a surprise trip to lanzarote with the carlotti's for my 18th. quite simply the best surprise ever. we drove to paris at midnight on thursday, to catch a plane at 7am to lanzarote, via madrid. lanzarote is part of the canary islands - the spanish islands near morocco. it's a volcanic island (still active today), so the landscape is dotted with both volcanoes and their cooled lava. the most striking aspect of lanzarote is that the earth and sand are black - as it's mostly broken down volcanic rock. so different to what i'm used to back in australia.. but so beautiful.
we stayed in papagayo, on the south end of the island. this is a protected part of the island, so we had beautiful 26º weather sans wind...pretty incredible considering we're still in european winter. i'm embarrassed to admit i got intense sunburn on the first day... it was hot okay!
from our hotel, we were walking distance from about 5 different beaches. my fav beach was playa de papagago, with soft golden sand stretching down to crystal clear turquoise water. the beach was between two rocky cliffs, so it was protected from any wind and had rock pools along the bottom edges of the cliffs - full with tiny colourful fish.
the best time of day was just as the sun was setting - it brought out the red colour of the cliffs surrounding the sea. we went for a walk at sunset in a water canal which was, at the time, empty. we got right to the end and had an impressive view across a lake next to the ocean...before we had to race back down the water canal as water started rushing in...whoops. earlier that day we were also able to hitch a ride on some camels in the parque nacional timanfaya!
while walking along the boardwalk at playa blanca, hugo and i came across a spanish parrot chirping 'hola', as well as someone selling boomerangs...spanish boomerangs?? by chance, we also found the playa blanca market. i bought a stone and silver bracelet, made here in lanzarote. there was lots of jewellery made with volcanic rock...there's plenty of that around here.
i'll be leaving this sunny island with mixed feelings. sad to be leaving both the carlottti's and summer dresses behind, but at the same time i can't wait to get up to (freezing) northern europe to see my fav little german...jana!
¡adiós amigos!
S.
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| nice park |
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| apparently noone wants to call australia |
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| epic blisters, yum |
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| spanish boomerangs? |
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| flying back to france over the pyrenees |
