The Dopamine Diaries: Yoga Retreat, Fuerteventura

My first solo trip was to a yoga retreat in the Canary Islands...

I decided to go for a week over the new year to Yogafriends on the island of Fuerteventura. Yogafriends is a boutique yoga and meditation hideaway in the North of the island. It is in a beautiful, luxurious and contemporary villa with a stunning backdrop of a volcano (you can see the top of the volcano in the photo below).

The gourmet food served was vegan and organic. The retreat was a detox; no caffeine, sugar, meat or alcohol (except New Year's Eve!). I struggled with the lack of caffeine and managed to go missing for a whole afternoon; they found me asleep in my room.. oops!

All our meals were prepared by a private chef so he made sure there were always gluten free options for me. My favourite meal was breakfast as we usually had it out by the pool.

The retreat consisted of about 4 hour of yoga per day, a couple of hours in the morning and a couple before dinner. There was also daily hikes and meditation, if you wanted to, and a massage. I liked going on the hikes, on the first day we hiked up the volcano near the villa which was amazing.

The island is a really interesting (but very windy!) place with so many different types of beaches and landscapes to explore. There were 2 pups that lived in the villa so we would take them on our walks, so cute.

As it was my first solo trip abroad I thought traveling somewhere where I would meet people would ease me in. I love yoga and I needed a proper break so a retreat was the best idea.

I made a lovely friend with the only other person who had traveled there alone (other people had come with friends or partners) and we went off on little adventures around the island together, she even came over to the UK to visit me afterwards.

Everyone on the retreat was German, I was the only British person but they all kindly spoke English around me and did the classes in English.

The best night we had was on New Year's Eve. Some of the other guests bought some wine and champagne. We had a beautiful meal then we drank and danced the night away to ABBA, needless to say I missed the early morning yoga the next day!

Corralajo Beach

The yoga retreat was quite possibly one of the best things I've ever done. I left there feeling happy, strong, rested and rejuvenated. I completely reset myself and broadened my horizons. It gave me the confidence and independence I needed to start traveling alone. And it was so amazing to meet people from different walks of life who I wouldn't normally meet.

If you want to start traveling on your own, doing something like this is a brilliant way to start.