My internship in Fuerteventura!

Lanzarote

Last week on Saturday we took the ferry from Corralejo to Playa Blanca in Lanzarote.. Some weeks ago my flatmate found out Fito y Fitipaldis were gonna go to Arrecife (capital of Lanzarote) this weekend and she really loves this band so we decided to go for a trip there the same weekend.. For you who don't know who Fito y Fitipaldis is, here is a song by them so you can hear what i'm talking about. Anyway, we started our journey Saturday morning with breakfast in the harbor cafe in Corralejo.. We bought the ferry tickets for 44 €/person for there and back, online.. But then we found out that it's cheaper to buy it in the harbor.. So good to know until next time.. When we were on the boat our friend hurt his toenail on some stairs so he had to stay with the doctor all way to lanzarote and they said to him he has to go to hospital and everything but in the end he didn't even go.. :D 

 So we arrived in Playa Blanca, went to Cicar to rent a car and went for a coffee at the beach in the center. We could notice it was a very touristic city because everything was so expensive! one coffee for 2,50€, it's even worse than in Finland! :D Then we started driving ahead the west coast, and arrived to this very volcanic area, with a beautiful coastline! Not good for swimming since there were high cliffs going straight down in the ocean but it was a really amazing scenery with the black cliffs and the light blue ocean waves.. When we were driving in this area we stopped maybe every 500 m because everywhere there were something more beautiful we had to take a photo of.. The last city we could visit on the southwest coast was El golfo, which was a really small and cozy village with a black sand beach, since the rocks and cliffs here were black, and there were also amazing waves and we even found a cave in the cliffs.. After this we headed for the volcanic nationalpark "Parcue nacional de Timanfaya" & "Parcue natural los volcanes" Where they actually had a road around and inside a volcano but you had to pay 9 €/ person to drive there so we decided to skip that because we thought we didn't have enough time anyway. But while we were driving through it, there were an amazing landscape.. it looked like a dessert with black/red sand with high black volcanos. In a valley they had about 50 camels where u actually could take a camel safari to the volcanos, but we didn't have time for this and we also thought it looked really bad because the camels where just lying there waiting in the heat chained to each other and it looked so sad.. After this we drove further to the city La santa where they were surfing everywhere.. there were big perfect waves.. And they also had some sort of fake lake in a bay behind the pier, where they were training windsurfing. We continued our trip to the city Caleta de farmara, Where we stopped for lunch and there were a beautiful long beach and high mountains and the scenery was beautiful. I ate a perfect salad with avocado, melon, lettuce, tomato, asparagus, onion etc.. It was really good! Then we drove to the capital city and finally found our hotel after sometime lost in the city. It was a huge city with thousands of one way streets so it was really hard to find out how to drive there. Our hostel, wasn't the best but good enough for 16€/night/person. We went for some small snack and some drinks before the concert and came to the concert right on time because they just started playing after we got our drinks from the bar.  It was a nice experience to see a Spanish band live and they were really good live and you got really caught up by the moment, emotionally, even if it was hard to understand the lyrics for me. After the drinks we went for a beer to some night club close to our hostel, and first they weren't gonna let me in because I had leggings instead of a dress or skirt.. Then our friend who hurt his toe weren't gonna get inside with flip flops, but he did since his toe was in bandage.. And then the guys had to pay 10€/ person for entrance but us girls got in for free.. It was a really fancy club and after some time we got really tired and went home and fell asleep. 

 The next day we went for breakfast, and later started our journey up north on the island.. We came to Cueva de los verdes and here we had a tour 1 km down in the cave.. It was a really beautiful cave and very interesting scenery and i would defiantly recommend it to other people. After 45 min in the cave we headed off to the city Orzola in the north, here they also have a boat which goes to the island la Graciosa, but sadly we didn't have enough time to go there. We stopped in the city for the last dinner on the island. Me and my flatmate shared a 2 person plate with grilled fish and seafood, where they had octopus, shells, 4 different fishes, shrimps, Canarian potatoes and salad. everything for 31€. It tasted good but i was a little bit afraid of food poisoning so i didn't eat so much. After this we started the drive back to Playa blanca, we drove up a high mountain and beside a volcano and it was really scary for me but there were really nice views. If I weren't so afraid of heights  I really would have enjoyed it. 

 The only city we didn't visit was the touristic city Playa del Carmen, but I don't think we would have enjoyed it so much since we weren't looking for this kind of cities. We wanted to see the real Lanzarote, which we did, so I am really satisfied with our 2 days trip on the island. We saw maybe too much in 2 days but I'm still very happy we did. In Playa del carmen I bought in the last minute some postcards i'm gonna send home today. Now we are already planning next weekend, we already bought our flight tickets to Gran Canaria and we will go on Friday and come back on Sunday. I hope we will have enough time to see everything there also, it is still a bigger island than Lanzarote. And on Friday also starts the world championship in Ice hockey, So we really have to find a place where we can watch the Finnish games!

I will put pictures when I get the rest of the pictures from my friends!

Hasta Luego!

My internship in Fuerteventura!

