complicated procedure takes some pleasure out of internet shopping for sure. You never know how much you will have to pay altogether. I am not amused.

dunes - flying sand and drawing zumba logo

2011-11-07T19:39:00.001Z

Timur prefers dunes to ocean. He doesn't mind one hour walk each way to get to the large, steep, completely plant-free dunes - just to jump or run off them. And now the biggest crowds of visitors are gone, there is a good chance to have an undisturbed sand to walk on, which makes for nice picture

Yesterday the wind was on a strong side and sand was flying. It ends up looking like a blurred edge to the dune in the picture, but in the close-up you can see the sand particles in the blur

Kirill had an idea for a new userpic for his zumba pages - to draw a zumba logo on the sand. Problem is, he started too big

This one is a little better but still not ideal. So it's work in progress

Fuerteventura pics at shutterstock

Festival de cometas - unexpected preview

2011-11-06T18:49:00.000Z

we went for a walk in the dunes today and unexpectedly got ourselves a preview of upcoming kite festival (festival de cometas). the festival itself starts on the 10th at El Cotillo, and will hopefully be a lot bigger, but looked like participants are arriving and starting to fly the kites already. Today they were on a beach past RIU hotels as you go from Corralejo towards Puerto del Rosario

A few more pics follow

Timur's got a little camera for his birthday, so now he takes pictures of everything. Shame that he almost immediately deletes them, but as a true artist he is never satisfied with his work

Bear (at least I think it is a bear) on the right is really psychedelic color. I also like its shadow on the sand

Today, after I don't know how many visits to this particular section of dunes, we unexpectedly found that there a bar just there. Somehow we failed to see it before. It's a very basic affair, but it looks like it was always there, and we were very grateful for it - walking from home to the cometas took about one hour, so we were all thirsty and kids were hungry and getting cranky

I never suspected there are so many types of goats :)

неспокойно синее море

2011-11-05T00:24:00.000Z

Went to make a few long-exposure shots in the evening. Waves were a bit smaller today.

Big(ish) waves today

2011-11-03T17:44:00.000Z

Yesterday, all of the Canaries were put on "coastal phenomenon" alert. "Orange" alert was today for Fuerteventura. The explanation mentioned sea swell and a possibility of waves up to 5 meters high. I actually spent (or perhaps wasted) some valuable time trying to figure out if avenida Grandes Playas is likely to be affected - we take it quite often, when we go into old town, and Kirill takes it when he goes to teach his zumba lesson, dragging his musical equipment with him. I figured that probably not, and most of Corralejo is shielded by the pier and Isla de Lobos. But of course I wanted to go and check it out. Early morning weather was good, but when it was time to get out of the house, fine but dense rain started, so by the time we were by the old town we were both wet. There were no waves on town beaches, but large waves were visible further in the ocean. To see them closer, I went past the pier a bit.

A few more pics of the waves and people follow

Of course, I was not the only one who had the bright idea to check the waves out. There were a few people who looked intently at the waves, clearly evaluating them. Probably surfers, although I can't really say.

you can see the scale at the pic below - not five meters, but still quite impressive

Of course, there were fellow photographers :) I think the lady is taking a video with her SLR, though - support is a burden, not help, when the conditions are as bright. Unless it was long exposure - but then a monosupport is insufficient.

Anyway. Her dog looked somewhat bored :)

Fred Olsen going to Lanzarote. First pics is of Armas on the trip in opposite direction - and I must say, I won't have fancied a ferry trip today. I am sure it's perfectly safe, but still, it looked quite wobbly

Dunas de Corralejo Half Marathon

2011-10-30T17:52:00.004Z

Today there was a half-marathon in the dunes. Unlike some other local events, this one at least managed to make me aware of its existence - for example, by displaying a large banner by the entrance into Corralejo from FV-1, with, amazingly, a wrong date on it. The banner said 31 October, the half-marathon was today, on the 30th. I strongly suspect that decided to re-use last year's promotional materials without any changes. But anyway, by some googling I've found their website and confirmed the date. Just hope nobody turns up for running one day late, that's quite a handicap.
After looking at the route of the run (big loop around the dunes), I figured that I can first turn up for the start, then get on my bike (literally) and go along FV-1, meeting them on their way back. First part of the plan went swimmingly. There was a small hiccup later on, but it was a good plan, anyway. Below are some more pics and some notes about route.

Ok, that's the start, and you can see both male and female favorites (NN1 and 2). By now I can say they were chosen correctly - by the water point about 3/4 of the way number one was ahead of everybody else by about hundred meters by my estimate, and the lady (2, on the first pic in this post) was well ahead of other ladies, although I can't say by how much. Saving some disaster at the later part of the race, they must have won in the respective runs. UPD - they were Roger Roca and Aroa Merino, and yes, they both won, Roca for the third time in a row. And this was the third race :)

I went along FV-1 to the RIU hotels and stopped there, because I saw activity on the top of a dune and decided to check it out. That basically was a hiccup in my plan. Because people who were waiting for the runners with water and fruit didn't know anything very well themselves, but were very willing to share their little and incorrect knowledge. I asked when they expect a leader to turn up. They said in ten minutes. I was a bit perplexed, because it seems like a very good time even on the tarmac race, but decided to listen to them for some reason (a mistake, should have known better, but thought that maybe the route on the website was not correct and runners will pass us twice).

What I have to do next time is to park the bike by RIU and then start walking along the dunes, parallel to the road, to Montana Roja - I would have met the leader at a lot better place from photography point of view. Picture above shows a policeman on a quadbike, marking the route for the leader.

Finally, about 30 mins later, the leader appeared, closely followed by a cameraman. It's a lot easier for the cameraman though - he haven't run the previous 15 km or so :)

Loved these two, they were laughing as they run. It was nice to see them smiling for the camera, even if they choose to make horns or pull a face - it meant they still had some energy left, at least.

Another photographer's note - we are a lot more noticeable in this race. In London, you are part of the crowd, all happily snapping away and cheering. Here, photographers are well-spaced to put it mildly, except for the start and the finish. So, runners actually look at you when they run. And I can tell you, it's a lot more difficult to cheer when you on your own. I am not sure how well I managed

Love his T-shirt :)

just to show that it was loose sand along this part of the route. I am not legs-obsessed or anything

Lot more pictures in a facebook album

events of unknown nature and birdwatching

2011-10-22T23:08:00.001+01:00

While we've been staying on Fuerteventura, there always seems to be somethings going on and almost always that mysterious something is not very obviously advertized, so it's practically impossible to find out any details. Or maybe I lived in England for too long, and got used to the fact that every tiny local event will announce itself well in advance. Today, for instance, there were at least two of those somethings going - one a watersports event in the harbor, and another skating (?) one in the skatepark. What were they exactly, I can't say. I just can say that I like this boy's helmet very much

I like those birds. Quite a few of them live around the botanical gardens close to our house. Today I finally found what they are called, and the names are as funny as the birds themselves : Hoopoe, Upupa epops (!), and Russian "удод" (... да не тот). They have this amusing manner to walk to the other side of the fence of the garden when you approach. They stop immediately on the other side, presumably thinking that the fence will stop those annoying humans from both seeing and approaching. Thing is, the fence does neither - it consist of well-spaces wooden posts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoopoe

I am still lens-less sort of. I am hoping to get a lot better pics of the birds in a little while.

El Cotillo - La Vaca Azul and our container's moving (apparently)

2011-10-15T12:48:00.002+01:00

In El Cotillo, we ate in the restaurant called La Vaca Azul (The Blue Cow). I am not entirely sure what's the origin of the name, and they specialize in fish, really, but they do have a blue cow on the terrace upstairs as a visual support.

