Spot The Disorganised One With No Glasses

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It was another early start before sunrise for me this morning. The sad, geek photographer walked back to the sand-dunes in the dark for some photographs. I wasn't disappointed, although it did look very cloudy as the light started to break.

We had booked a dune buggy tour at 2.30pm, so we had until then to take it easy and enjoy the sun, since that early morning cloud had cleared. We managed to get the postcards written, some washing and ironing done (there is a washing machine in the villa, which is a blessing or a curse depending on your point of view) and the travel blog up-to-date.

The meeting point for the dune-buggy tour was outside a bright pink frozen yogurt shop, which is impossible not to have noticed. That's probably why they chose it - that and the fact that the buggies were all parked close behind it.

We actually managed to get there on time, so for once in our lives we were not the ones that everyone else was waiting for. The other people turned up eventually and then promptly left to go and buy some water. Our incredibly laid-back guide then led us to the buggies and got us all set-up. We had three buggies between five of us - our son now has a driving licence so he took one on his own, his girlfriend went with my wife and our daughter came with me.

We started off on the streets of Corralejo, which meant negotiating with the normal traffic. Everyone was very patient and given that people seemed surprised when we followed the normal rules of the road, even when they had stopped when they clearly had right of way, they are obviously used to the tourists in these buggies being a law to themselves.

It wasn't long before we headed off-road. There was only one person who didn't have any glassed and his (my) eyes were starting to suffer severely due to all the dust. Every time something came in the other direction or we hit a particularly dusty stretch of road, my understanding daughter had to quickly pass me her sunglasses. Some people had even gone as far as taking bandannas, which was very organised.

First stop was the volcano, which involved a walk along a rocky path as even our buggies wouldn't be able to make it up there. It has apparently been four million years since in last erupted, which is when the island was formed. The crater of the volcano was very interesting, but everyone was more focused on the chipmunks that flocked round us for some food. Out guide had bought some seed, so everyone enjoyed feeding them and trying to entice them to pose for photos.

Once we got back to the buggies, in tune with this holiday things started to go wrong. The buggy that our son was driving struggled for a while and abruptly refused to go any further. The guide fiddled with the wiring for a while, which got it going a bit further before it died again. After a bit more fiddling, it made it to a 90 km/hour main road and then died again. We then decided that enough was enough and I went t tell him that it was getting too dangerous. He was randomly connecting a complete tangle of loose wiring. Our son got into another car and his was left abandoned by the side of the road.

I don't think these were top of the range buggies. There was all the problems with our son's; mine had a completely bald front tire and my wife's only had one wing-mirror and no roof. They were not exactly road worthy, or rather dune worthy or whatever.

There was another stop a the north most point of the island and then it was along a dirt track back to where we started.

We felt decidedly grubby walking back to the villa, so it was straight into the pool or a shower to clean off all the dust and grime.

For the evening we went for a meal by the harbour, which was very pleasant. The was the view, the sound of the sea lapping and some relaxing music curtsey of a musician with his guitar.

On the way back, we stopped at some place where you can get the bottoms of your feet eaten by a swarm of fish, for some unknown reason. My son and I gave that a miss.

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Photos

On The Dirt Track
In our buggies heading out on the dirt-tracks.

Little Chipmunk
After some seeds up in the volcano.

Dune-buggy Tire
I'm not convinced these are completely road-worthy!

Another Corralejo Sunrise
Back out again early and it was definitely better than last time.