This last week

Sorry I haven't had time to update anything here since I've been so busy this last week, been renting a car and surfboards and we have no internet in our apartment yet so i'ts hard to update on my free time.

Feaga 2015

So Friday two weeks ago, I went with my boss to this fair in Antigua (the middle of the island) and helped her out with some stand where she was gonna present Ecoisla. Feaga is a fair of agriculture, animal husbandry and fishing of Fuerteventura. Feaga is the largest fair in the primary sector of the Canaries. Live horse race, Auction of animals, exhibition of hound dogs, national contest of goat milk cheese, craft market of the Biosphere and local products is some of the things you can find here. I was walking around the fair a couple of times and it was very interesting, most i liked the donkeys, they are so cute with their big ears! And we also went to wine and cheese tasting, where i found an awesome mojo sauce which tasted fantastic..

 Mojo sauce is originally from Canarian cuisine and there is Red Mojo and Green Mojo. Red Mojo is made from small red peppers from La Palma and paprika, and is usually eaten with meat. Green Mojo is made of green spices and is usually eaten with fish. I LOVE IT and i will bring home my luggage full of mojo sauce bottles i think ;) 

 Anyway, it was a very interesting fair and if you ever get a chance to go there, you should! 

Surfing

Same Friday as Feaga me and 3 of my friends went to rent a car and surf boards for one week. We got really into the surfing now so we decided at least one full weekend we will surf :D So the whole saturday we were in El cotillo, and the conditions were pretty good. We also tried som yoga at the beach after surfing and it was soo relaxing..  At least I got myself a nice tan because I was totally red in the evening when we went for my previous room mates birthday party.. 

Ecoisla Fuerteventura

I haven't yet said anything about my work place. It's name is Ecoisla Fuerteventura and is a tour company in Puerto del Rosario. They produce trekking excursions, bird watching excursions etc.. My main duty is to translate their programs from Spanish to English, which is a bit hard since I'm not so good in Spanish. But with help from google translate and a dictionary it works out somehow. After I have translated their programs I also make flyers for them in Photoshop/Word and so far my boss has been satisfied with my work. I really like the way the company thinks, their idea of taking care of the nature and local people while trying to give Fuerteventura's best sights and activities to the customers. And I'm waiting anxiously for their website to publish! 

 Here is a link to their Facebook page if you are interested: Ecoisla Fuerteventura FB

And here is some examples of the flyers i have made.

Last Monday we also started our Spanish course, so hopefully we will learn something from it! :D

Hasta Luego ;)

My internship in fuerteventura!

Ruta de Tapas

Warm tapas

Cold Tapas

This weekend Ruta de la Tapa (Ruta de Tapas) started. We thought it will only be for one weekend but apparently it's going on until July sometimes. Ruta de la Tapa is a kind of event which many different restaurants are included in. You can go and eat cold/hot tapas and then you will get a stamp for every different restaurant in one kind of book you get in the first restaurant. When you collect over 40% of all stamps, you can vote for the best restaurant and leave it to a tourist office and when the event is over, the best restaurants in hot and cold tapas will be chosen. We went for our first tapas on Friday and of course i wasn't so sure about what tapas was, and for you who don't know, tapas are a wide variety of appetizers in Spanish cuisine. We paid 5€ for hot and cold tapas with a glass of a various drink. You can choose wine, water, lemonade, beer.. Almost whatever you want, it depends on what the restaurant offers. 

 The cold tapas we got was a small can with some kind of seafood. I don't know exactly what it was called since the waitress didn't know it in English but it sure was good. The warm tapas was some kind of volcano made of flour and a mix off mushroom and vegetables inside. It was also very nice, so I think i will for sure go for tapas again!

 Now i'm gonna tell you a little bit about my first experience of surfing. On Saturday morning we woke up at 06.00, ate a little breakfast and walked away to a pick up place where a surfer school was gonna pick us up. My friend surfs as a hobby and she planned everything so I could go for a lesson, and i had the luck to go during the sunrise. We were actually going to a beginner's beach since i was the first time surfing, but the teacher decided to go to another beach where the waves were hard and strong, and closing very suddenly.. But I thought positive and was thinking it can't be so hard right? So he showed me a little bit basic stuff i needed to know and then i just started trying.. The other people who was with us were also training surfing but i was the only first-time surfer.. but they needed a lot of attention from the teacher so i kind of had to teach myself.. It was very hard and heavy to get out in the water because of all the waves coming towards me.. I didn't get out so far where the waves started, i was only in the "white water" and mostly only lying on my stomach riding the waves.. i succeeded with one wave standing up, only one because it was so exhausting getting out in the water so i didn't have enough energy to jump up on the board when it was time for that. 

 My friend told me that surfing is kind of like therapy because when you surf you don't have time to think about anything else, you have to concentrate on the waves, other surfers and everything and she was soo right about that.. While I was in the water i didn't think about anything else and suddenly 2 hours had gone just like that. But I had the best time anyway and i can't wait until i go next time again. Probably we will go on Tuesday and then it will be more first-time surfers so then maybe we will all be on the same level :D

 I would absolutely recommend surfing to everyone! You only need good patience and of course good balance to be able to keep the board steady while you are standing on it.. You also need some kind of good fitness since it's a very exhausting sport. The day after and still today my arms, shoulders and neck hurts a lot because when you are paddling these are the parts which are most exposed. 

