Our new blogger in Spain fell in love with the Canary Islands in 2006 and has since decided to stay put.

Following in Sal’s blogging footsteps is not going to be easy. He’s an expert and I’m just a beginner. But the lovely people at Expatica have asked me to blog about life in Fuerteventura so I’ll give it a go.

I suppose by way of an introduction, I should tell you a bit about myself. I’m Irish, born and bred in that finest of cities, Dublin. You all probably know it as the birthplace of a certain black liquid –that one with the creamy top. What’s its name now? Oh yes. Guinness. Though I have to tell you that unless you’ve had a pint in Dublin, you haven’t tasted the real stuff. As we say, it’s the Liffey water that makes the Guinness in Dublin the best in the world.

So what am I doing in Fuerteventura, in the Canary Islands? A spur-of-the-moment decision in April 2006 to buy a villa here! Honestly. It wasn’t that I had been coming here for holidays for donkey’s years; it wasn’t for health reasons. It was just that I had fallen in love with the island.

My first visit here was to Corralejo on a holiday in March 2005 and I absolutely loved the whole island. I came back again a year later and as soon as I landed on the runway, I felt I had come home. I got a vague notion that I’d love to buy a place on the island, at some time in the future.

Then at Easter, just a few weeks later, there was a large property exhibition in Dublin. I decided to go out to have a look at what kind of properties were selling on Fuerte. Just have a browse.

But an hour later, I had put a small deposit of EUR 800 on a villa in Tamaragua! Then I had to break the news to the family that the house in Dublin would be going on the market and with the cash, something smaller would be bought and the rest was going to pay for my new pad in Fuerte. My estate agent subsequently told everyone, it was the easiest sale she ever had!

It was the end of May before I got over to have a look at the property – by which time, the Spanish owner had sold it. Well, apparently, his lawyer did. Even though I had put a deposit, albeit a small one. He had asked for a  EUR 25,000 deposit in April but I’m not that stupid! Ah well, just one of the vagaries of buying property in Spain.

My estate agent was very upset but she needn’t have worried. The particular villa was absolutely in the wrong place and I wouldn’t have bought it anyway.

She showed me another villa in the same area, with a dip pool in the garden and I loved it. There was a small hiccup in August when the owner hiked up the price and I changed my mind. But I knew this was the right place and the right time so after a lot of thinking, I decided to go ahead.

And by the first week in September, it was signed and sealed. I was now the proud owner of a ‘house in the sun’. Most of my neighbours are Spanish so that helps with learning the language. I did learn Spanish many moons ago when I spent a year in Gran Canaria, so it’s slowly coming back.

Although I still haven’t moved lock, stock and barrel over here, I commute between Dublin and here. I’m a journalist so most of the time, it doesn’t make much difference where I’m located.

So that’s the story, as we say in Ireland. There are quite a few other Irish living here as well as British so no doubt I’ll be telling you about some of them over the next while, mentioning no names!

Hasta pronto!