The fish display in front of the entrance was quite attractive. When I stopped to photograph it, a waiter immediately demanded five euros per snap - as a joke, or course. We thought the setup looked nice, so we returned there after our walk around the village. While village looked deserted, they were quite busy, with people who booked a table and/or were known to the staff turning up all the time. We got a table at the back of the terrace.

My Sangria - made with grape juice, I think, definitely not with orange. It was good. I don't know why, but I seem to want to have some sweetness in my drink during the hot part of the day here, something that I didn't really like before. Chilled rose will do, but I didn't yet hit on a good rose here.

Salad presentation was good, too. My plate is waiting to receive a portion of fish prepared in sea salt crust, something we've seen but didn't try before

Our fish, looking like an enormous pile of coarse salt, arrived at the table. Brandy was poured around the top, then set alight (shame it was daytime, in darkness it's spectacular).

Waiter 's opened the crust along the line formed by burned out brandy.You can see the backside of the cow behind Yuri, btw

Fish opened, cleaned and transferred to my plate. I remember hearing before that this kind of preparation leaves fish "not salty at all", but actually it was quite salty, just not as much as you'd expect from the size of that pile of salt.

Overall, it was good, but not cheap by local standards. The fish dishes are prices by the weight of the whole fish (head, bones, the lot) that went into them, plus this particular method of preparation was the most expensive one. Our two fish cost just under 40 euros, 20 per head, which is not too bad, just a lot more than you pay for your main dish here normally.

In unrelated news, we got contacted by the delivery company and by their partners that are handling custom clearance. It seems that we already have three papers out of four papers necessary (oh, how they like their papers). With any luck, we will see our stuff finally arriving in ten days or so.

El Cotillo and sudden sign of life from Canon

2011-10-13T20:30:00.000+01:00

Yesterday there was another holiday, kids didn't go to school, and we went to El Cotillo. This time, instead of heading straight for the beach, we went around the village, which didn't take very long - it's a very small place. It was sunny and hot (surprise, surprise), and pretty much empty, apart from an area close to the marina, where restaurants were fairly busy.
Given the bright sun/strong shadows, prevailing squarish architecture and sparseness of vegetation, Fuerteventura tends to show nice limited-color abstracts everywhere, and El Cotillo is not an exception.

The sculpture is that of a fisherman's wife. I think that whoever designed that fence was a fan of Escher

Only three days has passed since my last post about my broken lens - and we had a phone call from Canon! (Maybe someone from there reads my blog? :). They phoned and quoted an outrageous price for the repair, which we accepted since it is still about five time less than buy a replacement. So hopefully, I will be able to extract better value out of my 5d mk II soon.

Puerto del Rosario - cow on the roof, new dress and my lens's still missing

2011-10-10T15:54:00.001+01:00

We went to Puerto del Rosario again on saturday; Timur, who is very unlike Yuri in this respect, demanded some new clothes. I also bought myself some stuff, including rather funny little dress below (photo taken by Kirill). In my defense I can say it was on sale, plus our container is still out there somewhere (!), so we have to survive with a very limited wardrobe.

On the bad side - my main lens disappeared in the unknowable depths of Canarian Canon Services and I never heard from them again. Nobody answers my emails, shop was closed when I went to check it, and telephone's not answering either. I guess that's not good.

Or, if I take an optimistic view, it can equally mean more shopping :)

In the other news, it is my birthday today and it seems that underwater volcanic eruption on El Hierro started. Those two are unconnected.

a woman in dunes (I want to break free)

2011-10-06T14:47:00.000+01:00

A real-life "woman of the dunes" that I am now, I gotta start every single day with sweeping. The same fine white sand that makes Fuerteventura's beaches so beautiful makes my floor gritty and unpleasant to walk on, and we all like to walk barefoot.
Today, after I put on my shorts and short top, I thought that that they'd combine nicely with my sweeping broom. A short photosession followed, with Kirill doing the actual shooting

Have a look if interested

I am perhaps a bit too old for both those clothes and for the poses (I am hitting "berry again" age next week - Russian readers will know what I mean ;), but I am pleased with these pics, so I thought what the hell.

growing basil and other things

2011-10-02T17:06:00.001+01:00

Those are tiny basil plants that are now growing in a pot on our sunroof. I am surprised - I thought when bringing them outside that they might not be happy about so much sun. It appears I was totally wrong.

Unrelated pics follow

Timur gradually accumulates a new collection of art materials. Apart from pencils, he now has a brand new set of acrylic paints, brushes and a small canvas to practice on. I expect a masterpiece any day now. I must say, I am getting annoyed with our container still being somewhere in between here and the UK - there's a lot bigger collection of stuff in there. On the other hand, house is nice and empty now - which means that it is tidy-able, or whatever the word is. Everything's tucked neatly away; once stuff, especially books, gets here, we will have a problem.

Meanwhile, Timur's producing his pencil masterpieces - this is his design for - unexpectedly for me - a cushion. I didn't press for details, but I think that the idea arrived into his head because Yuri produced a nice batik cushion in his old school. I am not sure that they do projects like that in Spanish schools, but we will see.

short-lived croc

2011-09-27T18:57:00.000+01:00

Today, at flag beach again, this young couple decided to build their own piece of sand art. They choose a nice spot for it - damp sand a little away from the waves edge. It was a crocodile, and it was just starting to shape up nicely when the tide started to come in.

They started to work faster and faster, really fast. The guy even tried to block the waves with his own body, but unsuccessfully, you can't argue with the ocean, once it decides to go up, up it goes.

And that was the end of that croc

I asked them if it was their iguana on more or less the same spot last week, but no, the croc was their first project. It looked like they had fun making it though, and sand sculptures don't live long anyway, so I guess it doesn't really matter if that one only existed for a few minutes

town abstracts

2011-09-26T17:56:00.000+01:00

Some semi-abstracts snapped around the town. Enjoy

sand art - professionals

2011-09-25T18:24:00.000+01:00

Couple of days ago I've posted a picture of sand iguana on Corralejo flag beach. Now let's have a look at how professionals do it :) I must say I was really impressed with the skull. Less so with a pyramid below, but still impressed.

Plus the guy who made a pyramid has interesting tatoos.

Have a look

Fiesta del Mar (queueing for)

2011-09-25T01:52:00.002+01:00

We went towards the port of Corralejo to see what was on offer at Fiesta del Mar. We knew that it was starting at 10, but I can't bring myself to get up this early on saturday, so by the time we got there, it seems that fiesta was all about queueing (funny spelling innit).

It was not, of course, even though it did look from the distance that a mass christening was occuring on one of the boat slides. The queues were for free watersports - normally quite expensive. We saw sea kayaking, jetski and what looked like a start of snorkeling trip. There was probably a lot more stuff happening. and of course there were freebies from sponsor - green straw hats especially noticeable

A few more wet pics follow

2011-09-23T19:28:00.000+01:00

We finally found a way of planting our plastic windroses wherever we want. All you need is a large-ish volcanic stone with a through hole from a local beach. We are probably not meant to remove "beach material" here either, but every single garden I looked into uses those stones, so I guess it's ok.

More unrelated pics below

This cute iguana was on the Corralejo Flag beach couple of days ago - probably done by amateur sand artist, professional ones make giant dragons and castles at more crowded town beaches and then collect coins for their pains

As our stuff is still in transit, Timur's restricted to pen and paper versions of his celtic rings - which is fine by me, availability of copy-paste in illustrator kills part of the charm

And here's another pattern which he spend some time on. I actually have photos of two more stages of this drawing and wander if they can he easily joined in a animated gif somehow? Never done it before.

pomegranate and cactus

2011-09-21T19:14:00.000+01:00

Today we started to talk about plants and what can and can't grow round here with Rosa. I was mostly interested in whether it's worth buying and trying to grow a small orange tree (there are some in our local garden center/shed). I am still not sure about the orange tree, but Rosa is also very interested in things that grow, so she shown us a some of her current favourites around the site - small pomegranate tree (even given us one tiny fruit of it) and a beautiful cactus blooms that will last just today. Don't know what cactus that is - maybe there are some experts reading, identification will be appreciated. The flower is about 12 cm in diameter, very pale magenta/pink, the bloom is taller than the rest of the plant

Cactus pictures to follow

visitor that walked by herself

2011-09-18T19:39:00.000+01:00

Meet our new neighbour. She moved in, with her accompanying humans, a couple of weeks ago. Two weeks seems like a long time for a cat, but she's still confused as to which house is hers - or maybe doesn't really care. We tend to sleep with windows open, so she feels free to drop in any time.

