Argonaut

The day before yesterday, Kirill found a nice looking shell with what he thought was something dead and slimy inside it on the sand of our favorite beach. He picked it up and carried it to show us; while he was walking, he felt something touching his fingers, and when he looked at it, a sad blue eye popped out to look at him. He started dipping the whole thing in the water as he walked; at which point the shy dweller climbed out of the shell and made bid to escape. The animal abandoned the shell; it looked like a tiny octopus. Kirill released it into water and it swam away, changing the color as it went. It  left the shell with us. According to my limited knowledge of octopuses at that point, they don't have shells, so we decided that the animal was probably carrying someone else's shell around for protection, rather like a hermit crab.

Lajares-Corralejo

After my last walk around Calderon Hondo, when writing up the post, I noticed how close I was from the system of volcanoes that includes Bayuyo, which is, in its turn, right next to Corralejo. So I figured that a walk from Corralejo to Lajares (or vice versa) is probably reasonably easy, and this Sunday we decided to give it a go. We ended up going from Lajares to Corralejo; maybe next time we'll go another way round.

El Barranco de Los Molinos walk

Yesterday I went for a nice longish walk organized by the center for adult education where I take spanish lessons. There was a goodish group of us going, mostly spanish-speaking students who are taking subject other than spanish (well, for sure). Unfortunately, our own classes shrank dramatically by the end of the year.

Anyway. It's a nice, mostly level and very easy walk, starting at a small hamlet of Las Parselas. From there you first go to the dam and reservoir of the barranco (ravine). From there you go to the bottom of barranco and proceed to the sea level at Los Molinos, even smaller place of about two buildings; one of them being a restaurant. Once you located the dam it's impossible to get lost.

 The barranco is supposed to catch the rain water and the reservoir to hold it; unfortunately, this winter there was no rain to speak of and the water level looks very low. Below the level of the dam, what water there is in the bottom of the ravine is the one that filters through the earth from the ditches that come from the reservoir. There was very little of this water yesterday, which was good from a walker's point of view. Probably not that great for anybody else though.

 Those horses observed with no interest whatsoever as we started on our walk, unlike the dog from the same farm. It barked and barked, but funnily, stayed beyond the symbolic line of his territory provided by the low earth barriers. The pic is somewhat overprocessed; the original taken against the light.

More pictures below; including one of a dead goat. You've been warned.

Oasis Park Fuerteventura

Last week we went to Oasis Park with my sister and her daughter. There are a few useful bits of knowledge that I got out of this trip.
First, most important, and something I didn't realize before - they run their own free bus service from all major resorts on the islands. The schedules are on their website. I am not sure if it ever gets so busy that you can't get on to the bus, we got on with no problems both ways. Free daily bus service means that you don't need to book the trip, you just get on the bus and pay your entrance fee at the park. "Last minute" travel company gives you a tiny discount - 1 euro per person - but takes a deposit, which ties you in a way; knowing about the bus you an just go whenever you like.

Of course, you can also go whenever you like with a car.

Entrance fee is 24 euro adults, 12 euro kids up to eleven. However, if you are canarian resident, take you residencia paper with you and you will get in for 14 euro, kids 7 - much bigger discount than with last minute travel, I wish somebody mentioned it when we were booking.

There is one drawback, or what we thought was a drawback, with buses - they bring people in the morning, and take them back in the evening, in case of Corralejo at 6pm. When we arrived and realized that, we thought, oh no, how are we going to spend seven hours here. However, it proved to be easy - the territory and variety of animals is quite large, there are cafes serving quite reasonable food, and there are a few (three at the moment, normally four) animal shows during the day, of which we saw only one. As a result, we didn't even quite finish looking around the park, and there was no time at all for checking out an enormous garden center attached to it (sob, sob, I have to come back)

Morro Jable

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

more zebras

just one more pic of them and I'll stop.

Do you see interference (I think it's interference, although my optics are shaky) - an additional pattern is formed on defocused zebra in the background? Or is it just me?

Both zebra pictures were converted to black&white using infrared pre-set in photoshop elements. I just tweaked it a bit, adding more green and adjusting other channels to match. By a stroke of luck, it make the background white in first case.

Zebra abstract

Zebras from Linton zoo. Shame that there is only four of them there (at least, I think it's four). In my opinion, a herd of zebras is a sure recipe for millions of instant masterpieces

baby tapir

Went to Linton zoo today and luckily, came to tapir enclosure just as this young lady was finishing her talk. After the talk she stayed to answers questions — mostly about this very cute baby tapir, two months old, if I understood correctly.

After some very short belly scratching, baby happily flopped on his side, as a dog would. It was all very "awwwww".

Baby tapir pics on Shutterstock

those eyes

battling with enormous energy dip, went shopping. it helps, yes.

They had birds of prey charity display at scotsdales garden center, as they often do on weekends. This owl was sitting on a glove of the handler. When confronted with the eye of the camera, it got agitated and tried to fly away - unsuccessfully, of course.

I think he was bothered that somebody (or something) had even bigger eyes than himself

Fuerteventura - around Montana Roja

one of the main roads on Fuerteventura, FV-1 from Puerto del Rosario to Corralejo, passes through the most spectacular it of scenery. First you go through rather lifeless lava fields before coming up to Montana Roja, and then you come into a different bit altogether - white sand dunes of Corralejo. Beaches by the dunes are amazingly beautiful. Some of them are more or less taken over by kite-surfers, but it doesn't really matter because you won't want to swim when wind is strong enough for them, and when it's not, there is no kite in sight. Well, maybe one or two.

Montana Roja seems to be an epicenter of roaming goats. They mostly stay in the lava area, but those guys above came into the dunes for a bit

Two very short videos on driving there first, coming up to Montana Roja




second, past the mountain, through the dunes. Lanzarote is visible in the background

Blue triangle butterfly

several versions of vector illustration of Graphium sarpedon butterfly ("blue triangle") overlayed with old paper texture.

I am still very new to the adobe illustrator, but I like it :)

color version of white can be seen here

Parakeets

there were quite a lot of those loud birds in the little pine grove by the beach in Santa Ponsa. The built complicated-looking nests in the branches, and were easily outnumbering ubiquitous pigeons. there was at least one restaurant named after them (restaurante papagayo), and local-looking people were feeding them - something different from what they fed pigeons, since each feeder attracted either pigeons or parrots, but not both together.

they were obviously not native to balearics, so I made a quick search just now. they are monk parakeets apparently, native to subtropics of Argentina. wikipedia article doesn't list balearics as a home to feral flocks. maybe I should go and correct it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk_Parakeet

PS: I just did, but am not sure if the change will stay since I have no source of information that wikipedia would consider appropriate. reference to blog will probably be considered as spam

I spy with my little eye something beginning with c

this cat was a resident in our hotel on Fuerteventura. I am not a great fan of cat normally but I liked the color on this one, and the lazy dignity of its movements