La Graciosa in summer

Shallow lagoon Bahia de Salino filling with water in high tide

Ok, with all the excitement of the wildfire over, the academic year has started for real, and I feasted my (and, hopefully, your) eyes on the rare sight of freshwater stream on Gran Canaria, I would like to return to our short stay on Lanzarote.

Lanzarote in summer, Playa de Papagayo

Beautiful water. Playa Mujeres

This year’s summer holidays were a bit scrambled for us, due to this and that. To punctuate the month of August we decided to go to Lanzarote, just for three days. We’ve already been to Lanzarote a few times of course. This time, the aim was to check out Playa de Papagayo, Parrot’s Beach, a small cove beach not far from Playa Blanca, and La Graciosa, the smallest inhabited Canary Island, “the eighth one”.

Isla de Lobos walk

Both me and Kirill are attending Spanish classes two times a week, arranged by a local "adult education" organization. As the end of the year approaches, they arrange a few events for the students. First of them was a trip to Lobos (small island between Fuerteventura and Lanzarote) yesterday.
We've been to Lobos before, once in my case, twice in Kirill's, but both times we didn't really explore, just went to a small shallow cove and stayed there. This time, since we were with somebody who knew where to go, we decided we'll join the walk.

view from belltower - by night and by day

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.

starry pool

one more from Lanzarote. Usual trick with star-shaped highlights. No reason except it's a summery picture and I am still combing my old folders.

might make a nice userpic though

Lanzarote sand

This photo I made on the very first evening of the last visit to Lanzarote. First time I went through the raw files from that trip I didn't touch it because it was too dark. I still think it's too dark and color is quite obviously not great (contre-jour pictures rarely have beautiful colors), but somehow, with shining sand and that couple in the background, it asked to be shown, and here it is.

Pottery in Haria

We drove to Haria, which I think the guide described as "the prettiest village on Lanzarote", via road from Teguise. That experience (driving that is) I don't recommend to anybody - there are a few hairpin bends on the way down to the village, with very very limited visibility, and the road is narrow. Fortunately, there is another, much gentler road, coming from eastern side of the island, so you do have a choice.
The village is quite pretty and relatively green, but it's not as pretty as I somehow expected. What I really liked there was the pottery workshop, belonging to Aquilino A. Rodríguez Santana - would be cool to find him on facebook, but he's not there, apparently.




Those little pots are rather charming. We bought a couple of small ones (keeping in mind the luggage restrictions). I would like a bigger one, but maybe I will have a chance to buy when we move to the Canaries.




That's the owner of the workshop. The black inclusions in the clay he uses are particles of volcanic sand, as far as I understood (between his not very fluent english and my extremely limited spanish)





some of his sculptural work. I like the female figure the best.




While we were there, a young woman, his friend and colleague, walked in. She was not from Lanzarote, but from mainland Spain, on holidays, and she was also very curious to look around, pick things up and examine them

This ant helmet-mask she is wearing is made of papier-mache. It's quite scary. He tried to explain to us what it is for, and as far as I understood (see note of language barrier above) it goes as follows : he wears it when he stage protests against their beautiful island being taken over by hotels, which encroach on the land as ants.



Lanzarote pics on shutterstock

sentinel

originally, we booked Parque tropical apartment for a week. There was no problem at all with the apartment itself and ground/pool maintenance, and staff was perfectly friendly and very understanding when ash cloud closed the airspace and we couldn't fly back home when we were supposed to (so we stayed one more night there). But, if you are used to relatively quiet place, this could pose a bit of a problem - the apartments really *are* in the center of Puerto del Carmen, which means that if one of your windows is facing the street, there is going to be cars and people going past well into small hours. It's quite noisy. If you are from town somewhere, no problem, but for us, village dwellers, it is.