Couple of unrelated pics follows

sand art

2011-09-16T12:02:00.000+01:00

What to do in the dunes if you forgot to bring your book :)

parque natural - flora and some fauna

2011-09-13T16:42:00.001+01:00

One of the species of Salsola (saltwort) that is flowering at the moment on the verge of parque natural across the road. My attempts to identify it to species weren't particularly successful so far - I am divided between Salsola vermiculata, which seems to visually fit better, and Salsola divaricata - I am not sure how significant is the difference between yellow and pinkish color in this case. The attraction of thinking that it is Salsola divaricata is that this species is endemic to the Canaries.

Macro and some more nature shots follow. Warning - there's a very big caterpillar in there, open with caution

This is a flower of the bush that shares the habitat with Salsola, and is possibly even more resistant to lack of water, judging from distribution.

Timur spotted this huge caterpillar on the ground in the dunes, going around its caterpillar business. It was a surprise for me, as I didn't see either big moths or butterflies around here so far - maybe it turnes into something else entirely? I just don't know. Any ideas? It was about 12 cm, and its front is on the right, in case there're doubts.

There were not much wind recently, and dunes are full of paw- and foot- prints. This one is puzzling though - what are those long trail in the middle of each print, did the perpetrator have very long middle claw? or maybe it's a spur - I am not even sure what way it was going

underwater

2011-09-11T17:13:00.000+01:00

At the moment Timur doesn't just jump in the pool holding his nose closed with his fingers - he even swims under water like that.

He already had three days at school. He doesn't understand much Spanish yet, but fortunately, there's another boy in his class, who speaks both english and spanish. He's helping Timur out with difficult bits (which is pretty much everything right now, apart from drawing and having a snack)

butterfly car

2011-09-06T23:44:00.000+01:00

Looks like someone else is missing butterflies, too.

Tomorrow primary school starts. It feels odd, as if our kids are going to school for the first time ever again.

Assorted pics follow

butterfly

2011-09-04T19:34:00.001+01:00

There aren't many butterflies (or moths) around here. My theory is that they are blown away by the strong winds of Fuerteventura. Maybe they stop at Tenerife, but then again, maybe not.

This one is a small butterfly, I guess, although I am never sure what exactly is the difference between butterflies and moths. I don't think the clutch of small white round eggs in the morning glory cup belongs to it. I didn't notice the eggs till I've opened the photo on big screen.

And two more (unrelated) pictures. Enjoy

schools and saturday walk

2011-09-03T20:54:00.000+01:00

This week, on the 1st September, we made one more step to settling properly - went to the both schools where kids will go and filled in/picked up various forms that need filling. The secondary school visit went a lot easier - the administrator spoke English quite nicely. Primary school admin's English was rudimentary, worse than our combined Spanish, but even with him we achieved understanding - by repeating everything a few times. Interestingly, his approach to making himself understood by people who clearly are struggling (us) is not to speak slower - rather louder. But we got there in the end - or so we thought till next morning, when Kirill's mobile rang. Apparently, there was a duplication of paperwork, and somehow Timur's record was showing that he already was studying at school here. The funny bit was that it was the same no-English guy who rang. By the end of conversation, when everything finally was sorted (fingers crossed), Kirill spoke with three different people, with better and better English each time.
Anyway. Some pictures from today's walk. Enjoy

windrose roundabout

2011-08-29T19:20:00.001+01:00

Today, while checking out the schools, we walked to the roundabout that is completely covered with Claudine's wind flowers. It looks somewhat odd with volcano and malpais in the backdrop, but I liked it a lot. She keeps fixing it - in the strong winds of Fuerteventura plastic flowers keep propelling away. It lacks scale and permanency of Cesar Manrique's creations for Lanzarote, but I think it's part of the deal - make something ever-changing with recyclable material, rather than something permanent with metal and stone

unlimited supply of blue sky

2011-08-28T22:25:00.001+01:00

Picture above is taken from the top of small artificial hill in botanic gardens of Corralejo. I'd say to call them "botanic gardens" is a bit of overstatement, but that's what they are according to a little plaque next to one of the gate. Basically, there are cacti, palms, olive trees, some other low-growing plans with no nameplates yet, water feature, playground, little skatepark (below) and that's pretty much it at the moment. What is remarkable about it is that it's almost brand new - opened in march this year. It was a wasteland before. They keep doing small adjustments to it - adding tables, planting more stuff, but I never managed to catch the work in progress, although we pass it every day.

Speaking of wastelands. You can see one on the pic - empty area, visually between the picnic tables and white buildings in the distance. I believe it's a victim of spanish building industry crisis - they dig out the place for future development, and went broke at that point. Still, it's good that they run out at this stage and no later - there is a tremendous skeleton of a building just as you enter Corralejo, and it's sort of scary to look at. Maybe one day I will make a little project photographing everything that is bad and ugly, but not just yet.

Those two guys at skatepark were sweet. Little one was scared to try, so his dad got on the board and started skating around.

bright day

2011-08-27T19:29:00.001+01:00

Another bright and sunny day today. Timur's relaxing after a swim - once he is in the ocean, it is very difficult to extract him from there.

This beautiful butterfly necklace was given to me by our talented friend Luisa Curbelo just before I left for Fuerteventura. I still haven't assembled an outfit that will go with it, but the colors match the island beautifully

moving water

2011-08-26T23:42:00.000+01:00

Long exposure shot of some stones on nearest beach. I must say that I miss having a "normal" lens at my disposal. It's been a while since my broken lens was sent (I hope) for repair, so, fingers crossed, maybe our reunion is getting closer. Also, our container should be getting closer, too, and there are some lenses in there.

blue pearl

2011-08-24T23:29:00.000+01:00

I didn't use Apophysis for a goodish while, and a new version became available meanwhile. And today I suddenly discovered the I can make flowers with it. Something to do with variation called "blob" of all things - check it out

green-haired man

2011-08-23T23:04:00.000+01:00

I don't like small fiddly things. Timur, on the other hand, loves them. When we were in local art and craft shop, he spotted those little white men and later oh-so-casually mentioned them to me ("... and, by the way, they are only one euro ninety five..."). So of course we bought one. I am pretty sure the coiffure should ideally be thicker, but Timur's happy, and so am I. Tomorrow we will give little white man a haircut with manicure scissors

Ghost crowd and fishy sandstorm

2011-08-22T15:54:00.001+01:00

Yesterday we went to the belltower again, bit there's really just one road junction worth recording visible from it, so we went for light smudges this time.
This one looks like a crowd of ghosts, or maybe hattifatteners again

And this one is, according to Kirill "CERN experiment gone wrong". I see exactly what he means.

The little video shows Timur making a sandstorm for little fish in the shallow water on Flag beach. The fish looks a bit like spot-tail barbus you see in aquariums, but barbus is freshwater dwellers, for all I know.

Hattifatteners and shrimps

2011-08-21T19:29:00.001+01:00

If you aren't a fan of Moomin Books, here's what wikipedia has to say about Hattifatteners
The Hattifatteners are tall, thin, ghost-like creatures.... They are constantly, silently and purposefully on the move. I am pretty sure there was a picture in one of the Moomin Books where Hattifatteners were casting long shadows, heading into the sunset. Seeing those thin euphorbia shoots in the dunes made me think of them.

