With all Lanzarote has to offer, I'm sure you'll also need some time off during your trip. So, let's call it a mental health day. Let's just lay in the sun for a day, swim and snorkel.

I've done some proper research in that field and can show you my favourite spots:

Lanzarote is famous for its volcanos, the black sand beaches and the hiking trails around them.

To me this sounded like a geography teacher's, and not really like a place I would enjoy. What I didn't know: Lanzarote is also a wine region.

Since Alex and I accidentally "moved" to Fuerteventura, we made absolutely no prior plans and ended up moving quite a bit.

While there were very few Covid cases on the island during our time there, we still wanted to make sure not to meet too many people, therefore we always tried to find apartments or houses, that we really liked, so we didn't mind spending more time there. And of course, we wanted our apartments to be pretty.

 
While typing this, I'm realizing what this post really is about: about being irresponsible. Spoiling yourself with the nice apartment, you can't afford. Staying as long as you like, in the places you love.

What I'm not showing you: the dark and smelly places, we stayed in after realizing that we're living way out of our budget. Totally worth it.

When Alex and I decided to spend the second wave of Covid somewhere else, we picked Fuerteventura for its accessibility, for being part of the EU and therefore our health plan and for its low infection rates.

We quickly fell in love with this strange little place in the Atlantic and stayed for two months before moving over to Lanzarote, so I'm pretty sure we've seen almost everything on this small island.

Are you as obsessed with true crime as me? After binge-watching almost everything there is in this genre, I was very excited to find out that there is a mystical villa in Fuerteventura's desert of Cofete, that may or may not have been built for the Nazis.

The desert didn't look so bad either, so Alex and I decided to go see for ourselves.

Put on your billabong sweater, a beanie and manage to get a little sun burnt: we're going to Lajares.

This small town in northern Fuerteventura is located between El Cotillo and Majanicho, two of the major surf spots. Therefore it became a popular hang-out for surfers and those who'd like to be one, despite not being at the coast at all.

As you might remember, I'm a terrible surfer and have given up on it. But I do appreciate a good vegan burger and also don't mind strolling around shops that specialize in surfboards and knitted hats, so I'm always happy to spend time at popular surf spots.

When Alex and I stayed in the even smaller El Cotillo for a few weeks in the beginning of our trip, Lajares became our place to have a better coffee, to run errands and to simply hang out when we didn't feel like going to the beach.

Later on, we moved to the “suburbs” of Lajares to be closer to all our favourite spots.

After a few weeks by ourselves in El Cotillo, Alex and I met up with our friends and their baby just an hour away in Parque Holandes.

This strange village is located in the middle of nowhere, in the desert of Las Dunas, half an hour drive to the next supermarket in Corralejo or Puerto Rosario.

There isn't much to do outside of the ocean in El Cotillo. And I love it.

Apart from a few cute cafés and restaurants, there's really just the beach.

As I'm overly serious about snorkelling, I made it my ritual to go to one of the beaches first thing in the morning during our stay in El Cotillo and to be in the water just after sunrise, only me and the fish.

For many Europeans, including myself, the Canary islands were a spot where our parents loved to vacation in the 2000s. I remember many spring holidays in small bungalows on Gran Canaria, surrounded by other Germans, in walking distance to a pebble beach and a schnitzel restaurant.

When I decided to leave Hamburg before the second lockdown to spend this time somewhere else, I looked for places within the EU to make visa arrangements easer.

I also wasn't keen on changing planes, not wanting to expose myself and others to more possible Covid interactions than necessary.

This left me with exactly one place to go: Fuerteventura, right next to Gran Canaria.

hi! My name is Sarah and I am a travel addict. And I secretly went to the Canary Islands for several months.