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 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.

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.

Flamenco photoshoots with Anna Villacampa Gómez

At last, after almost a year of thinking about it, I am writing about two flamenco-themed photosessions that we had on Fuerteventura with Anna Villacampa Gómez, a beautiful lady and a great dancer. As usual, we procrastinated for an awfully long time before arranging the shoot — and the arrangement was finally made only because of our imminent departure.

One of the photoshoots was in the dunes of Corralejo, and the other in the malpais on the road to Tetir, by dead fig tree shaped by the prevailing winds. The second location was suggested by Anna, while we’ve been planning to do the dunes for two years. A piece of red gauze was bought to fly in the wind, Anna choose her own favourite dresses and off we went.

She proved to be a great model. Despite the heat on both days, she was happy to pose and move and dance. The minimalistic background of the dunes worked like a charm, and the dead tree, although making pictures a lot busier, always provided some parallels to the graceful movements of the dance. I enjoyed both days immensely, and so I hope did Anna.

Pictures in no particular order. Enjoy :)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Patrouille de France

we did catch Patrouille de France on Saturday - about 5ish they were on. Their display was great, and standing where we were, it also felt very, very personal - those jets are whooshing by like there is no tomorrow.


I believe from this picture you can see why we mistook them for red arrows on Friday - there are eight of them (Red Arrows fly eight when one pilot is not available, and that's what happened on Saturday), the outlines of the jets are not dissimilar, and the colors of the smoke they trail are the same. And sure there are differences, starting from the color of the planes, but in the distance you can't really see that at all.

I read up on them a little bit and was very surprised and pleased to find out that the team is headed by a woman - Virginie Guyot

And of course I do have a shot with them doing a very similar curve to the previous picture, but I think there's enough curves for a bit.

Duxford air show today

ever impressive red arrows display over Duxford museum today. They are going to kick off the display tomorrow at two, apparently, so there is still a chance to catch them over this w/e.


Yesterday a jet team was doing a display very close to our house. We immediately assumed that they were red arrows, except when they flew really low, I saw that the jets are in fact blue. I was somewhat perplexed, but decided this was a new look for red arrows (Blue is New Red, you know). They did some figures that I didn't ever see the Red arrows do - a heart pierced by an arrow was one.

Today it transpired that what we saw yesterday was French aerobatics team - Patrouille de France, and they will perform today only. Problem is, nobody seems to know what time. We are assuming they'll close the show at about 5, so we are heading back to Duxford soon.

Liverpool carnival

This beautiful young lady was one of the dancers at Liverpool carnival parade this saturday. The parade was not nearly as big or impressive as one in Luton, (I think there were maybe five floats, and ten or whereabouts groups of drummers and dancers), but it was a nice experience anyway. If I understood correctly, it's a relatively new thing, organized just for the last few years by a samba school in Liverpool, so it might grow into something much bigger eventually. that might make it a lot less accessible, though.

It was good to visit Liverpool. I was there only once before, years and years ago, on a dismal winter afternoon, and had mostly unpleasant memories. Now it looked lively and vibrant, very liveable. Sure, there are still parts of it that will probably benefit from a extensive flamethrower treatment, but hey, it's a city, what city doesn't have those, I ask you.

Duxford saturday workshop performance

Today we went to Duxford saturday workshop children theather performance "African Jigsaw". Both Yuri and Timur took part. In Yuri's case you could plainly see that he was rather uncomfortable with being the tallest and oldest boy on stage - there were simply no possibility to hide behind anybody. After the performance he relaxed though and agreed to pose with his "beggar'd cloak" (my old-but-never-used-properly sarong) outside

you can see how much better flash-on images look with a bounced light.

In this case the light was bounced from the ceiling



(although why on earth Timur keeps making this face when posing puzzles me). I love the background with two girls in the sun, happy feel to it.

and here the flash is direct, nowhere to bounce it off



still, nice dynamic picture.

Luton Carnival 2010 - second (and the last) set

the day was dark and most of puctures I've taken are blurry or incredibly grainy (or both). fortunately, there are some good ones, too

Luton carnival

been there for the first time ever today. I must say I was really impressed. it maybe not as big and famous as Notting Hill carnival, but on the plus side - neither is it so crowded. In Notting Hill I could see exactly nothing at all, and my understanding is that this is a rule, rather then exception. Here you really can see the parade from not far

Interestingly, I only noticed the heavy-duty straps (on the first pic on lady's shouder(, for example) that are needed to hold the costumes when I started to look through the pictures.

Weather wasn't great, but well, you can't have everything

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

Mill Road Winter Fair

we went to Mill Road Winter Fair today. The weather wasn't that great and it started raining in the late afternoon, but there were some very colorful guys around, like those. I didn't quite get who they were. They danced a weird dance, and then walked off to another location to dance some more. Loved the tights

Cambridge (Fen Ditton, stricktly speaking) dragon boat festival

festival website - http://www.dragonboatfestivals.co.uk/cambridge/
a few more photos at http://tamara-k.livejournal.com/324898.html
Cambridge pics at shuttersock

red arrows again

samw shhow. shame they don't do flybys for private occasions, or so it appears