Except they are not really white. The taller ones are sporting rasta-colors, with only the black missing from the set. Small ones are bright green.

And now about the shrimps. There's a "fish spa" in the old part of Corralejo, where you put you feet in big aquarium, where small fish nibbles on them, removing dead skin and massaging. The experience cost, if I remember correctly, 15 euro per 20 mins, or something like that. It's a funny way to feed someone else's fish.

Today we discovered that you can have a shrimp spa entirely free on Flag beach in low tide. Those small semi-transparent shrimp will come and nibble on whatever part of your body you choose to place in the water. The video shows them nibbling on Yuri's hand. I was filming something else entirely a bit later, and one of them came and pinched my butt. I am not joking you.

view from belltower - by night and by day

2011-08-20T12:06:00.002+01:00

Yesterday Timur got really impressed with car trails photo on a cigarette vending machine (of all things). I've shown him the star trails photo but he didn't look particularly convinced. So we climbed the only accessible high point close to us - belltower in Campanario shopping center - and took a few photos of the only good road junction that is visible from there. That involved placing my camera on the edge of the window outside metal railings, as my tripod is still in transit. All in all, we did well.

And this is Lanzarote as seen from the same belltower, but late morning

Fuerteventura pics at shutterstock

orange kite delivers

2011-08-19T17:49:00.002+01:00

I don't understand much about kitesurfing, but my best quess is that the point is not so much going to and fro very fast (as in the last picture), but to do tricks. We observed a big bunch of wind- and kite-surfers yesterday on the Flag beach. It took me a while to figure out that one of them was doing something other than just turning and heading back into the deep almost every approach - a guy with lot of bright orange in both his kite and underside of the board.

I thought his flights (you can't call them jumps any more) with just one hand on the kite handle and board held vertical very cool. He is quite likely well known among kitesurfers - if I ever find out, as I did with Claudine, I will tell.

Watch him also i this little video, coming from the right and flying. I was following the other guy with sweet spot of lensbaby, but he stole the stage, didn't he?

A note to myself - next time, come closer and take a lower position, so the height of the flight was plainly visible

sand angels and patterns

2011-08-18T17:05:00.001+01:00

Although most of the sand surfaces are disturbed, there were a couple of perfect mini-dunes a little bit away from beaten track - razor-sharp crest and everything.

the "wind-screen wiper" pattern is a result of the thin brown root (or possibly a stem, I am not certain) going to and from in the wind.

That was inevitable I suppose - undisturbed sand invites you to make a sand angel :)

After making a few big angels, Timur started making small ones with his fingers. We pointed out to him that those looked more like newly hatches baby sea turtles going for water, and he was happy with this interpretation

walk to the dunes

2011-08-17T23:05:00.001+01:00

Although natural park starts across the road from us, "proper" sandy dunes are some way away, and today we measured how far - 45 minutes walking reasonably fast by the roadside. There might be a shortcut through the park, that we'll try next time we go.

Right now it's a lot of tourists coming to visit the dunes during the day - we saw some arriving by busload, plus there's not much wind, so the surface of the sand is disturbed in many places. I know when to come for good organic sand patterns though - in winter, when there's very few people and wind is blowing. Admittedly, when wind blows really hard, sand dunes might be just about the last place you want to hang around.

there were some undisturbed surfaces even today

road goes past Flag beach, and I took this little video with lensbaby. I think sweet-spot effect looks quite good when it's moving.

Fuerteventura looks and lens that is no more with us

2011-08-16T23:18:00.000+01:00

Today we went to Puerto del Rosario and I've parted with my faulty lens and some money. It will be sent to Barcelona and they'll call us and tell if it's reparable, and if yes, how much it'll be. The guy we spoke to in canon center didn't speak a word of english, but funnily enough, I understood what he said, without catching any particular keywords in his speech - probably because it was of a highly predictable content. It will be "un mes, mas or menos". I am feeling sort of post-lens depressed, me.

Meanwhile while we were planning the move and making the move, Timur definitely turned from a being of unbearable cuteness to a being of unspeakable coolness. At least in his own eyes.

And up till the moment he lets his true nature to show through

I like Kirill's Fuerteventura look - extreme slouchy is just right in absence of both an iron and desire to iron anything. Ever

flowers, coffee and haircut

2011-08-15T19:20:00.001+01:00

Delonix regia, flametree. They are now in bloom everywhere

Today Timur got a haircut. That is a "before" picture of him sitting on a bench in front of small no-nonsense peluqueria. Look at the length of those sideburns, or whatever they are if there's no beard even in potentia

We had our coffees in a cafe two steps away while Timur's hair was being done

And that is a couple of "after" pictures. I am not sure how they do it, but our boys seems to have a knack of putting on contrasting t-shirts completely independently. Timur also has a bright red one. It will almost surely appear on him when Yuri chooses his bright green.

Except sometimes they both put on bright blue ones.

Flag beach

2011-08-14T19:59:00.001+01:00

We've spent happy couple of hours on Flag beach. It's just to the south of Corralejo.

Waters between the beach and small volcanic island Isla de Lobos in the background are very popular with kitesurfers, and there's a wind- and kitesurfing school based on it (is that expensive or what? wish somebody buy me a beginner's package). When we arrived today though there was just one kite flying, and that over land. More flew when we were leaving. I am pretty sure I saw this particular kite there before - maybe that particular surfer, too, but they are lot more difficult to distinguish, what with wetsuits and all.

Today was my first proper swim in the ocean too. Waves were on a biggish side, but since we couldn't see red flags, we assume it was ok to go in the water.

The only problem with this beach is a lack of facilities. There's no showers, at least none on the side of the that is close to Corralejo. Even bars, which seem to be pretty omni-present in Spain* are represented by a little kiosk with no shaded seating area. I suspect the reason is that now it is practically impossible to get a permission to build something more permanent in this area. I would feel that it's fair enough, the beach being either a part or on a border (never sure which) of a natural resort, if not for the two monstrous edifices of RIU hotels that are already there. How did these get their permissions, I don't know and don't really care either, just wish they disappear.

* - which makes a phrase often found in spanish textbooks - "hay un bar cerca de aqui"? sound quite ridiculous really. of course there's a bar round here, chances are, you are standing right in front of one.

fuerteventura pics on shutterstock

blue and yellow

2011-08-13T18:27:00.001+01:00

Looking at today's lot of pics, I realised that they fall into blue and yellow color scheme, so let's have a blue and yellow post. Well, mostly blue actually.

Today I spotted this beautiful morning glory flowers on one of the walls. I saw only pale lilac variety before, which is nice, but nowhere as nice as blue, at least in my book. I must remember to look for seeds next time I am in the shops.

Windsurfing class just off the town beach in Corralejo.

Photos below are from yesterday's night, actually, today's small hours (madrugada, if I use this term correctly). Guess what?

Yep, a rather feeble attempt to catch myself a Perseid or two. The glare in upper left corner is the full moon - it didn't help of course. I though I saw one meteor, but it was out of frame. The exposure is probably about five minutes or so. I made several attempts, none worked really. Still, valuable experience

a builder was a-building

2011-08-13T01:28:00.002+01:00

Nothing much happened today except I got on a bicycle first time in years. It's a fancy one - gears and handlebar brakes. Not at all like bikes of my childhood, where you needed to pedal backwards to brake. It will take some time before I attempt a big ride, but it'll happen one day.

Builders are doing something to the roof of a local shopping center. I just like the geometry of this view.

Bonus track is a very short movie of Timur, taken both above and below the water surface. I must say Kirill's little camera handles this switch pretty well.

and the name is...

