All through lunch at El Cotillo, I was becoming increasingly distracted. It was a sea view of kinds. Not the picture perfect one you might imagine from some far flung exotic location; rather more one filled with traffic, building works, and passing punters looking for somewhere to eat. But the food was good, and suitably priced for the hard of spending, and I had to agree that Ali’s scouting mission had gone well. But while I was enjoying my chicken caesar salad and a cold beer, I couldn’t help but notice the size of the waves breaking near the shore, just about visible through a gap between the parked cars and the buildings in the distance. It was difficult to be certain, because the sea likes to put on a show here, but today they looked larger than the ones I watched when we were here a year earlier. Much larger in fact.
Before arriving in Fuerteventura I’d been reading articles about something called “la Calima,” a Saharan dust storm that brings higher than normal winds to the Canary Islands, as well as an atmosphere full of flying sand particles. Towards the end of our trip, almost three weeks later, afternoon clouds have often tinged with a suspicious hint of yellow, and the hire car has been decorated in an unappealing new shade of sludge brown. But in this first weekend, the winds were stronger than usual, and so was the swell out to sea. “Maybe we’re getting the tail end of the storms at home,” I overheard someone say. If this was the tail end, I was glad we were here and not suffering in the eternally damp British Isles. “When we finish here, I might just pop down to the beach with the long lens and have a quick half hour,” I announced to Ali.
It was a good job we did too, because it turned out to be the last of the sea monsters during our stay. Lunch over and the bill settled, we waddled down the street towards the beachfront, towards where a number of people were watching from what seemed to be the perfect vantage point by a group of rocks close to the shore. From here we could watch the waves, side on as they came racing past us towards the Playa del Muellito on the left, without any danger to ourselves. The odd hosing of foam might occasionally creep up on us from the side, but apart from that, all I had to worry about was dialling in my settings and hitting burst mode at the most exciting moments. Well, actually I had to worry about changing lenses first. That’s been an exciting business every time I’ve had to swap them on the beach here. More than once I’ve had to take everything out of the bag at the apartment and use the rocket blower and the soft brush to clean everything off, but I’m still going to be taking half the Sahara Desert home with me at this rate.
It was a bit of a novelty to be in such a prime spot, because despite living right beside the Atlantic where we often have waves such as these, I always struggle to find a side on view from where I can click away in safety. And in Cornwall, you don’t often get sunny blue skies in tandem with those monstrous storms to make fast shutter speeds easy without ramping up the ISO and turning your images into a sea of grain. Pun possibly intended. Usually at home you’re battling an army of rain, foam and spray coming right at the lens. But here, and on the neighbouring island of Lanzarote, the north west coast often seems to offer perfect shooting conditions and plenty of places to take your long range shots from in perfect safety..
At the time of writing this, I’m (just about) still in Fuerteventura, but time is almost up. I’ve been editing my shots on a reconditioned Macbook Pro (other options are available, although the graphics really are very good), which I bought so that I can tinker away with a few images on the hoof, whilst using the resort WiFi system to get everything safely into the cloud before heading for home in the middle of the week. In fact, in proper belt and braces fashion, everything is stored in no less than four separate places already. It’s also allowed me to cull unwanted images early, but with this folder, I’ve only managed to kill off just two of the more than three hundred exposures I reeled off in twenty odd excitable minutes at the wavefront. I know there are images in there, begging to be discovered. So many forms in those waves, where the right crop will bring the eye into the magic. I need the bigger screen at home to help me see them.
But this one wasn’t a difficult choice. A huge thundering many faced giant against the distant mountain backdrop. When did photography get this easy? Spray and pray - and the spray will bring its own rewards. Again, pun probably intended.
