Spring equinox sunrise at the necropolis of Arteara

Somebody switched on an enormous spotlight behind Amurga massif.

On one of our very first visits to Gran Canaria we booked a stay in a village called Fataga. The reasoning was that the holiday house looked really nice and that it was “only” 45 km from the airport. We were thinking in terms of Fuerteventura or possible even East Anglia, where 45 km on the flat is no distance at all. What can I say. We were wrong. Between the airport and Fataga there is an enormous Amurga massif. You can either go through a steep and narrow pass called Degollada de las Yeguas or go a longer and somewhat less steep route through San Bartolome de Tirajana. The second option is easier, but you need to know that beforehand. We didn’t. The most difficult bit is going up to the pass from Fataga to airport (opposite direction being downwards and therefore easier). When I tried to do it the first time, I got stuck on the steepest curve. I kept stalling the motor and try though I did, couldn’t advance even an inch. If anything, I was going backwards with each stalling. A small queue of cars started to form behind me immediately, and eventually a giant tourist bus joined them. A guide from the bus, very nice and polite German guy, run up to us and asked what was going on. When he found out that nothing was wrong with the car itself, he suggested to drive us to the pass, and did. I was enormously grateful to him, still am.

That all happened in daytime (hence the queue and the help). We, however, were supposed to drive to the airport in the small hours, in the darkness, on the empty road. So. I chickened and we changed the booking for the last night to a guesthouse in Ingenio. I did have to drive the same road one more time of course, but not at night and I was mentally prepared to what was coming and managed ok this time.

Why am I telling you all that, all these years later?

Winter Solstice Sunrise on Mesa de Acusa

I liked this stage of the sunrise the most — the cone of shadow under Roque Bentayga was spectacular

An excursion to greet the first rays of the sun on the day of winter solstice is organized by the Cabildo of Gran Canaria every year. Well, this year there were two, on two consecutive days, coz, let’s face it, the difference in the position of the sun and timing is non-perceivable and we are no druids anyway.
We already tried to attend one of those three years ago. The bus picked us up later than it was promised, the driver took a long way to Acusa plus he seemed to be afraid of the dark or something. All these combined, we arrived to the Mesa de Acusa, a plateau in the upper part of the Acusa village, when the sun had already risen, to the general embarrassment of all.
This time was different. We started on time; the bus was small, so it could take a faster route via the smaller roads, and the driver was excellent. We arrived well before the sunrise and had a lot of time to freeze our bits off and to listen to a very good explanation from the Cabildo guide .
Of course, to observe the beautiful sunrise over the rock formations Roque Bentayga and iconic Roque Nublo you don’t need to be there on the day of solstice, but on that day and around it it’s well known where the Roques project their shadows (see map below). Plus, of course, I like a bit of ritual now and then.
Not overmuch, though.

Noche de San Juan in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

Wow. I'd never seen a firework blast like this before

Every Year, Saint John's Eve is celebrated in the beautiful city of Las Palmas. It has something to do with the foundation of the city, although the idea that it was founded precisely on Saint John's day seems unlikely to me.

Anyway, the celebration is a part of "Fiestas Fundacionales", associated strongly with Saint John (i.e. San Juan) and is most certainly of pagan origin. It is basically a Midsummer midnight madness, except it is shifted by a couple days.

Las Fallas 2018

First published 27 March 2018 @ Listen, Learn, Read

According to my old Rough Guide to Spain (this book served me well but I left it to my flatmates three years ago), Las Fallas are one of the Spanish “Big Four”, together with Semana Santa, Feria de Abril and San Fermín. Strangely enough, the Carnival is not among them.

Now it so happened that I, quite intentionally, stopped in Valencia en route to Boston and back, being able to see some of the festival and even take some pictures of it. For the benefit of those who never heard of ​Las Fallas, I allow myself to explain what’s going on here.

La Falla Convent de Jerusalem-Matemàtic Marzal

Gran Canaria — Planting trees

Most people seem to be engaged in picture-taking, but still

According to Wikipedia, the whole area of Gran Canaria is 1,560 square km. The density of forests vary. I found the following piece of information: when planting, you need to leave three meters between seedlings (assuming square grid for simplicity), which will make, should they all survive, 100 000 trees per square km. So, to cover whole of Gran Canaria with forests, you need to plant 156 million trees.

Well, now consider that some areas are forest already, some are fields and pastures, some are dunes; they don’t need or can’t be planted. So, once again, for simplicity’s sake, let’s say you only need to plant a half of this amount (I’d say even less, but a half is nice *). So, 78 million trees.

