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)

Achipencos 2012

Carnival started in Puerto del Rosario, capital of Fuerteventura, a few days ago. Big carnival parade will be next week and I am quite looking forward to it; today though there was something rather special. It's called Regata de Achipencos, Regata Achipencos, or just Achipencos. I won't pretend I understand what the word means,  probably nothing. The idea is that a few quite obviously sea-unnworthy vessels take to water in the Puerto del Rosario, crewed by strangely and/or cross-dressed people.

The  theme of the carnival in Puerto del Rosario was "fantasies"; that should have given the participants a lot of choice of how to dress. Given that, the number of Smurfs-crewed floats was rather surprising.

walking on Bayuyo

Today we went for a walk up the volcano that is nearest to Corralejo, which apparently goes (or stands rather) by a funny name Bayuyo. There is path going up it that is visible form the village, but we were told (quite correctly) that is is not so easy to find where it starts. So we went with a group of people from one of the hotels, led by somebody who knows exactly where to go. It's not that you can get lost there, it's just that stone desert doesn't make walking very comfortable, so you need somebody who knows how to cut walking on a rocky surface to a minimum

evening light change

 Those two pictures were taken this evening with just eight minutes in between them. Just another demonstration of how fast everything changes when the sun is setting. Of course, the processing might have increased the effect, but the last bits of sunshine disappearing from the Isla de Lobos and the clouds is the most obvious difference

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

Suzi Q by a sandpiper and other sandy things

Small local sandpipers (or are they turnstones, maybe?)  look quite amusing when caught in mid-step. This one looks like he's doing a Suzi Q. He's running around a beached jellyfish - we a have a small-scale plague of them at the moment.

Floral Betancuria

I've just looked in Wikipedia and discovered that Betancuria proudly bear a "city" label in there. Well, I don't know. The population of the whole province was 721 in the latest poll, and not all of them live in Betancuria, so calling it a city seems just a tad excessive.

It's a pretty place, whatever it is. There aren't many real sights to see, and they've been photographed to death. You can hardly blame the photographers - apart from scattering of windmills, Fuerteventura doesn't have many historical architectural landmarks, compensating, of course, for this lack with its natural beauty. In any case, I decided to sort of skip photographing architecture - after playing a bit with a borrowed wide angle lens around the church.

So, here are just some floral things from Betancuria.

wide angle mirador, spirit of the stones etc

Today I went around with friends who are here on holidays in their rented car. While fully understanding the benefits of not having a car (we all are a lot healthier after those six months for a start), sometimes I really miss driving. It gets you there a lot faster than public transport, biking or walking, and sometimes it just gets you there, full stop. I am not about to bike to Betancuria, for instance, while I am still sane.

On the other hand, once the car is there, you feel tempted to drive it even for small errands, and that's not that great.

Anyway. The view above is taken from Mirador de Morro Velosa with Sigma 12-24 borrowed off one of my friends. I know what to add to my (suddenly almost-empty) wishlist now (benevolent universe: hint hint?)

school schedule and full moon

The calendar on the Yuri's school website displays, among other things, stuff like full moons. Reasons for that are best known to the developer, but that means that we are less likely to miss it.

Kids are back at school finally and the moon is full. Overall, a good day

full moon pics at Adobe stock

Lucky king

Yesterday a friend of ours gathered a few people in her new dance studio to celebrate its approaching opening. Since it was also King's fiesta, she bought special ring-shaped cakes - called rosco de Reyes, that you are supposed to have on the day.

The guy who was cutting the cake told us to be careful, as there are two small hard objects in each - a little figurine of the king (or a wise man), bearing gifts, and a bean. If you get a king in your piece, you are the lucky one, get a little paper crown and, far as I understood, will be lucky all year round. If you have a bean though, you have to pay the price of the cake to the person who bought it originally - something that our hostess immediately dismissed though saying- no, that was her party and she was paying.

It was good that we were warned - Kirill found this cute little king in his piece. Despite the warning, he almost did some damage to his teeth. He was lucky that it was only "almost", so I suppose the sign works in a way. He also got the paper crown.

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

Fuerteventura snowflakes and noodle soup

There is very little chance of real snow here, although you never know of course.  We made this  garland before Christmas and it was hanging for a while over TV. Today I decided to take it off and throw it away, but first we went to the roof to photograph. Presence of one unwalkable shoe in the picture is explainable, but it will take too long, so let's say it's just holding the garland in place.

New Year fireworks in Corralejo

We all like fireworks, and there were some planned, so we debated for a while were to go for New Year midnight, and eventually decided to go to the tip of the pier in Corralejo. I was hoping to get some nice "across the water" shots. We took the essentials - grapes (Timur hated them and Yuri loved them), tripod and cameras.

The position we choose was probably the best one - we could see all Corralejo fireworks, plus Playa Blanca and Puerto del Carmen displays on Lanzarote - but I must say that it was not really impressive. I don't know what is the reason - lack of money seems like the most likely one though - but the only place that put up a longish display was RIU hotels, far way away from where we were. I got just a handful of good shots, one above being my favourite. It it was nice low-key New year though, something different for a change.

Now I am seriously considering going to Madeira for next year. Their fireworks is something else altogether. We saw them once and I didn't take any pics, but if I ever going to be there again, I will :)

Happy New Year :)

Blanket, jedi warrior and knitted ghost

Ok, that blanket I was knitting turned up to be veeeery long, so we can cover ourselves with it all four of us when we watch TV or something. It can also be used for fun photoshoot :)

Colors

 Even now, in winter, Fuerteventura's sun is strong and colors striking. And here is Timur, in his bright t-shirt, sitting against blue-grungy wall background, and completely disinterested in being photographed. How unfair is that, I ask you?

First Christmas on Fuerteventura - just a few pics

Apart from being first Christmas, it was also a first time we all went on our bikes together. Mine is blue :). This is Corralejo Flag Beach again, our nearest good beach. Kids read and chatted and we engaged in accumulating a stash of userpics :)

Gnomes, pimientos de padron and sparkler tornado

On Christmas eve, gnomes bought for Yuri in Stokholm found their way on our patio table :)

baking, knitting, eating and making cairns

Those chocolate cookies work with local ingredients just as well as they did with others :) Baked a batch today and want to do another one tomorrow  

not much to report

There's nothing much to report recently. We kept unpacking and finding places for our stuff and I am proud to say that finally all the books are on their shelves. Now it's pictures turn - and we have a lot of those.
Fish above is scrambling for a piece of bread - there was a guy on a pier yesterday who kept feeding pigeons and fish in turn. Pigeons can't swarm like fish though, that's for sure

sparkler games

 Today we finally found sparklers for sale in Corralejo. Not that we were looking very hard before, of course, but there weren't any in first two likely-looking shops we asked. Third time, in a basement "shopping center" off the main street, they have some - short and thin ones, unfortunately, so they don't burn for very long, but it's a start.