So, for the rest of our unexpected second week at Lanzarote, we went back where we were over Christmas - Hyde Park Lane. It is a bit out of the way (which means quiet nights and fine if your are renting a car). The only real drawback there is that the little bungalows are semi-detached (duplexes), and the sound insulation between two parts is practically non-existent. We didn't notice that over Christmas, because the second half was empty. This time somebody lived next door. Luckily for us, they were really really quiet not so young couple, so we had nice relaxing second week.

When we walked up to the reception to find out if we can just turn up or need to book ahead (turn up is fine), this beautiful cat appeared from somewhere and sat on the low stone wall surrounding the apartments. We admired it, and I am pretty sure kids were looking forward to getting to know him better. Sadly, he never shown up again

Teguise market

Every Sunday, there is a market in Teguise, in approximate center of Lanzarote. The is quite a variety of stuff for sale - from foods, via inevitable aloe vera products and lava jewelry to clothes and musical instruments. You won't necessarily want to buy something there, but it's a pretty village, and very lively on Sundays, well worth a visit just to look around.

The girl in the picture above was a very friendly jewelry-seller there. She was happy for her display to be photographed and posed herself. I asked if she had a facebook or email account to pass the pictures (if any f them were good). Unfortunately, she didn't have either. I am thinking - won't it be great if one of the people who see this picture know her of somebody who knows her? I know the chances are slim, but still - if there is anybody on Lanzarote you know, show them this pic. I will be very happy to send her a file in good resolution

Below are guys who entertained shoppers at some point, they were great too

hazy sea

inevitable long exposure shot. eight seconds exposure, aperture - also eight. at this time the artificial light starts to show close to the water edge, giving it reddish tink

Light evening on Lanzarote

I just love the way wet sand reflects, especially when the tide is out and there is a large expanse of the beach covered in just a small film of water.

I did some balancing betwen the top of the pic (tends to go light) and the bottom, but not too much

house number ten

we found this old house in El Golfo - village where you come to eat seafood. I am not sure if anybody ever lived in it, or it was abandoned at the construction stage, but it looked very picturesque, what will grungy walls and blue sky and bindweed flowers below it

Village itself is very small - one main street with a few cul-de-sacs off it. Its restaurants (apparently raison d'être) were nicely positioned and served good food, but charged more than elsewhere - specifically for the location, I guess.

The road to the village is in good condition, but quite curvy as it follows the coast. There is a picture of the road here, so you can see fr yourself.

Apart from the restaurants and black volcanic sand beaches there is one more sight to see there, but having seen it I am not sure it was worth it - Charco de los Clicos. What you see if you follow the link is exactly what it is - a shallow strangely colored pond on black volcanic sand. If you do want to see it, I would advise to go to the village itself, park in the first carpark on the left, and walk about 100-150 meters. You will get a good view of it from a high-up point. If you follow the sign on the road instead, you will come to it on the same level and will get a worse view. It appears you can't come right up to the pond itself anyway - there is some sort of barrier, just about visible in the picture.

Pimientos de Padron

Those small green peppers, fried and salted with coarse (sea)salt, make at excellent starter or snack. Actually, this picture is to (hopefully) catch your attention, I just wanted to mention a couple food-related observations.

First - the best value for money for good quality authentic food on Lanzarote we found in Bodega Rubicon, In La Geria wine-making region. I will post some photos of this very odd place later. I can't comment on the quality of their wine, their main produce, since I was the driver, but their small restaurant served us an excellent meal.

Second, long overdue mention - small restaurant Ureka (yes, not Eureka) in Santa Ponsa, Mallorca, where I tried those peppers first. It is a small place, and you find it at the end of the row of restaurants as you go from the beach toward the marina, somewhere here, maybe a little to the right, but on the same street. They serve excellent-value, simple but tasty food, like whole baked local fish and those peppers.