Now, the population is 848 thousand. It means that if every single person goes and plants 90 (approximately) trees, the job is done.

Now, why do I try to figure it out, you might well ask.

It’s because this over the last month I have been to two reforestation events and only planted eight trees in total, and the planting season is over this year, so... it’ll take me ten to twelve years to make my fair share of planting :)

Fuerteventura, November 2017 - Kite festival and some other things

The octopus keeps turning up every year. He is one of the biggest kites at the festival.

Every year, in November, мы с друзьями ходим в баню I go to Fuerteventura to see the kites. There is a festival in the dunes, and I have covered it already a few times. It started when we were living on the island, and that was when I got hooked.

I missed the year when we were living in Finland, but apart from that I always caught the festival, at least partially.

Sharks are beginning to fly in the morning

Las Palmas carnival

By now we've been living on Gran Canaria for long enough to get a reasonably good idea of how the carnivals go here, and of course to take a decent amount of pictures. So I felt like writing it up. I've already done it once here, but now I know a little bit more.

Fuerteventuuuuraaaa

Although I wasn’t tough enough to stay on Fuerteventura for more than two years, it keeps calling me back.
I went there in the beginning of November, to photograph the Kite Festival, to visit some familiar places, and to meet old friends. Pure nostalgia, it was.

Don’t really know what to write, apart from some short comments for the photos. Enjoy!

El Cotillo

We came to El Cotillo on Saturday evening to listen to some music on the second day of the free music festival Fuerteventura en Música 2012.
To be perfectly honest, for me it was mostly a pretext to have an evening on the west side of the island and to photograph some evening scenes. Kirill, who was there on the first night, brought back some pictures of some polygonal patterns visible on the stony part of the shore in low tide, less spectacular than ones at Giant's Causeway, but present.
There is indeed a pattern, more obvious in some places, less in others, and where the surface is more eroded, lines of lighter-colored stones are visible between the polygons.

Assorted week

Here are just some assorted pics from the last week or so. First one is our nearest proper beach, which I photographed many times - the Flag Beach. This time we came there when the tide was low, but was just coming in, and the sharp rocks in the foreground were being covered with water. When the water is higher, they might be lurking just below the surface, so beware when you go swimming. Water is beautifully clean, so when you can see that there is something dark under there, proceed with care. Isla de Lobos in the background.

El entierro de la sardina (The Burial of the sardine)

I saw carnival processions before, but I never saw the El entierro de la sardina (The Burial of the sardine) up till yesterday. I looked it up and apparently other ceremonies like this - burning of an effigy, accompanied by a procession/ritual - exist in Spanish tradition in various places. The burning symbolizes cleansing, passing of old and new beginnings. In this case, it marks the end of the carnival. In "normal" circumstances, burial falls on Ash Wednesday, but, it being Fuerteventura, it's not really linked to anything, and feels like a way to end the carnival with a proper bang.

I didn't take any pictures, because it was dark and crowded, but below are some videos of the event. It all happened on the small main town beach in Corralejo.

First, we could hear the sound of samba drums and a small torch-bearing procession of people dressed in black appeared. They were carrying the large figure of sardine with them. It was placed on a podium. If you look to the right of the sardine in the second half of the video, you could see some people dressed as priests, and just about see a crucifix in someone's hand. The whole thing is meant to look like a funeral; priests and lamenting women ("adios! adioooos!"), the works.

Corralejo Carnival Parade 2012

Yesterday there was a carnival parade in Corralejo, the biggest of the several. I heard that it was going to be a big event, but didn't expect it to be on the same scale as one in Puerto del Rosario. I think it was bigger though, and more on the show side. Kirill is telling me that there were at least seven samba bands there (I didn't count myself), and when we leaving, the tail of the procession haven't started yet, so there might have been more. It lasted for two and a half hours, but we didn't stay for all of it - kids were getting tired.
We figure that the samba group above is not from Fuerteventura, although we could be mistaken. They were, deservedly, at the very beginning of the procession, had some simple, but effective dance routines, and their costumes were beautiful, too - check out these lace trousers in the facebook album.

Timur's abstract and things

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

Festival de Cometas

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.

Festival de cometas — unexpected preview

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.

Dunas de Corralejo Half Marathon

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.

Fiesta del Mar (queueing for)

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

Race for Life - Cambridge

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

London marathon, part two - supporters

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.

London marathon

 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