Fuerteventura, Spain 2025

We don't like arriving in the dark, but our Vueling flight from Seville arrived on schedule at dusk. but we had only a ten minute drive in the darkness to reach Castillo Mar in La Caleta.  I had exchanged Whatsapp messages with Nikki, the apartment host who appeared a few minutes after our arrival. We had a two story unit in the thick of a mostly British enclave, and a short walk to the malecon.  We walked over to the nearby restaurant zone and had a mediocre meal at the popular Hong Kong restaurant. 

Fuerteventura has a reputation as a beach island. When we were on Southern Lanzarote a few years earlier, we could look across and see sandy beaches and sand dunes. I booked 11 nights on the island to give us time to explore the island beaches at a relaxed pace. As we found out later, there is more to Fuerteventura than beaches. As it happens, a large storm was hitting peninsular Spain and the island got hit by a few stray downpours on our first morning. After breakfast, we walked along the seashore path and got drenched by a heavy shower.  Later in the morning, we drove out to the main road and did some grocery shopping at Mercadona and the adjoining Lidl. The weather mostly settled down in the afternoon to allow us to walk south to see the local beaches and some of the local urban environment (7km). We were slightly underwhelmed by the area, but the weather had something to do with it.

We had a small balcony off the bedroom upstairs and we made a point of having our meals there. We would walk down to the seashore to watch the sunrise and then head back for breakfast in the early morning sun before heading out. The town of Betancuria is inland in the central part of the island, about 30km from where we were staying. When we arrived at Betancuria around 9:30am, we found a sleepy, traditional Canarian village. By the time we returned from a nearby hike, it was packed with tourists and tour buses were standing by in the parking lot.

We walked up the neighbouring hills along an old road to Degollada de Marrubio from where we opted to follow a ridgeline south and then back into Betancuria. It was a 6km walk with 250m of ascent that provided views to the north and east. On the return drive, we stopped by a cheese museum to see a windmill and the gardens. Later, on a local beach walk, we watched the sunset from Playa del Castillo.

It was a 50km drive the following day to Ajuy for a popular coastal walk. We were there by 9:00am so there was hardly anyone around. The trail had been closed during the recent storm mainly because it gave access to the Ajuy sea caves. it was a nice 6km return walk  to a sea arch. There is gravel road access to the arch area so there were a couple of campers there, but otherwise it was quiet. When we got back towards the Ajuy village, we could see that the sea caves were a popular attraction.

We followed the road to Antigua and found the side road to the Gayria volcano trail head. The 3km Gayria volcano hike turned out to be our favourite volcano walk on the island. The trail was lightly travelled, steep in places and we didn't see any other people there. It gave some interesting views and you could see the old lava flows down below where animal grazing was impractical.

We had plenty of time in the afternoon to relax and take in another sunset at the Castillo beach.

It was time to move south to the Costa Calma. It was about an hour drive to Sotovento beach parking from where we walked up and over Montaña Pelada and further south for massive views in all directions. We descended to the Sotovento lagoon and walked the tidal areas back to the car for a total of 7.5km and 325m of ascent. The area didn't show up on Alltrails but I certainly preferred it over the Betancuria hike.  Our host, Javier, met us at the Bahia Sunlight and set us up in the apartment. We were nearby to a new Spar supermarket and about 10 minute walk down to the Costa Calma beach. Although the apartment was nice,it looked right at other units and it was located much further from the beach than advertised, so I felt an element of deception.

Once again, we got off to an early start heading for south end of Fuerteventura. Playa Cafete was our first objective. There is a fair amount of poetic license in some of the descriptions of both the drive in and the Cafete beach itself. I read "Reaching it involves a challenging 20 km dirt road, often requiring a 4x4 or careful driving in a regular car" and once you are at the beach "Those who dare to  venture the road will be rewarded with awed amazement as they take in the immensity of the mountains of Jandia". It was a gravel road, with a few narrow sections, but we reached the beach area just after 9:00am. Yes, it is a dramatic setting. It was low/mid-tide and we started walking along the beach, but after a while we turned around because the soft sand made for poor walking. In just over an hour, we were back on the other side of the island. 

We carried on further west on gravel roads towards Faro Punta de Jandia and then turned right and drove to Faro Punta Pesebre and parked the car there. We undertook a 7km hike along the SW coast as far as Punta Junquillo. It featured all kinds of dramatic cliffs and big waves. We saw two other people at distance. We drove over to the Faro Punta de Jandia and there were a number of day visitors doing the same. We doubled back to the town of Morro Jable and found a parking spot. We walked the busy Morro Jable promenade. It features a pretty beach with plenty of sunbeds for rent. Many of the visitors to the south of the island are Germans,particularly Morro Jable. We detoured to the Esquinzo Mercadona supermarket before heading home.

We had seen the Playa Sotavento a couple of days earlier, so we timed our walk on the long beach for an early morning low tide. We were rewarded for the early start; the sun came up right on schedule at 7:30am. It was a beautiful 7km walk right to the end of the beach and return. We shared the beach with more birds than people at that hour.

Later on, we walked the local beaches from the apartment and then drove over to La Pared on the other side of the island and wandered the Punto de Guadalupe and then over to Playa del Viejo Reyes, that had a number of busy surf schools for beginners. 

The coastline south of La Pared looked intriguing. The Alltrails route to Playa De Agua Liques meant walking from La Caleta, but we opted to start in La Pared for more coastal walking. We had packed up and parked in La Pared before 8:30am. It was a 13km walk out and back with a slightly different return route. Once we reached the Agua Liques area, we followed a shelf above cliffs for about 4km before turning around. It was magnificent walking and probably my favourite hike on Fuerteventura.

We drove through the mountainous centre of the island to reach El Cotillo in the NW of the island, where we met our Italian apartment host, Stefano. Our comfortable unit, Pensamiento Feliz, was centrally located in town. In the late afternoon, we drove a  little ways north and reached the busy Playa El Islote area to enjoy the sunset.

We had a short drive to Lajeres and walked up to the rim of Volcan Honda. The5km walk was on well developed trails with all sorts of signs to keep to the path. In short, it is popular, confirmed by the busy parking lot when we left. Not a favourite. We spent the balance of day checking out the shoreline north and south of El Cotillo.

We started the day with an enjoyable walk up Volcan Arena, just north of Oliva. We looked around Oliva, then the windmills of Villaverde before driving over to the NE corner of the island. We checked out the Coralejo dunes, the very same sand that we could see from Lanzarote some years earlier. The dunes are not particularly high. We made a stop at a Mercadona supermarket, drove through busy Corralejo to reach Popcorn Beach, that features white algae sand. We timed our visit to Playa del Castillo with the sunset.

On our last full day on Fuerteventura, we walked up Barranco de los Encantados (7km return) that felt like Utah. We came across an area of standing petrified trees.  Later in the afternoon, we took a boogie board from the apartment and Sheila had go at riding the small surf at Playa del Castillo.

We had an early flight to Tenerife Norte, connecting to El Hierro. We drove to the airport in the darkness right through the main town of Puerto del Rosario. The sun came up while were in the air terminal to expose a calima  (fine sand and dust particles from the Sahara Desert) had moved in.