2011-08-11T20:47:00.001+01:00

Looks like Corralejo is even smaller than I thought. Couple of days ago I wrote that I can't find the name of the lady who makes wind toys. Today we went to salsa lesson (which proved to be bachata, but never mind), and who turns up in the middle of it in bright yellow dress? So now I know her name - Claudine Macquart. By another coincidence, piles of magazine where the article about her was published and that I threw away were both in the bar where the lesson happened and in the little photo shop where we dropped in after lesson to have a passport-size photo done.

We stopped for drinks in a little bar that only opened a couple of days ago. I am pretty sure that rattan table is supposed to have glass top. Well, it didn't :) But I like the way lensbaby treated its pattern.

watery day

2011-08-10T23:34:00.001+01:00

what a lovely splash

and here Timur's engeged in a bit of beachcombing. We were mostly looking for sea glass, to use for decoration in our flowerpots. We found a few pieces, so pictures will follow some day

wind toys

2011-08-10T02:23:00.001+01:00

Now we have a few of those recycled-art wind toys, bought from a charming lady at the artisan market in Corralejo. Since I first saw those rotors at the market, I keep seeing them everywhere - there are trees made of them in some gardens, and a whole plantation on one of the roundabouts.

She is one dedicated lady. I saw a small article about her in one of the many free local magazines, but, in spirit of keeping clatter to minimum, I threw it into a recycling container and, of course, immediately forgot her name. I will ask next week.

Both still photo and the video taken with Lensbaby.

dunas y playas otra vez

2011-08-09T01:38:00.001+01:00

One of the things that we wanted to do yesterday at the dunes was to make a new "fuerte-zumba" userpic for Kirill's profile at zumba.com. We weren't particularly successful, picture above approaches the desired effect, but we'll have to come back and do it again some day

Beach pictures had some rather nice splashes in them

This one is unrelated to zumba, but very much related to dunes

energetic sunday - dunes

2011-08-07T20:37:00.001+01:00

Today we finally went to the "big beaches" (playas grandes), about three kilometers from the edge of Corralejo. Ocean was a bit choppy and red flags were on, but we didn't really go there for the ocean. Those beaches are backed by white sand dunes, where our kids (and not only they) like to jump, roll and run downhill
Which is precisely what they (and Kirill) did for a while.

Yuri is not about to start beating Timur up, it just looks this way

market at Puerto del Rosario and plants

2011-08-06T23:06:00.002+01:00

Today we finally went to the "La Biosfera" market at Puerto del Rosario. It's on Saturdays, an the first floor of their enormous bus station. I don't know what was the original plan for the station, but normally it feels very empty and causes you to think about whether humankind is lonely in the universe and things of that nature. On Saturdays it's somewhat busier, but only somewhat. Truth to be told, we overslept, and came there by almost midday. Maybe the market was a lot busier before, but not at that point. There were vegetables, cheese and ham, bread, and one stall with plants. Guess what I bought then :)
Plants were surprisingly cheap, I paid just a euro for this little crassula plant. We also were looking at a cactus with absolutely huge thorns, but decided against it, as our intention was to shop some more. The stall holder handed us the plant, said "mil de euro" and giggled at his own joke. I tried to ask in a very shaky spanish if he's there every saturday (we really set our hearts on that cactus), to which he cheerfully replied at machine-gun type of speed. Hm, thought I, I take it as a yes.

We re-planted our first cactus with Timur. I think it looks cute

An extremely windy Avenida de la Constitucion in Puerto del Rosario. No, it was not as blue as all that, it's just that I forgot to switch the white balance from tungsten after yesterday's visit to Pincha Cabra, but I sort of liked it that way. The trees that line the central walk are unknown to me - they are covered in green fruit (or are they seed pods), velvety to touch. Kirill found a few that are ripe, or at least dry, and they open and show brown seeds inside. So many unknown things.

And that's just a part of our dinner :)

morning coffee (and yet another lens report)

2011-08-05T17:24:00.005+01:00

Pictures are just to demonstrate our morning coffee progress and test an explanation that I found yesterday for the my lens problem. In this helpful page Martin Pot from Australia describes what he's going to do about his old lens with the same problem. While I am not brave enough to go inside an L-series lens with a screwdriver (which is what he ultimatly did), an advice that I extracted from his post was that the lens would still work if the aperture was open. So I tried and it does work, as you can see in those picture. 4 is not the best aperture for this lens, at least for my copy of it (veeery soft and a lot of color leaking), but it is a great relief to see that something still can be done with this lens before I either break it completely with my own fixing effort of decide to go for an expensive option and fix it at official Canon place.

And here is a little cactus we bought for Timur yesterday in our garden center - well, garden shed sort of thing, anyway. Today we went to the beach with Timka and collected a bit of sand and pebbles to transfer it to the pot properly - at the moment it is standing inside a terracotta pot, still in its original plastic one.

And here you can see a mesmerizing process of grounds settling after cold milk was added to the little cup. What you can also see is Kirill frantically waving his hands at me, showing wordlessly that he doesn't like me waving my hands at him. Which I did a second before the video started, trying to show not to talk. Juts watch the reflection in the little coffee pot towards the end of the video

new shoes and lensbaby

2011-08-04T11:17:00.000+01:00

following the sad demise (or at least temporary incapacitation) of my 24-105 lens which I was using more or less permanently, I am now left with two choices lens-wise. One is my old sigma (not full-frame lens, ok for isolations but not good for scenery, street photos, portraits, etc) and Lensbaby. My new shoes were taken with the later. The aperture I inserted sadly lacks marking, but it is between 8 and 16, perhaps 12. It is a fairly small opening anyway, but you can see that lens still produces a very distinct sweet spot and obvious out-of-focus area. I think it is especially visible on the second pic - focus on the upper shoe, spherical aberrations on the lower one. As for me, this is a nice effect, but I strongly suspect stocks won't take it. I will try though.

The denim shoes, btw, accidentally fit perfectly into what I envisage as "Fuerteventura look" - combination of sandy colors, blues in various degrees of fading and ochres. I am slowly assembling an outfit to match a very nice necklace given to me by Luisa just before we left. Picture to follow one day

Puerto del Rosario - colors

2011-08-03T15:39:00.000+01:00

Pictures from Puerto del Rosario - this time with more color in them. The shoes I bought yesterday I tried today at salsa class, btw - they are a bit stiff in a way new shoes tend to be, but work fine, good balance.

I find this yellow of postman (and postwoman) scooters very touching

Puerto del Rosario - white hot

2011-08-02T18:27:00.002+01:00

We went to Puerto del Rosario today, to get more bits of paperwork done. We haven't done what we intended, but got forms, a list of docs to bring over next time and an assurance that we are not needed there all four of us, just one representative will do. So we considered it a success.

When we started from home, it was a bit overcast. It started to heat up when we walked to a bit - in the direction of the shopping center (Las Rotondas), because I needed some dancing shoes. Inside the center it was cool and on the darkish side, and easy to forget how hot it is outside. Which it was

Plant above, ith long tubular yellow flowers, seems to be a local equivalent to black elder in the UK - it seeds itself everywhere, grows, where allowed, to considerable size, and seems to be considered a weed - at least I saw it being chopped off around local police station

El Cotillo and dying lens

2011-07-31T19:46:00.001+01:00

Today we went to El Cotillo on a bus - which was large, comfortable, air-conditioned and on time. I don't know why it surprises me, but it does. I think it was the same bus both ways, at least it was the same driver.

We've been to the village before, so, led by imprinting, we turned right as we came to the ocean, and walked to the "los lagos" (lakes) beach that is sort of to the north of the village. It's a series of nicely enclosed calm lagoons, white sand and black volcanic stone, with easy sandy access to the water. Only after we came back I've checked and found out that there are much longer beaches if you head in the opposite direction, but they are exposed and not calm - better for surfing than for swimming.

