Sun and Sea

                                     Hola!                
Here we are in the Canary Islands.

On Fuerteventura, to be exact.

"Hola" means "hello" in Spanish, which is the official language spoken here.

The Santido Playa Esmeralda Resort

It blows my mind that a year ago I had never heard of the Canary Islands, and now I am on one of them! 








For those of you who also have never heard of the Canary Islands, they are an autonomous community of Spain, located off the coast of northwestern Africa (below Morocco)

The Canary Islands  seem to be THE place that Scots go on holiday, so I have heard from the Scots I know. 
They go to Tenerife, in particular.     

It doesn't take long to get here and it's pretty cheap - as long as you don't try to come that one week between Christmas and New Years. 
Then, the price doubles. 
Ask me how I know this.

It is the place everyone likes to go to get sunshine and warmth in the middle of the dark Scotland winter.
And that is exactly why we are here.

And the timing couldn't have been better.
After all the rain and cold and wind of Thurso and then Amsterdam, it was quite a relief to come here, where it is a full 40 degrees warmer!! (mid to high 70's all week!!)

the resort

And here we are, soaking up the sun. Sitting on the beach.
Walking on the beach.
Sleeping with the windows open and a light breeze blowing through.

It is a dream to be here.

BEAUTIFUL sunsets!

My bare arms did not know what to make of it. They had forgotten what it feels like to have the air blowing on them.

Except for that extremely too-hot and humid time in Venice and the week I had in Germany, my arms have been covered for the past 6 months. It really felt weird at first to have direct air exposure on them after so long. I know some of you think I am exaggerating, but it's really something I noticed. 

The view from our room

Mike gets all the credit for getting us here. 

I was full-up on planning trips this fall - to Glasgow , to Amsterdam with Kathryn, and Brussels and Amsterdam again with Bryan - with train schedules and plane schedules and searching for B&Bs and looking at things to do in each place, that I could not even get my head around going from cold northern Europe to warm sun and beach - in the same trip - and all the details required to make that happen.

 So, Mike took over and made it all happen.

And trust me, that was not an easy job. But he did it.

I did not even do any research before I came to find out what there would be to do here.
I figured if all I did was lay on the beach all week and (hopefully) get a tan, it would be enough. So, I only had hopes, but no real expectations.

And then we flew over the island.

I looked out and thought, "Oh no. Where are we?" It seriously looked like we were landing on the moon!  The ground was dark. It was desolate. The picture out the plane window captured it pretty well. Inside my head I was saying, "What are we going to do with ourselves here for a whole WEEK?"

We got in our small, rented car and drove an hour south to our resort.
The scenery started to look a little more optimistic.  We drove through great expanses of desert, but there were at least pockets of civilization here and there. Buildings with terra cotta colored buildings and roofs. And wild goats roaming all over the desert. 

And then there was the ocean. A Big, Blue Ocean!

It was all (minus the goats) weirdly familiar.
And  this is why....

It felt like Las Vegas. 

In particular, it felt like Las Vegas probably would have felt 80 years ago when it was quite small - back when it was a small town in the middle of a big, hot, desert valley surrounded by bare, brown mountains.  

Only imagine it's after that earthquake everyone says will eventually happen, where California drops into the ocean and/or becomes an island and southern Nevada becomes beach-front property.
That's exactly how it felt there.

It is familiar because I grew up in Las Vegas. Well, at least from age 11 until I got married at 21. I spent many a hot summer day swimming in our backyard pool (every other house had one - before it became so expensive to build them) and many a day riding my brother's mini bike through the desert that was beside our house. Before they built houses there.

Even the evenings and the sunsets felt like Las Vegas. Dry air cooling as the sun set and painted the sky like a tequila sunrise. And since Mike and I both spent years in Las Vegas, (we both graduated high school there and were married there) we both had the same sensation. The only difference was that all of this was on the ocean.

And believe me - we soaked it all up!  Storing it up because it has to last us a while. (At least until April, when we are going to Italy for 2 weeks!)

So, I know you are dying to know what we found to do on this desert-moon island. 

Actually, there was a lot to do. There were cool caves on the west side of the island. There was a great sand dunes north of us. That would have been cool to go to, but we didn't really want to drive that far. But we did go to the Oasis Park and road a camel! The park was really well-done and we thoroughly enjoyed it. It was better than any zoo we've been to for a long time. There were all kinds of animals that had been rescued, really great animal shows, where the caretakers walked around through the audience with snakes and lizards and such so that you could see things up close. The man with the snake actually got a little too close and made me squeal.  There was also a very big cactus garden with tons of different kinds of cactus. 

But really, we mostly slept late, lounged around, laid on the beach, drove around a bit to explore nearby towns and shops, and ate seafood at local restaurants.

