On the Canary Island La Palma, unexpectedly, there is a lot of water. Some of this water ends up in the Cascada de Los Colores, a small waterfall of red, yellow, and green streams. Soon the stream becomes mostly red, stays like that for a while, slowly turns into yellow, as other, clear water connects to it, and in the end, it fades into ordinary water.

The very top of La Palma is the Roque de los Muchachos with it’s 2426m height. On cloudy days, this is the view - that pointy thing in the distance is the Teide on Tenerife, way above the clouds, with it’s 3718m.

The Roque de los Muchachos host a significant amount and rather important astronomy telescopes. Unfortunately visitors are not allowed up here during the night because even that tiny ligth pollution could distort measurements, but it’s certainly a unique view, even during daytime.

A panorama from Roque de los Muchachos on La Palma at 2426m.

This is the ourdoor veranda, the engawa of the dojo building itself at Dojo Stara Wieś¹. The building hosts three beautiful areas to practice martial arts in a place, which resembles their origin quite well.

I had the chance from Pakua UK¹ to spend a weekend at Dojo Stara Wieś² in Poland. Unexpected as it is, the Dojo is a small village, built for Japanese martial arts, in Japanese architectural style.

While it’s not the complete fairytale Japan one might expect, in the end, the only thing one could wish for is a small forest of giant bamboo, because everything else is tranquility here. The ponds were full of huge frogs and lovely newts, the air was filled with loud and happy birds - it’s a lovely place.

I took the picture not that early, sometimes just after sunrise.

Just another abandoned, decaying factory in Budapest.

Empty windows, nature slowly taking over, rubble everywhere - a few decades of decay.

Puertito de los Molinos has huge, steep, beautiful walls of rock surrounding it; unfortunately it’s more or less impossible to climb down on them. We planned to get here by sunset, but it was pitch black when we actually arrived, so instead before getting our flight home, we got up early and came back for sunrise. It was worth it: when sunrise comes with the high tide the waves are magnificent, even with a calm weather.

The road to and from Pozo Negro is quiet, but that doesn’t mean there is nothing to look at: it comes all the way along the black fields of lava which started at Malpaís Grande and ended up at the sea at Pozo Negro.

Pozo Negro got about 2 sentences in the guide book for Fuerteventura, and most of those 2 lines was that it has 2 pescados, fish restaurants. Well, it did, in fact had nice fish, and if you’re there by sunset, like we were, it also offers beautiful colours.

There is a rather empty road on Fuerteventura, the one that goes through Betancuria, in the mountains, to the south, FV-30. I can certainly recommend taking this route if you can: it’s calm, outerworldly, with ravens visiting you at the miradors, showing all the beautiful mountains on the west side of the island.

During the past centuries there were numerous attempts to make Fuerteventura greener again - one of them was the Peñitas Dam. Unfortunately the erosion of the surrounding mountains is too strong, pushing a lot of soil into the dam, making the water completely disappear in the mud. It still contains a lot of water though, given how happy the trees are in the valley - trees, which are already rare at Fuerteventura.

(Also: a small praise for my Pentax camera, for producing an image like this, ouf of the machine without post-processing or filters.)

The image was taken from the top of Mirador De Morro Velosa, on our way to Betancuria.

When visiting a mirador, one might expect a place to buy coffee next to a magnificent view, but Mirador De Morro Velosa offers a lot more. Besides the panoramic view, the building also functions as a museum about the islands and their origins - and yes, you can still get a Cortado leche v leche.

Since my camera doesn’t have a panorama function, I had to improvise: 4 handheld shoots combined perfectly with Hugin turned out better, than I expected.

On that black slope you can see small semi-circles of stones: those are humiditiy traps with vine in their middle. Wine from Lanzarote is sweet and very nice, and knowing it’s growing on a martinan land makes it even more exciting.

The Timanfaya National Park is a vast wasteland of volcanic eruptions happened mostly around 1730. It is unique, beautiful, looks like an alien planet, and quite dangerous to walk on your own. The road on the left is the route the camels take when going to work and getting home - they are only serving tourists these days though.

My camera doesn’t have a panorama function: this image is glued from 3 handheld shoots, combined perfectly with a program called Hugin.

Lanzarote has a unique lake: it’s completely green, called El Lago Verde. The colour is due to the different volcanic ash falling into the small lake: all these magnificent slopes around it are contributing to creating that green water.

At the top of Timanfaya National Park on Lanzarote, there is a building, designed by César Manrique, called El Diablo: it uses completely natural hot air coming from the depths of the Earth to cook. This is the view in front of it.

Sometimes the simple, small things, are just as gorgeous: this was in the stream that as flowing down from a gigantic waterfall in Ireland.

Only a small portion of the huge Powerscourt Waterfall in Ireland. The place is beautiful, however, it can get very crowded, so taking images of the whole waterfall is very tricky.

Occasionally it’s worth getting off the usual tracks and paths; you end up in abandoned, unmaintained parts of the forest, leading into dark rows of pines all around you.

Irish forests are beautiful, and all the greens collide before autumn sits in.

At the end of a wonderful organised day tour we visited Loch Awe and Kilchurn Castle. We a decent weather all the day - given it was winter in Scotland, I was very glad for it, but the sunset was certainly magnificent.

Sunsets can be magnificent all around the UK, but they seem to be astonishing in Scotland - if you’re lucky enough to see the sun. We were, thank fully.

Sunsets have been photographed so many times that when you see one that’s truly outstanding you end up finding yourself looking for excuses why you took the picture. It’s simple: it was, in fact, beautiful.

We passed this tiny island on our way to Kilchurn Castle and back. Going there, they were simple, grey trees, but when the sun was setting, it was lighting up the branches just like it was the colour of the leaves or the trees themselves. You need to look closely to realise, it’s only a trick of the light.

There is a large parking lot in Glencoe where everybody stoppes to take pictures. While the view on the opposite is indeed magnificent, if you turn around, you can see just as interesting and just as beautiful landscapes as well.

Clencoe in Scotland is a manificent place, but it feels incredibly distant from what I’m usually used to. Vast, flowing clouds, close enough that sometimes they are just above your head, snow capped, steep (although not too large) mountains all around.

La Palma is full of these little fellows, curious, fast, beautiful. If you give them some pressed fruit bars, they come very close.