On a sadder note, my old trusty 24-105 lens seems to be dying :( Camera claims that there is poor connection to the lens and doesn't write the image to the card. Camera seems to work fine (touch wood) with a different lens, so... If anybody feels like buying me a new lens full-frame lens from Canon L-series, you will be most welcome. It is likely that those three images and yesterday's set from performance by deloFlamenco will be the last ones taken with 24-105, at least till I repair it.

Kirill and kids resting in small corralito before walking to the los lagos beach

organic texture of volcanic stone

getting paperwork done

2011-07-30T11:14:00.002+01:00

Over our first week here we've achieved an important thing - we've got possibly the biggest bit of paperwork done. That was obtaining a "residencia" - green paper of A4 format per head, stating that we live where we live. Apparently, we are supposed to carry it around. Used to be a photo-card that fits in a standard card slot in any wallet, but that was changed to a floppy large piece of paper with no photo which doesn't fit any. Doesn't make a lot of sense, but there you go. It will probably change again, hopefully we'd be able to do our own paperwork by then - this time we had to engage professional help

We have to do a few more pieces - maybe next week.

Pictures are more or less random.

Cup of coffee in a cafe in Puerto del Rosario, while we waited for Sabrina, who went off to the bank to pay the official fees.

Timur's drawing on the sun terrace.

Timur's icecream - kids were promised a reward after a boring visit to ayuntamiento and that was his.

selling my car

2011-07-28T18:06:00.001+01:00

this is a somewhat boring post, but I thought I'd better do it for a record, plus it might be useful to somebody. I never sold a car before, and was intimidated by the idea. But I had to, I thought black just won't work on Fuerteventura, it'll be like a furnace.

An aside - now I see some black cars around, and I although I don't know if air conditioning manages to cool them down, my main concern, I can see that none of them look clean - fine dust seems to settle on them almost immediately. Light color is a necessity

Needless to say, I procrastinated. As an excuse, if I really need one, I can say that I really did need the car till the last moment. I made some preliminary research and found this website - http://www.wewillbuyyourcar.com . Searching for independent reviews shown that they tend to give a fair market value, not the best perhaps, but I was more concerned with hassle-free process than with getting max value. Another restriction (didn't apply in my case) - car needs to be less than ten years old and have less than 80 000 of mileage.

So. On Friday, exactly one week before we flew out, I went to their website and filled in all the forms to get a quote. As I am not mechanically minded person ("it's big and black and it goes" is my idea of good description), I stopped at a local garage and asked them to look at my tyres beforehand (two were close to legal limit, but not there yet). I listed all problems that I know with the car, got my quote (which was more or less what I expected), accepted the offer online, and somebody called within two hours. He went through my description with me ("what sort of scratch?" - "overoptimistic parking close to a column" - "ah") and we agreed that their driver will come next wednesday (they wanted to come on tuesday, but wednesday was not a problem).

The driver came and went through the car very thoroughly. It seems that I listed everything apart from the fact that a stone chip in the windscreen started a small crack and the whole thing needed replacement. The same person I spoke to called again to re-negotiate the price. The difference seemed fair to me (it is an expensive piece of glass), so I accepted the new price. He said to expect a bank transfer within 20 mins, and that's what happened. Driver was there waiting for the transfer to be completed and took the car away only when I saw the money in my account. The only problem with the whole process, if you can call it that, was non-arrival of confirmation email from their bank, but since I could access my account online, that wasn't so much of an issue. And that's pretty much it :)

Kitesurfing

2011-07-25T16:26:00.003+01:00

Yesterday we finally found the way down to the beach - not the town beach, but one at the beginning of natural reserve of dunes of Corralejo. When it's windy, it's full of free-range kitesurfers. It was windy yesterday.

I never observed the tricks they do before - I was under the impression that they just go to and fro very fast. I was wrong. Maybe the weather was appropriate yesterday, maybe it's something to do with the fact that there's kitesurfing championship going on the other end of the island, but they were doing jumps, twist and turns, you name it. There was also a fair bit of falling going, too. Shame that my biggest zoom's in a container somewhere, but I caught what I could.

Those guys are crazy, and I mean it in a nicest possible sense. I want to have a go too, one day. I probably would never able to jump like that, but I will try

fuerteventura images on shutterstock

Artesan market in Corralejo

2011-07-24T17:51:00.001+01:00

Today, and every sunday, there was an "Artesan market" (Mercado de artesanía) in commercial centre Campanario. What is for sale are mostly useless, though often desirable - volcanic stone jewelry, trinkets, bags, more jewelry, etc. There were some food for sale - local cheeses, bread - but not much. Apparently you need to go to Puerto del Rosario on Fridays for food market - which I fully intend to do.

What I especially noticed where those wind toys made out of plastic bottles.

And here is the charming lady who makes them. Opposed as I am by now to all these small fiddly object (who won't be opposed after all the packing), I still feel inclined to buy a few of those daisy-like things off her.

There was one more display that I wanted to photograph - mobiles, made from materials salvaged from sea, but their maker immediately indicated that he doesn't want me to photograph, so I deleted the only snap I did. Shame, but his loss really.

Spiral staircase inside the eponymous belltower (campanario)

Listening to the (quasi-)traditional band in the main square of the center

Although what they played was a mixed bunch of stuff, they were really quite good. Some people even attempted to dance to their music

Once again, have to say that color is probably all over the place - can't correct it on laptop

first and last

2011-07-23T17:04:00.000+01:00

My last week was full of "last" things - last zumba lesson with Luisa, last salsa with Nunchi and Udoka, last casual lunch in Saffron Walden, even last trip to its Library and recycling center, etc. Granted, apart from possibly last two items, the other things can still occur if I come over for a visit, but it felt sad all the same. I will miss all that, even the recycling center

Today it is a different story altogether - day of "firsts"

First litrona bottle shared in the patio

First visit to cafe Amarena, which was Kirill's favourite place to get a cup of tea and free wi-fi before telefonica guy (who is usually busy planting random telephone poles all round Spain) finally came and connected the house to the world. Look at this teapot, isn't it just beautiful?

Oreo crunch icecream - perhaps not my thing, but it was free :) - waiter made a mistake and gave it to us gratis

And first piece of sand art and the artist who made it at the Corralejo town beach

colors are quite likely off, as my work screen is in a container somewhere, but you get the picture.

Race for Life - Cambridge

2011-07-03T16:08:00.004+01:00

we came to Cambridge today to spot two friends that were taking part in Race for life event. Needless to say, we were sort of late, as we tend to be, so Kirill managed to spot one, me - none. What we did see was a lot of ladies of all ages, all without exception looking lovely in their (mostly) pink outfits, enjoying a run, jog or stroll under sunshine. I liked it a lot. I like it when anybody can join, and here it is pretty much the case - unlike marathon, for example, where even strolling the whole distance is a huge effort. Granted, it's ladies-only event, but apart from that, very inclusive

love those lashes

A photography note - I don't know what exactly possessed me, but somewhere halfway through, I changed white balance setting from "sunshine" to "automatic". Color went mad from that point on - what with all this pink around, plus green reflections from the grass. I must remember to never do that again

lot more pics in facebook album

Grassington

2011-06-06T20:33:00.000+01:00

First time (and the only one until a week ago) we visited Grassignton with our friend, on almost the first drive around in the UK ever, fifteen years ago. I don't remember much from the first visit, apart from some bunting across the streets.

This time there was no bunting, but the village (or town if you insist on being correct) is almost too pretty. We went for an extremely short walk to the Linton Falls, then a little way along the river Wharfe and then turned back into the village (yeah, town, I know) in search of a cafe

I saw some activity on the river and couldn't figure out what it was - and now wikipedia tells me they are restoring hydroelectric plant there. Well done, I say.

