Misc: The sand dunes

Since Fuerteventura is very much a desert island, there is an abundance of sand dunes. The sand is this incredibly fine, soft, clean stuff that feel so great between your toes. I guess there is a lot of four-wheeling and dune buggying that goes on in various places on the island. I just thought it was beautiful to see the stretches of rolling dunes that meet up with the ocean. Plus it made it very easy for me to pretend that I was actually in Africa on the Sahara desert.

Mr X and I played around on them for a bit one day. In some places the dunes have some pretty steep vertical drops so we would run and jump off of them.




If you are starting to notice that we are wearing the same thing in every picture, its because that's all we had. We originally hadn't planned on going to the Canary Islands so we didn't bring anything but winter clothes. We had bathing suits and our workout clothes substituted for beachwear just fine. Plus our apartment had a washing machine. More on the apartment tomorrow though...

Fuerteventura Oasis Park

One day during our stay in the Canary Islands we decided to check out the Fuerteventura Oasis Park. It's a huge park that contains a zoo and a beautiful botanical garden.

But the primary reason we went to the Oasis Park was for the Camel Safaris. I don't think I've ever seen a camel in person, especially up close. I was pretty excited about the whole thing. I was pretty impressed with how they sat, with their legs all bent up funny underneath them. (See the second camel pic below.)

I was caught off-guard by the height of the camels. They were really tall! I don't know what I was expecting - I guess maybe that they'd just be like an odd shaped horses or something. I was also surprised to discover that they don't have hooves like horses either - they are these soft padded ...things... I don't even know what to call them. But they were pretty cool. My brother had told me that camels are nasty and they spit. These camels didn't spit at all but they were pretty gassy and that was gross since Mr X and I were the last people in the line of camels. All in all we had a great time on the camel safari. Here's a few pictures:

Next destination...

Mr X and I are getting ready to head to our next destination on Saturday. We'll be making a quick trip to Spain's Canary Islands. We leave Saturday morning and I'm so excited for several reasons. First off, Spanish is the official language so there's a good possibility that we won't feel quite so dumb since Mr X is fluent. It will be nice (for at least one of us) to be able to understand what people are saying finally. Second, the weather is quite mild and so it will be much warmer there than it is here and I'm ready for some cozier weather. Third, the fact that the Canary Islands are so close to the coast of Africa allows me to pretend that I'm actually going to Africa instead of Spain...or maybe just Africa and Spain all at once. (No slight intended towards Spain in any way of course) But what I am looking forward to most of all us that I'm heading somewhere new that I haven't been to before.

So for those of you that don't know exactly where the Canary Island are located, here's a picture. I confess that I wasn't entirely sure where they were, I knew they were off the coast of Africa but I thought it was further north, very close to Spain.

(They are those tiny islands between Western Sahara and Morocco)

And this is the view from where we will be staying (on the island closest to the African coast).

Mr X and I didn't know we would be going someplace that wasn't freezing cold so I guess we'll be taking our long pants and sweaters with us because that's all we have. But from what I hear, there are a lot of "naturalist" beaches there so if all else fails we can just strip to our birthday suits and strut our newly acquired love-handles and saddlebags (at least in my case) all over those sandy beaches. (Just thank your lucky stars that you won't have to witness this atrocity. And don't worry, no pictures will record this awful event.) I will be taking my computer but I'm not entirely sure if we will have Internet access while there so if you don't hear from me after Saturday, we didn't have access.

Anyway, back to the present. I've got to get ready to go to the Christmas Market. (I'll fill you in tomorrow on that outing.)