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 shutterstock

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 :)