There was a not-so-young, probably retired, couple eating their lunch on the table next to ours on a coffeehouse. They had two cute small dogs with them. We finished our cakes, walked up and down a bit (and believe me, it doesn't take long) and I've noticed familiar dogs hanging around outside tables in a pub. Sure enough, their owners were sitting there, having drinks. Enviable life, I think - cafe-crawling whole day long.

Shoes and other things that are good

Back from Yorkshire

2011-06-03T17:52:00.002+01:00

just came back from Yorkshire after a couple of days of going around places we saw first time fifteen years ago. Yorkshire holidays always turn out to be nice in low-key way - no big discoveries, no big disappointments either. We stayed in Leeds and went for drives. I do believe I broke some rules, turning where I was not at all supposed to - and doing it twice in as many days, due to our navigator's directions. I just hope they'll let it go if I am caught on camera.

Below are some almost randoms pics

Difficult to spell but easy to pronounce - Knaresborough. Easy on the eye, too.

I spend a while waiting for a train to appear on the viaduct, given up and we started moving down to the river level when it finally did, and I wasn't really ready of course. There's a picture on another camera, though, taken with lensbaby, but I haven't seen how it turned out yet.

yum yum beads is a place full of objects of desire for me. As you can see from price labels, I am quite reasonable really

And here is Timur getting into a smallest available space for reasons best known to himself. It reminded me of the observation in his brother's nursery report "Yuri likes taking all the toys out of the boxes and then sitting in them"

Luton carnival 2011

2011-05-30T20:42:00.003+01:00

Second year we go to Luton carnival and it second year it rains on their parade. You can see the rain in some pics. Stupidly, I didn't take an umbrella out of the car, so we started moving pretty fast just as soon Acro Iris went past us, and didn't see the tail of the parade properly. It's a nice event though, rain or not.

Wet Arco Iris (and Kirill) is moving past

firebreathing dragon. real fire, very hot

kids got tired and fed up pretty early under rain

Luton carnival pics at shutterstock

lot more photos in a facebook album

would smell as sweet?

2011-05-29T17:21:00.002+01:00

Once setup for "black mirror" photos is set up, so to speak, it's difficult to stop making small still-life images with it.

The rose bud is from our garden, rosebush came with the house. The plant is very old and the trunk base is as thick as a small tree's. Flowers are not particularly pretty, they open too quickly, loosing the central swirl, most attractive feature in a rose flower to me. But they are highly scented, so much so that it seems almost unnatural. The scent is so strong that it reminds me not so much of other flowers, as of a small tube or essential rose oil that we used to have in our house in Moscow, years ago.

I just looked up the rose oil, and think that maybe "our" rose is related to rosa centifolia (cabbage rose) that is apparently one of the two main sources of the oil. Well, all roses are related, but some more'n others

black mirror images on shutterstock

weekend

2011-05-23T21:17:00.002+01:00

There was an international market in Saffron Walden over the weekend. We only got there on Sunday afternoon, when it was pretty much over (*), so it was bit empty

We did buy some olives, bread, biscuit and yet one more unnecessary thing for Timur - small panpipes.

I am guessing it was a lot busier and more interesting on Saturday, but it worked out too complicated a day for us - first everybody bout me were at the final concert at Duxford workshop, and then later Kirill and me went to a Latin Party. I was feeling somewhat under the weather, but we did a couple of dances and even were complimented - we are apparently great dancers, us :)

* - "к шапочному разбору", something like "in time to pick up your hat < and leave >". Apparently the expression comes from the times when a) men were wearing hats of some description all the time b) they left them by the entrance when coming inside a church (and on some other occasions, but church seems to be the most obvious). So, if you came towards the end of service, meeting or whatever, you arrived just as everybody were locating their hats before leaving

pea plants - tendrils

2011-05-21T15:17:00.004+01:00

I guess I'd better give them something to cling to before they suffocate each other

trio of onions

2011-05-20T19:52:00.003+01:00

No reason for this picture, except they look nice. I don't know how is it around here, but my granny would always put an onion that has started to sprout into a jar of water to get the green "plume" of spring onion eventually.

Onions that we buy here hardly ever sprout, or maybe it takes them so much longer that we eat them before it happens. But this trio did eventually, and was placed in water, and made water brown overnight.

Today Yuri came from school, looked at them and went "mum, why do you have onions standing in what looks like beer?"

And that brought another memory - of coloring Easter eggs (real chicken eggs, hard-boiled) with outer layer of onion skin, the thin papery stuff. You put a lot of onion skins in water, add eggs and booil. They go lovely rich brown.

Of course, it involves saving a lot of onion peel, first eating a lot of onions.

old lens

2011-05-17T16:08:00.006+01:00

I had my sigma dc 17-70 2.8-4.5 idling ever since I switched from cropped frame canon 20d to full-frame 5d. I theoretically knew that nothing terrible will happen if I put it on fullframe camera, but something always stopped me.

Now when I switched to the newer version of 5d, I finnaly felt brave enough to try and see what happened. and what happened is that I liked the results. my only complain is that the circle of invisibility (or whatever the technical term is) is not full. It can be helped to a degree with photoshop

Looking at it now, I'd say I should have used two different pictures to form the full circle

More practically, the lens is macro, and even if you deduce the useless black space, it still gives a bigger object size pixel-wise than my current main 24-105 L. Below is 100% crop. It was sharpened a bit during processing, but then save-for-web ate some of it, so what you see is pretty much out-of-camera

All the pink flowers above are sainfoins (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onobrychis_viciifolia), growing by Sawston bypass - Local reference for those locals that are interested.

No reason for producing an image below at all, except I happened to press ctrl-i :)

all sainfoin pics at shutterstock

splashes

2011-05-16T21:26:00.002+01:00

there are a lot of splashing fruit&veg pictures around, but they are always fun to make, because the results are somewhat unpredictable. I like taking pictures of smoke for exactly the same reason.

It would be much better to have a bigger vase or even an aquarium with completely flat surfaces, but we avoid buying any stuff that is not completely necessary right now, in preparation for the move. The setup we use is a lot more achievable and can easily be seen from the picture below. But it requires Kirill to be quite precise when dropping the apple, as the opening of the vase is small.

knit fast, die warm

2011-05-14T17:33:00.004+01:00

Couple of days ago a lady electrician came to check wiring and fitting in our house. She noticed that I have a stash of knitting yarns (I readily admit to compulsive yarn-buying, me) and mentioned a wool shop in Saffron Walden. It happened to be in one of the nooks you hardly go to, unless you have a specific place in mind - a passage between King Street and High Street where Mocha cafe is. It doesn't even show on the googlemap as a separate track.

Of course I felt I must go check it out, and today I did. The motto "Knit fast, die warm" was on a blackboard outside. The shop is small and cute, with a lot of interesting yarns, considering the available space. For example, the blue ruffle scarf is made of a pre-kitted strip of loose netting, which you crochet tightly on on side. I never seen one of those yarns before, and spent a minute trying to imagine how much time it must have taken to knit that much ruffle in what looks like a very fine yarn (came up with "an awful lot" figure ). With that strip thing, you can make two scarves a day, if you feel so inclined :)

And this is recycled sari silk, and there was recycled bamboo with nice lustre to it, and felted knitted bags (I had to really stop myself) and lots of other stuff. Timur was especially impressed with sort of thin plastic tubing which you can make into purse or a bracelet - and it will glow in the dark. I suspect that we will have to come there again specifically for that.

Did I buy something? Sure I did. Couple of balls of cotton-bamboo mix, nice goldish-yellow color. No idea what I will do with it, but I just had to buy something.

