10 days in Feurteventura

Queen Maeve

Posted on April 08 2017

I booked this holiday in February as I was wrapping up 3.5 years of working in HubSpot and I knew I could take 5 weeks off between full time employment and then re-joining my own business. I knew I was going to need a decent amount of down time to help me unwind, catch up on sleep and shift gears, physically & mentally. Mission accomplished here in The Canaries.

I am mainly writing this blog post as a reminder for myself as I am not great a recollecting the past and sure if anyone is reading this - Hi !

Flew in with Ryanair and booked an Airbnb apartment all for under €650 and then a couple of days before I booked a rental with Gold Car (don't ever use them - cowboys). While I was waiting in the queue for the hire car I decided to delete Snapchat, Facebook & Twitter Apps from my phone, switched off all notifications to messaging apps. I kept Instagram but didn't post anything just read. So my first "digital detox" commenced, didn't tell anyone and put undue pressure on myself, just did it.

First bit of craic was when I eventually got out of the airport and realised I was going to have to drive on the left - I have only ever done this once, with a friend in Hawaii about 13 years ago. I took my time and drove like a nana for 40 mins to Corralejo on the north of the island and a well renowned destination for Kitesurfing, the primary reason for my trip, that and chilling out.

Apartment was perfect and after unpacking I drove into the town centre to pick up groceries. Plan for the trip was to eat clean, cut the processed foods and sugar to a minimum while giving coffee a break too. One of the reasons I booked a trip on my own :) imagine being with me? Zero craic, oh yeah - I'm still not drinking - one year of more or less no booze. The complex has a lovely pool and most days I was lying out reading or listening to audible and obsessing over how much suncream I had on - still got patchy sunburn marks - Grrrrrrr.

On the Thursday I had my first Kitesurfing lesson with the guys at Flag Beach. Andrea, our Italian instructor was great, through our chats he and I found out we both were living in Auckland at the same time, small world - love it. Day one was on the land (second time I have done this - first time was in Lanzarote two years ago). I absolutely love the feeling of the wind in the kite and controlling how it moves. We went to a couple of places, chasing good wind conditions. I had a great time.

Day two was another kettle of fish, we drove to a small harbour, geared up and 9 of us hopped into a small dingy where I thought we were going to a lagoon to learn how to manage the kite in the water, oh no. Way, way, way out to the deep sea is where we went, anyhoo, through the bouncing over waves, over and back dropping people off to learn and collecting others I had my first ever panic attack - joy. So that was that. Combined with the ever changing wind conditions meant I didn't get to do anything on day two.

When I got back onshore I asked the instructors if that is how they were going to teach the remainder of the 3 days or would be be learning in one of the shallow water areas that I had seen on their website? Turns out the conditions were only good for offshore and I tapped out. The owner was great and gave me a refund, but now I had 7 days left on a holiday I came on mainly to learn how to Kitesurf, mmmm,

After getting the adrenalin out of my system on the Friday I emailed a couple of places to find out if they could do private lessons in shallow water and voila Petra at Red Shark Kite Surf great name) came to the rescue. The conditions for Tuesday and Wednesday meant high tide and good wind in a lagoon at El Cotillo, 20 minutes away. So I booked in and relaxed over the rest of the weekend.

Tuesday morning at 8am off I went on now my 3rd attempt to learn how to Kitesurf, and there I met one of the best teachers/instructors in my life another Andrea, except she was from Hungary absolute cracking bird. The spot was beautiful and we were there before any other Kite Surfers so had the place to ourselves. One of the first things she said to me was "I cannot tell you how to Kite Surf, you have to feel it yourself". Anyone who knows me, knows how much I LOVED hearing this.

We spend two mornings in the lagoon and I got to learn and practise at my pace. I did't get up on the board but I was happy with what I learned. Next step is to woman up and get lessons in Ireland, preferably in my home town, Sligo. My goal is to be good enough to go out on my own someday on Rosses Point Beach.

For the rest of the holiday I just researched a new Powerlifting Program for The Euros, in July. Went to the gym a couple of times, lay by the pool and ate some meals . . . . did not post them on Instagram so here's what you missed out on.