The Canary Islands

For our second break of the semester, our reliable travel planner Chad organized a trip to Lanzarote, Canary Islands. I have to give him a big shout-out, because I harassed him to "just book something already" for about a week while he was searching for this wonderful destination. If it was up to me, we probably would have been in Switzerland with a group of three or four. Instead, we were in sunny, wonderful paradise for seven days with a group of 15 people!!! What an amazing time! After scouring the internet, Chad booked two adjoining villas for our amazing group. The villas were identical, each with four bedrooms, complete with two backyards and TWO heated pools! We were amazingly lucky that our break fell at the "low" season and we were able to get amazing deals on our flights and villas.

Pool/View from the Girl's Villa

An Overview

For those of you who don't know, as I didn't, The Canary Islands are a chain of small, volcanic islands controlled by Spain and just off the coast of Morocco. They are very close to the Equator so the weather is pretty much amazing year-round. We visited the island of Lanzarote, which is less developed than the main island of Grand Canaria. The island was very touristy, with lots of beach houses, shops, and a few restaurants. All houses and buildings on the island are white. Much of the island is not developed, with houses and beaches along the coast and desert in the middle.

The Trip

Day 1: The Journey

Getting to the airport was quite challenging. To keep our flights cheap, we were using the budget airline, RyanAir. Because it is a budget airline, it doesn't fly out of Amsterdam, but the nearby city Eindoven. To get to Eindoven airport, we had to take a from Amsterdam to Eindoven followed by a bus to the airport. It was quite a process. When we finally boarded our plane, we found out the flight was going to last over four hours and that our plane was about 50% kids under age five. This was the most chaotic, disorganized plane ride I have ever been on in my life. There were kids everywhere; all over the aisles, climbing on the seats, etc. To top it off, the RyanAir staff attempts to sell you something every five minutes. Because their flights are so cheap, they make money off of in-flight "services" such as selling smokeless cigarettes(?), lottery tickets, duty free alcohol, food, and perfume-to name a few. Needless to say, it was an interesting and entertaining flight. I made several "friends" with some little children. Luckily, I was not planning on sleeping. After arriving at the airport, we rented two cars and somehow fit 12 people+luggage in them and managed to find our villa on the first try. I would have to say this was probably one of our most successful trips. Please take a moment to think about the fact that we found a car rental agency that would rent two cars to a group of 12 people all under age 25....

For our first night, we had all had dinner together and made good use of our pools! Great start to an amazing trip!

Day 2: Beach!!

For our first day, the beach was absolutely in order. There's not a lot to say, other than we spent an amazing day at the beach together. No sight-seeing, no getting lost, just the beach! The sun was very hot and several people came home with sunburns. I used my sunscreen, but somehow managed to burn only my stomach! Ouch! Because there was such a large group of us, we spent most of our evenings at home, cooking dinner together. Also, there was not much (none) nightlife in our tiny town of Playa Blanca, but we had cable TV! We did spend a bit of time watching TV, just because we don't have TV in our dorm so we haven't watched TV in months. One night, Billy Madison was on and we all watched together! What a wild group!

Day 3: Beach Again!!!

For day number three it was back to the beach again. Different beach, same story...

Me on the beach!

Day 4: Adventures

On the fourth day, some of our group spent the day surfing/relaxing on the beach, while the rest of us went sight-seeing. We drove through the Timilfaya National Park and saw the "Fire Mountains" or reddish mountains formed by volcanoes. We then drove to the other side of the island (only takes one hour) to see the coast. We also visited the Cactus Garden and Jameos del Agua. Jameos del Agua is part of a cave formed by a volcanic tube. It contains a man-made amphitheater, gardens, museum, and restaurant/bar. It also has a deep pool filled with blind albino crabs that sparkle in the water. Truly beautiful. It also contains a beautiful, white, outdoor pool that looks great for swimming.

Cactus Garden

National Park

A story for your entertainment:

 While viewing the pool, I thought it looked very tempting for a swim. However, no one was swimming in it. This launched a debate of whether or not you were, in fact, allowed to swim in the pool. General consensus among our group was that maybe you could swim, but probably not. As we were leaving, I decided to find out for sure. Very quickly, I took off my clothes (I was wearing my bathing suit) and canon balled into the deep in, only to emerge from the water to hear a lot of yelling in Spanish and see every visitor staring at me. No, the pool was not for swimming. Thus, our visit to Jameos del Agua was over.


We also went to El Golfo, a green lagoon and black sand beach. Absolutely amazing!!! I have never been to a black sand beach and this one did not let me down. Truly a beautiful sight!

On a cliff over looking the black sand beach. Hard to see the sand!

Day 5: Scooters

My favorite day of all was the day we rented scooters! Now, when I say scooters I am aware that it sounds like we rented small Vespas. That's what I thought we were renting. What we got were more like small motorcycles. The guy who rented them to us barely spoke English. He asked if our drivers had a motorcycle license  they said yes, and that was that. Very trustworthy people in the Canary Islands! We spent the entire day on our scooters, enjoying the weather, stopping at the beach, eating amazing seafood, and having a really fun day!

Me on the scooter...no I didn't really drive!

Day 6: Beach again...

Me and Jules on the "beach"

Day 7: Another day at the pool/beach
For our last night, we made frozen pizzas-kitchen was already clean! Then we drove out to a remote part of the island and went star gazing. We probably saw about 10 shooting stars! It was so incredibly dark but beautiful!

It's hard to take pictures while star gazing! Blinded by the flash!

Sorry if this is a disappointment. We really didn't do much on our trip besides go to the beach! It was an absolutely amazing time and we had a great group of people! Having the villas was such an added perk, we all had our own space. The cars also gave us freedom to split up. Some people surfed, mountain-biked, visited other islands, or spent most of their time at the beach. We shared many great breakfasts and dinners together as a group and had a wonderful, relaxing week! Couldn't ask for a better trip!

Watching the sunset on our last day at the beach!