After departing from Madeira and saying goodbye to Portugal, we continued onward to visit two of Spain’s Canary Islands. The first stop was Lanzarote, which is unlike its neighboring islands in that it’s very dry, with a lunar-like terrain. This is because of all the volcanic activity this island has seen over the centuries. We did a shore excursion in Lanzarote that  had three stops and gave us a good feel for the island. Our first stop was an agriculture museum called El Patio, was really a series of historic buildings that somehow dealt with the agriculture of the island. There was a farm house, a barn, a winery, a windmill, etc. The place was very photogenic so we spent a lot of time shooting there before we all ended up in the winery to taste some of the island’s vino and have some tapas.  Our second stop was a gigantic cactus garden that featured over 1,400 species of cacti! When shooting a place like that, I do a complete walk-through with one lens, then switch lenses and walk through again in an attempt to see things in a different way. Out last stop on Lanzarote was the César Manrique Foundation, which is an artist’s home-turned-museum that is literally build into the lava rock, with the natural terrain serving as the walls and ceilings. The place had a very organic and  artsy feel to it, and I shot what few photos I could in our limited amount of time there.

Before I move on to the next Canary Island, here are some of my images and Karen’s video from Lanzarote:

 

 

Our second Canary Island was Tenerife, which was just a one-night sail from Lanzarote. On this stop, we did not do a shore excursion. Instead, we went about exploring town on our own. (We would eventually return to Tenerife a week or so later and do a tour at that point.) The Crystal Serenity docked at the port in Santa Cruz, which is the business capital of the island. It was quite bustling compared to our previous island stops, with busy pedestrian streets full of stores and people doing their Christmas shopping. We did find some historic buildings as well as a farmers market to shoot in town, but the most interesting thing we shot that day was the overly unique concert hall (You can see it in the photos below). It’s a very modern, space-age looking structure that was juxtaposed in an interesting way to the historic part of the town. On our second stop to Tenerife, we traveled to a more quaint and colorful town, but we’ll save that for another post. Next stop: Morocco!

More to come…