And here's Cassie, under umbrella just in case. We didn't have any noticeable amount of rain here for a goodish while, but better safe'n sorry

Non flowering lake and more flowers

2011-05-11T17:36:00.002+01:00

My visit to Norway was short (less than one full day), but there was no plan, only a vague idea that I want to see more white flowers (wood anemones that is). So when we went to a lake and didn't find any around, it was decided that we will go back to Tønsberg were they we in plenty. There were also lily-of-the-valley, just starting to bloom. We met a guy in his fifties who was collecting them. He probably was not supposed to do that (I know you were not supposed to pick them round Moscow when I was growing up), which probably explains why he produced some sort of vague mumble instead of articulated words. But I understood him - he just wanted a few for their beautiful smell :)

Norway pics at Shutterstock

Egg tree of Stavern

2011-05-10T20:41:00.003+01:00

We went to a little town (village?) of Stavern to have a little walk and some food. There is a fortress there, main building of which is on a small island (or maybe it's a peninsula, I am never sure with those scattered large rocks in the sea). The main visual impression on me was made by the row of large yellow sheds (maybe used to store ammunition, or maybe not. Sadly, I don't know Norwegian) and by a lilac bush branches hang by easter eggs, which somebody put on a bench just outside of them. Somehow, it seems sweet that they went into trouble of giving branches some soil to hold on to. Lilac responded well - you can see green leaves

Norways pics at shutterstock

white flowers and snakes

2011-05-09T22:11:00.001+01:00

it's second year in a row that I go to Norway in early May, to visit my friend and to see wood anemones (hvitveis) everywhere. Last year I discovered that there were blue hepatica flowers there, too - not as many as anemonies, but still. And this year, lily-of-the-valley, wood-sorrel and violets suddenly caught my attention. I am sure they were there last year, too, I must have not been paying attention

One more thing that sure caught my attention was snakes. Two of them, not that many but plenty for one day. One was an adder, with bright zigzag pattern, on a largish side - he was sunning himself on a path when we cane along, and wriggled away fast, but with certain dignity. Second one was a smallish green something that was hidden between lily-of-they-valley leaves and made a pretty panicky escape from somewhere very close to my feet. I was scared to step on anything without checking first after that

Norway pics at shutterstock

yesterday's sunset

2011-05-08T22:42:00.001+01:00

in Norway. Not sure what the name of this beach is, but, as so many other things in Norway, the place is connected to vikings. There are big piles of (big) boulders, and they are remains of burial mounds, unless I don't get the explanation right.

And you not only are not supposed to remove "beach material" (which could be tricky, considering the size of some of those boulders) but not even allowed to build cairns. Probably the idea is that somebody might confuse your creation with a real thing and rush their finding to a nearest archeological society. Or something

London marathon, part two - supporters

2011-04-27T21:55:00.001+01:00

A few more pictures from the marathon - observers, charity support groups, police and ambulance. Para-marathon, so to speak.

Those ladies were really not supposed to sit like that - there's about 6 meters drop on the other side, into the Tower's moat.

Don't know exactly what the white t-shirt say, but they clearly came prepared

That's not me in the picture, but I had to do the same thing - ask a policemen where I should cross the street. All the above-ground crossings were closed for obvious reasons, and it was not easy to find the underground one with so many people milling around.

Before I asked a policeman, I tried to ask somebody else - a guy who occupied a strategically choosen position on a top of street railing. He turned to me, gave me his full and undivided attention and said "I am sorry, but I am French. I don't understand many words in English. What was your question again?". Of course he didn't know where the crossing was, but I found it highly amusing that he gave this little speech instead of a universally understood shrug and apologetic muttering

Loved their shades.

Three green men. I only spotted the third one when I was processing

I don't know if David and daddy from little guy's bandanna is the same person, but they were well supported in any case

pics from London marathon at shutterstock

Benmore Botanic Gardens

2011-04-23T17:46:00.002+01:00

When we visited Benmore Botanic Gardens couple of days ago, rhododendrons were in bloom. Even without them, gardens would be great, but it was a big bonus. I definitely recommend a visit, if you are on Cowal. They are a little bit more expensive than Cambridge ones - £10 for family ticket against £8 for two adults - but then again, the parking is free at Benmore, they are a lot bigger, more varied and have a lot better setting.

The only problem with them I see is that only part of the gardens is accessible for wheelchair users - the level one close to the river. Large portion of the grounds is one big steepish slope with many stairs and a viewpoint at the top

Since I didn't get rid of my old camera yet, I took it with me. I don't like changing lenses alfresco, there's always a chance that something sticky gets onto the sensor, so I used another camera instead. Lens that I had was my underused lensbaby. What I did forget to take were changeable aperture rings for it, and the one I had was large-opening 4, so the sweetspot is small and "fly-in" effect rather dramatic. Life like bumblebee must see it

Redwood avenue was very impressive. I don't know if it's not allowed to walk there ever or just temporary, but it was impressive even without spoiling the nice lawn.

One more thing. Little touristy "freehand-drawing" map of Cowal, that you pick at tourist info places or in hotels, has a mistake on it - the entrance to the garden is shown on a smaller road that branches off A815. It is actually on A815 itself. If you are coming from Loch Fyne - Loch Eck direction, it doesn't matter, you will pass the entrance. If you are coming from Dunoon, just carry on along A815. I think the mistake was introduced because two roads are physically very close together.

Puck's Valley and smoked salmon

2011-04-22T22:06:00.007+01:00

just returned today from a short trip to Cowal peninsula in Scotland.

Yesterday we did a lovely walk in funnily named Puck's Glen (apparently after Shakespeare's imp character from Midsummer Night’s Dream). Depending where your start, it can be 5+ km or just 2+ km walk. We happened to choose the shorter one - from it's "own" carpark (free! I was so surprised, honestly). If you want a longer version, you can start from Benmore botanical garden (great place in itself, report to follow) carpark - incidentally, also free, both carparks off A815 between Holy Loch and Loch Eck. The path is a bit slippery, but it's understandable, considering that the best part of the walk is along a stream that forms beautiful small waterfalls and rapids.

Smudgy figures in red and green are Timur and Yuri, respectively.

And below is a part of my well-deserved (I think so, anyway) lunch after the walk. We had it in Coylet Inn - I think that's the only inn along Loch Eck. There's also a cafe in Botanical gardens and that's pretty much it, so the choice is limited. Luckily for us, it's an excellent place to eat, and since nobody pays me to say it (pity, that), it really is what I think.

pictures from Scotland at shutterstock

London marathon

2011-04-17T19:26:00.001+01:00

Me and Yuri went to see London marathon today. I have a few hundred of pictures that I eventually will process (eventually, yes), but I just wanted to say - I worked it out, marathon is an equivalent of all-London carnival.

I completed London marathon a few years back - I hesitate to say "run", it was not running, more hobbling, especially towards the end. But I did complete it, which is a huge thing. What I could remember from it (not very much, I must say, I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other more or less) - the atmosphere was great. So, I decided to use what might be my last chance to see it as an observer. I wasn't dissapointed.

We didn't even try to catch the leaders - it takes a while to get there from our village, and leaders, by definition, are very, very fast. Whoosh - and they are gone. What we did catch is fast men race coming towards 23 miles mark and slow runners and walkers just passing under Tower bridge - half way mark, more or less. It's a magic spot by tower hill where marathon passes twice. And the slow crowd is much more interesting to watch - lots of costumes, lots of charity runners, less concern for speed.

Below is a little sample from the very tail of all the pictures I took today. Maybe I will do another little report with especially interesting costumes later

runners

and watchers

why vuvuzela? well, why not

Really liked those guys between the columns

Stripes are definitely back this season

guys from various charities are stationed along the whole route. as far as I understand, their task is to cheer "their" own runners - people who are raising money for them by running - but I think they cheered pretty much everybody. Not those two ladies, though, I think they are tired - main body of the marathon is past 23 miles mark by now

One more note - kids do get bored there. It's a looong event, and even if they manage to get a really good view, they eventually will find something else to do. Toddlers slept in their pushchairs, and this guys' fighting with those red clappers