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!

Las Palmas carnival 2015

I was looking forward to my first carnival at Las Palmas and was not disappointed. While perhaps not as spectacular as the carnival of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the Las Palmas Carnival nicely combined both the show and street party, with audience participation levels very high. It is also very accessible - if you want to, you can see all the events for free, get a good view of all the participants - including the carnival queen and dames, or even ride on one of the floats in the main parade - there are places for hire, I didn't realize it before.

Santa Cruz de Tenerife Carnival Parade 2013

I've heard many times that the carnival in Santa Cruz de Tenerife is something worth watching. "Second biggest in the world", "immediately after one ends, everybody starts preparing for the next one", "amount of feathers and sequins like you won't believe", etc, etc...
Last year we were quite content with much more humble offering of Corralejo and Puerto del Rosario, but this year I figured I should go have a look at Tenerife.
Now, I am not an expert on carnivals. Carnivals that I saw in the UK are basically few days affairs, sometimes just one-day affair, when you have a procession and that's pretty much it. Here it is not the case - various events leading up to the main parade start a few weeks in advance. But I couldn't of course drop everything and go for a few weeks, so I restricted myself to just four days. That allowed me to see the two biggest parades on the island - one in Santa Cruz on the day of arrival, one in Puerto de la Cruz on the day of departure, with the Burial of the Sardine and drag "put your heels on" parade in Puerto fitted in between.

El Cotillo and sunset fishing

Today, me and Yuri went to El Cotillo in the evening to catch a sunset. Corralejo looks to the east, and I am not an early riser normally, so there is a very little chance of catching either in the two “sun just above the horizon” moments. El Cotillo is perfect for sunsets.

The bus driver who took us there looked at the tripod and repeated several times that the last bus back is at eight, at eight, get it? Am I got? I found it rather sweet that he was so anxious for us not to miss the last bus. Somewhat intrusive perhaps, but that’s all cultural, your business is everybody’s business it seems.

big fish and good shopping

Today we walked to the tourist information to find out if there was anything interesting planned for the Sant Joan. There wasn't, or they didn't know about it, which is always a possibility with our tourist information. Anyway. There is a restaurant nearby, which has a fish cleaning table outside, right by the water. Today they had a bahamut being cleaned there. The table was surrounded by people taking pictures, kids staring as only kids could, and seagulls waiting for scraps.

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.

Big carnival parade in Puerto del Rosario

The parade was a week ago already, but somehow there was no time to write it up before.

After extremely photogenic Achipencos I was looking forward to this parade. (Though, unlike Achipencos, carnival parade is not something specific to Fuerteventura, obviously).

I am certainly no connoisseur, but I've watched and photographed some carnivals in the UK, and so far Luton remains my firm favorite, what with all the feather-clad samba dancers and majorettes. Puerto del Rosario grand procession is somewhat short on dancers in feathers - there were three ladies dressed as the one above, but that was all, I think. It reminded me of very tame Saffron Walden take on the same event - dressed up people enjoying themselves on the floats (I saw a few floats with on-board BBQ), amateur samba bands of all ages and so on.

But it can boast an amazing level of participation - the procession was very long for such a small town, and it looked like at least half of the viewers were dressed up somehow. It was like one half of the inhabitants are in the procession and another standing along the route.

sand art - professionals

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

and the name is...

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.

Kitesurfing

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

Luton carnival 2011

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.

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.

zumba demo in Saffron Walden - ahead only

There was zumba demonstration on Saffron Walden market square. It was by my zumba instructor Luisa Curbelo (lady in blue belly dancing scarf), and she was joined by another instructor, Natalia Bull (one in bright yellow trousers).

It was sort of chilly today, but the workout is so energetic, everybody who took part looked hot, not cold.

A few very young girls joined, (one in pink tutu!), which looked very sweet, but I didn't take any pictures, so as not to upset parents by accident.

I must say I myself find zumba excellent fun- considering I never liked really liked fitness, it's saying something I guess.

All the dancing, skipping and jumping was done on the big white letters on the road spelling "ahead only", which seems oddly appropriate

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

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