Probably and hopefully this week the Spanish lessons will start in education & mobility's office. I can't wait to learn a little bit more and it would be so useful for me since my boss speaks better Spanish than English and it would anyway be nice to be able to have a small conversation in Spanish. Spanish is such a beautiful language and a big part of the world's population speaks it, so it wont be so bad if I learned a little bit right? :D

I will write soon again, but now I will be a little bit busy since i have stuff to do for my workplace and also I have a deadline for my "thesis" to the end of this month. Better get started as soon as possible I guess? ;)

Hasta luego ;)

My Internship in Fuerteventura!

Fuerteventura

Stop in Gran Canaria

So now i decided to make a blog about my experience of my internship in fuerteventura, an island in canary islands.. I'm usually not an active blogger but since i know it would be nice to read about an experience before you do your internship i decided to make it a try..

I am a 22 year old girl from Finland, studying tourism in Turku and partly living in Vaasa since i have my family and boyfriend there. In the end of February i found out that i would have the opportunity to do my final practical training in Fuerteventura and since i had no idea of what else i could do, i took the opportunity.  So one week later after my class trip to Poland in march, I booked my flight and now, here I am, in the northern city Corralejo in Fuerteventura. 

Corralejo harbour

It was hard to find a straight flight from Finland to this island but i finally found a cheap one with not so many waiting hours.. So i first had to fly to Oslo, Norway, then i flied to las palmas, Gran Canaria and waited there for 5-6 hours until i took the flight to fuerteventura.. The only thing that i can complain about is that every airport has free WiFi only for 30 min, after 30 min you have to pay with your credit card.. well anyway, around 21.00 I got to Puerto del Rosario and a local driver picked me up at the airport and drove me to Corralejo in the north. When i was in Finland I didn't even know where I was gonna live, I only knew that I was gonna share an apartment with some girls and that my workplace was in Puerto del Rosario. Well I arrived in Corralejo and he took me to this big apartment with 4 bedrooms, 2 toilets, kitchen and living room where 2 girls from Education & Mobility was waiting for me. The best thing in the apartment was the roof terrace,  which was as big as the entire apartment downstairs and had a grill, table, chairs etc.. I was a little bit scared and felt lonely when I went to sleep but somehow I fell asleep immediately I lied down..

 

Corralejo

The next day I had a meeting at the office of education and mobility, and I met these girls who met me in the apartment the day before. They were very kind and answered all my questions. Later on that day I went to the beach and ate smoked salmon at the reef club, it tasted nice but was quite expensive... I sat in the sun for around 4 hours and just watched the sea, the people and I really loved it. I also went to get my Spanish number to Vodafone, 60 min free call to some international country and 1 GB internet was 15€.. This is the holiday connection and I heard that there is some better one that will work better since I swill stay so long here.. In the evening that day Milla came from Finland and moved in to the apartment and we became really good friends, it's like we have known each other from before. 

Corralejo harbour

The next day after I noticed I got very burnt on my shoulders from the first day, they were totally red! So i bought Aloe Vera lotion to put on and was hoping it will get better. And the rest of the week we celebrated Easter and more people moved in to the apartment and it ended with that we were 9 and they told us 4 more is coming.. So I decided to switch apartment and the new one is a lot better for me, since it's more outside the city and its so close to the sea.. We even have a pool in our yard even though the water is like ice cold there it's nice.. And we are only 4 people living here so it's really the best place for me now..

Corralejo

I have already had days I felt homesick but if I contact all my loved ones at home every day then it helps a lot.. ❤ I can't still believe I will stay here for 2 months.. I know it will pass fast but for now it feels like forever and i'm afraid it's too short time for me to really enjoy myself..

Chillin at the beach

I have always been dreaming about moving abroad to work and this is now the greatest opportunity for me to see if it's really my thing. And so far so good!

On Saturday I went with 5 friends to Puerto del Rosario for the first time. It was so hot this day but it was nice to see a little bit different than Corralejo, and this city was pretty nice. We went to their biggest shopping center and walked around for hours, ate Chinese buffet and one friend bought her new phone.  

My view from the bus on my way to work

Monday 6.4 was my first day at my work place in Puerto del Rosario. I went with the bus from Corralejo and at 9 in the morning I met my boss Mayte at the bus station in Rosario. We went for coffee and breakfast and we went to buy dictionary to a bookstore and also some office equipment. After this we went to the office and started work, my task was to find different clients for Ecoisla that might start to cooperate with them. When I have found enough clients we will send a mass email to them and then we will hopefully get some new clients. I have also translated the email from Spanish to English, which was a little bit difficult but hopefully it's OK for now.

Our backyard

WELL, I think I have written enough in one blog post for today, but since I haven't been writing anything for 1 week I decided to write everything in one. :)

Skating with Zana

Corralejo in the morning

Hasta Luego!! :)