PS - and we bought a packet of those pepper seeds, so I will have a go growing them here

Lanzarote sunset again

we are back from Lanzarote, arrived today in small hours.

looks like we got off really easy with airspace closure, although not inexpensive - extra holiday week did cost something, of course. but we didn't stand in long airport queues (apart from one instance), and didn't spend any time sleeping on the floor anywhere, and didn't have to cross half Europe on coach, train or foot.

our short and not very interesting story was that on the day the airspace closed - 15 April - we were supposed to fly back to the uk. I switched on the tv to check if my watch was correctly set and saw the news. Only Kirill went to the airport then, and, luckily, by the time he got to the desk, all the weird flying options ("you fly to Madrid, then take a donkey to Barcelona and fly from there...") for the nearest days were exhausted, so he had to take tickets for exactly week later - a bunch of them just became available, as people who were due to fly to Lanzarote on that day for a week cancelled the whole thing.

So we stayed for another week and flew back on the second day it became possible - which may well be the best scenario

Unexpected bonus was that when I was taking car out of Luton airport,I was fully prepared to pay a fortune for an extra week. Incredibly, they apparently waived the charges - when ticket was inserted, the barrier was raised and off I went. But maybe there was some glitch and they'll be in touch with coupla thousand bill, who knows.

blue and yellow

outrageously oversaturated in yellow band, I know. but it got a certain something in exchange, hard to define, but it sort of speaks to me.

fake waterspout

I have a few pet fears. those include flying (not very original, I know), and natural disasters of various kind. I never experienced one yet, and hopefully never will, but I do feel somewhat panicky when, for instance, wind is getting too strong for my liking

picture above is not a real tornado, of course. people who saw one will probably point out a lot of things that are wrong .

but there is some justification behind it - when on Lanzarote in December last year, we saw this cloud that I think was trying to become a funnel, but kind of abandoned the idea half-way. I took a picture (surprise, surprise). and worked on it a bit :)


that's how the original cloud looked, only the contrast bumped up.


Island in the background is Fuerteventura

hot royal blue

seems like everybody is freezing and snowed under. sun from Lanzarote to help.
spring will be here shortly - I was told that crocuses are already out in Bournemouth.

last glow

photographing sunsets is something that everybody does, and it's extremely difficult to produce something even close original in this area. so I didn't even try.

But - I just developed an instant theory why the sunset-y photographs are almost frowned upon by photographers - well, you know, they are generally landscapes, and landscapes are supposed* to have "an interest in the foreground", right? and what sort of foreground can you have in a picture where the main subject is sunset? - well, you can have a silhouette (human, dog, horse, bird, building, boat, standing still, moving whatever), but if foreground subjects are too big or you drag them out of pure outline with a flash, sunset is not a main subject any more. So it's somewhat difficult. Still, it's even more difficult to refrain from snapping away.

Anyway. Matter of fact, there was foreground interest in the original frame, but I choose to cut it off. It's (surprise, surprise) a photographer squatting on the water edge



* - I dunno why, one on these rules.

yes, it's smoke on the water

while collecting our stuff for Lanzarote, I forgot to take the tripod (I also forgot to take my driving licence, and a few other bits and bobs) So to make long-exposure shots, almost an essential seaside activity (well, yes, I might be a bit obsessive about it), I had to make do with some friendly stones, my backpack and my jumper for support

While waiting for one of the fames to expose, I heard a small noise behind me. I don't know whether it was a general feeling of being safe there, or my overall mindset, but I didn't think "mugger", I thought "another photographer". I was right, of course.

Timanfaya

we went to TimanfayaNational Park on Christmas day. It was open, but the day was overcast. I am told we've missed a lot because the light didn't allow to appreciate the colors in volcanoes. True, most of the photos turned up in different shades of black (almost like in the land of Death on Terry Pratchett's books). Some of them do show some of the true colors, and this is one of them. Fantastic place.

check out the geyser demo here http://www.flickr.com/photos/k1r111/4226397586/
they also demonstrated "burning bush" effect - throwing a bundle of sticks into a shallow hole in the ground - it starts burning after a while, because of a magma camber relatively close to the surface. Alas, no video for this one.