Fuerteventura : 2013-10

Took a surfing trip to the Spanish island of Fuerteventura. It's an interesting island - pretty much a desert with stuff built up for tourists. Surfing and kite surfing are pretty popular here.

First pic is of a rock. I thought it looked great against that sky. In the same area I took some pics of the lava rock beach. 

This second shot was trying to explore the capabilities of the camera phone. 

I went to the water park near our hotel. It's the Baku Water Park. It was awesome for a couple of reasons. First, it's a little surreal - look at that landscape. Second, the longest line was about four people! That was fantastic. Slide quality? Good enough! There was no waiting!!

A couple more interesting things about the park...  Saw some wasps building their nest. It was cool when I put the camera close for a pic...the all stopped working and looked at the phone. A little intimidating actually. 

The other thing was the slightly bizarre character welcoming you to the park. Not sure who she is or supposed to be. 

Next to the water park is this wrecked ship out if nowhere. I wonder if there's some hidden treasure. 

We stayed at the Oasis Papagayo which was nice and we took the "all inclusive" so you can easily pay for the room with all the meals and drinks. It was a good deal. I had to include this sleeping cat. He or she is obviously accustom to living in a resort. I.e., zero threat. How many stray cats let you watch them sleep? Zero. 

And the cat kinda summed up the stress level at Fuerteventura. Not very stressful. 

 Here's another thing I've started doing. Taking shots of myself. These are outside the water park.

The next days...

We went surfing - which was awesome. My first day was crappy, but the second day was much better. After surfing, I convinced Petra to go on a buggy ride. It was cool for me because when we called in the morning, there wasn't a trip (too few participants). However, it worked out that plenty of people wanted to take the voyage so my last idea of something cool to do came true.

The first stop we took was on a hill overlooking much of the island. It was quite impressive. The island is pretty much a moon (rooks, desert, etc.) but there were some cool things...mainly, these rock fences which had to take lots of time and effort to make and one side of this "mountain" had moss. But it was like sun-dried moss. It was bizarre. Here are some pics of the "mountain"...

 I also took some panoramic shots of this crazy landscape...

I am still impressed with the panoramic capability of the smartphone and, of course, this landscape.

Here's a couple shots of our buggy...

Not only were we the only red buggy, we also had the biggest license plate. I was called out on our very first turn - being too reckless - so the red buggy was highlighted. On the right, me in my new shorts (grace à Fuerteventura) since I only packed swimming trunks. Yes, I'm holding my smartphone but I'm taking pics, I'm not Facebooking.

A couple more shots of Oasis Papagayo...

En fin, we met this guy who to me was quite scary. I though this picture of him would make a great poster for the story one could tell of our new "friend"...

This was a great trip. I don't know if I'd return, but it was a cool place to visit.