Spanish food. That's what I got a hunger for. Spanish rice, fajitas  or enchiladas, right? No. 

Fresh fish. That is what they have to offer here. And they serve a WHOLE fish on your plate! And it is WONDERFUL!  
I could eat this fish several times a week and not get tired of it.  Especially if we were to be eating it while sitting by the ocean watching the sun go down.

And a delicacy here was fried goat cheese served with jam. Yum. 

But the thing that I HAVE to tell you about is.... the beaches.
How shall I say it?  They are......uhhh....... European.

Some of you probably already know where I am going with this.

By 'European,' I mean that Europeans seem to be a lot 'freer' with their bodies than Americans and I know there are places in Europe known to be topless beaches.
Now,  a topless beach would not have surprised me too much, but we were completely unprepared for completely nude people on the beach!!
To some degree, some people were discreet. They laid on their towels - and often out near the desert bushes, where there was a little more privacy. They were not so in-our-face with it.

But there were some that were just out there!
I mean, they were walking around!! 

Back and forth across the beach. In and out of the ocean, jumping over waves. They were standing at the edge of the water, hands on hips just soaking up the sun. And they were standing in small groups talking to each other!  But the thing that just put us right over the edge was when a group of them started playing Bocce Ball!  On the beach!  With no clothes! Who does that??
That was when we really lost it!
And there was nowhere to look!  Where were we supposed to rest our eyes?
The answer - close them!  Take a nap!

No, I don't have any pictures of that. 
Well, I do have pictures of the beach, but trust me when I say I had to work hard to make sure there were no nude people in them!

And the beaches....they extend up into the desert, so people just put their towels down next to the desert bushes (what we would probably call sagebrush/tumbleweeds at home). Or they make these little semi-circle walls of stone to lay inside. (try zooming in on some of these beach pictures)
But we had to be careful about those - that is often where we 'found' naked people - trying to be a little more reserved about it and not so in-your-face, but right there where we least expected it. 
LOL!

Just in case you are wondering how much we embraced the European life-style....

here is my tan line!





Communication here has been more interesting.

So far, everywhere I have been in Europe, the people have had English as their second language, so we could converse with most everyone. 
I don't know about Tenerife, which is a much more popular vacationing place for the UK, but here in Fuerteventura, English is not a second language. That means we have had limited conversations with the people here. We were able to order food, but asking questions about it were unfruitful. So we had to rely on whatever the menu said and hope for the best. 

And as far as food went, we were not disappointed.  It was fun to see that almost every place has pages of menus with a representative flag on each one. Usually the languages are German, Italian, French, Spanish and English (represented by the British flag).

But I have so many questions about life here and the things I saw and I had no one to ask. 

I feel a little sad that I spent an entire week here and don't know more about this wonderful island and the people who live here.

On Thursday, we drove to see the caves and the black sand beach. On the way, we stopped at a sightseeing spot, where we actually had a real conversation with another couple who happened to be from the south of England.  They were ecstatic to talk to us and said we were the first English speaking people they had spoken to in the 3 days they had been here. (they said we had soft accents and liked the way we talked)  They were hilarious. They had been in California last spring and were telling us about their adventures there.  I think we could have visited and shared stories all afternoon!

Then Friday morning at the breakfast buffet, I was waiting for the juice and told the woman ahead of me to go ahead, when a young woman next to me turned around and asked where I was from. She is going to school in Berlin and her mom was there from Philadelphia and said in the week they had been there that I was the first American she had heard!   That seemed so surprising because we seem to run into Americans everywhere we go.  

Except on Fuerteventura. It was a very popular destination place for Germans, especially. 

The time here as gone nice and slowly and we have just relished it.

But all good things must eventually come to an end, right? 





Now, of course, it's not quite that simple.

We will fly to Glasgow today (Saturday) and arrive tonight. We will stay at The Grasshopper Hotel overnight (because we have been there before and it is right next to the Central Train Station). On Sunday morning we will catch a train to Inverness, take a taxi to the airport to pick up our car from long-term parking, and then drive the 2+ hours to Thurso, arriving by supper time.

I hope we got in enough sun to last us a while. It sure was fun.
But I am also looking forward to being home again.
And sewing again.
And making coffee MY way (strong, with double cream).

Update: 
We had 2 signs today that it was time to go:

1. As we checked out of the resort this morning, we heard the Scottish accent - and then met people from Glasgow. 

2. The weather just changed. Thick clouds have moved in with the wind and it rained last night, dropping the temperature today.  Looks like we got the very best weather while here. 

And one last thing: 

I saw this last week and wanted so much to take a picture of Mike and I on the sun deck chairs in this pose and post it right next to this picture....but I didn't remember until we were already on our way to the airport. 

                                Adios!