Fuerteventura, whose name translates roughly as “reliable luck”, is one of the most popular tourist islands in the Canary archipelago and the main center of European windsurfing. Despite its desolate volcanic landscape, there are green areas, a botanical garden and a zoo, olive groves and whole plantations of medicinal aloe. In addition, the island is home to the former capital of all Canary Islands with a museum and several interesting temples.
Top 10 attractions in Fuerteventura
Sotavento beach
Fuerteventura attracts tourists primarily with its beaches. Despite the fact that it is a volcanic island with several volcanic peaks that once erupted, the landscape is rather flat. The peculiarity of the local climate is the constantly blowing wind. Therefore, there are also beaches with a high wave, which are convenient for windsurfing. You can relax here all year round, but the best time for surfing is from April to October.
The main center of this sport is Sotavento beach near the Costa Calma resort town. This beach is officially recognized as the best in Europe for surfers. There are several bays on the beach, protected by sandbanks, for those who prefer to just swim, but the main entertainment here is windsurfing. All along the coast there are centers where you can rent boards of any type and learn to stick to them, and the length of the beach itself is 30 km.
Pico de la Sarsa
Pico de la Sarsa is the highest point of the island, 807 m above sea level. Like the Tende volcano in Tenerife, it is part of the caldera of a grand stratovolcano that erupted here 21 million years ago. This mountain is the center of the Jandia Natural Park. An eco-trail with a length of 7.5 km is laid along it to the top, it starts right from the Matorral beach.
The road is deserted: the slopes of the mountain are not overgrown with forest, but rather rocky and covered with solidified lava. Here you can find rare succulent plants - for example, different types of crassula, and birds of prey soar over the mountain. The summit itself is fenced off from goats, which devour the protected plants. On a sunny day, the top of Pico de Sarsa offers beautiful views of the entire island.
Oasis park
Oasis Park is the largest green area of the desert island. There is an extensive Botanical Garden here. The basis of his collection is the relict plants of the Canary Islands. The fact is that several sections of ancient subtropical forests have survived on the Canaries, which covered almost completely the territory of future Europe for several million years. Nowadays, very little is left of them, and some plants have not survived on the mainland, but have survived in the Canaries, for example, the Azores (or Canary) laurel.
Fuerteventura has 12 plant species that are found only here and nowhere else, but the collection of the botanical garden is, of course, broader. It features all the relict species of the Canary Islands and several relict plants from other areas of the world, such as Australia. In addition, there is a huge cactus garden - after all, cacti and other succulents on the island feel great.
The second part of the park is zoological. This is a zoo, created in accordance with modern requirements for keeping animals: huge enclosures, balconies above them for observing the inhabitants, and much more.
Betancuria - the former capital of the kingdom
Betancuria is a small village almost in the center of the island. This place was founded in 1404 by Jacques de Bettencourt personally, the conqueror who conquered the Canary Islands and declared himself the Canary king. The next ruler of the city and the island was his relative Macio de Betancourt. The city remained the capital until 1834, when it stopped growing due to a lack of good land around it and a lack of fresh water: the river on which it was once founded dried up. Then the inhabitants began to move to more fertile places.
In Betancuria, the historic center has remained almost unchanged, rebuilt in the 17th century, after a devastating pirate raid. The church, which was once a cathedral, has survived, as well as two other churches left over from a Franciscan monastery of the 15th century. There is a small Museum of Sacred Art in the city, and in the neighboring village is the main shrine of the island - a chapel with a revered statue of the Virgin Mary la Peña. She is considered miraculous.
Museum of Archeology and Ethnography in Betancuria
The only historical museum on the small island is located in its old capital, Betancuria. It is located in an old building, in the courtyard of which there are two cannons from the first half of the 19th century.
The museum consists of three parts and five halls. The first part tells about the oldest finds on the island: people settled here already in the Paleolithic period. The second part is devoted to the founding of the city and its fight against pirates, and the third part is ethnographic. Before the arrival of the Spaniards, the island was inhabited by the Mahorers Indian tribe. They were almost completely assimilated by the Spaniards, but something of their traditions and art was preserved on the island: idols, ritual objects, weapons, tools. A separate small exhibition is dedicated to Ville Winter, a mysterious German base of the mid-20th century. The museum contains finds from excavations on its territory.
Aquapark "Baku"
This is the only water park on the island, so in fact it is the best in the vicinity. It is located in the largest resort on the island - Corralejo, known for its long white beaches and active life.
"Baku" is not only a water park, but also a whole entertainment complex. There are high-speed slides, a children's area, and a pool with waves (the maximum wave height there is two and a half meters, it is enough to practice surfing), but besides this, there is a land zone "Europa-Park". In it you can play mini golf, tennis, climb the climbing wall and have a snack. There is a small zoo called Animal Experience Park, with parrots, flamingos, turtles and iguanas. There is its own Oceanarium, which is a huge flooded ship with panoramic windows, where you can feed sharks or swim next to sea lions.
The prices in the park are quite European, but on the island there is an opportunity to get an entrance ticket for free: for example, they are sometimes handed out at the airport along with advertising brochures.
Villa Winter
The most mysterious structure of the island is located near the village of Kofete. This is the villa of the German industrialist Gustav Winter, built in 1940 in the form of a Gothic fortress. This man was the official German manager of the Spanish company Dehesa de Jandia S. A., collaborated with the Nazis and bought these places from the state in favor of his company. The building of the villa was built by prisoners, and in the future it was heavily guarded.
Officially it was believed that this is a farm, and they are engaged in agriculture, but there is information that there was a small airfield, and legends that it was almost a secret submarine base, or Hitler's secret bunker, or an underground testing ground for new types of weapons.
The building is now in disrepair. Its mysterious cellars are walled up, but it is possible to inspect the structure itself from the inside and outside.
Lobos Island
If on the island of Fuerteventura they are mainly engaged in windsurfing, then for the sake of snorkeling they swim to the small island of Lobos, which is very close. Most of the island is considered a nature reserve, and very close to it there are several coral reefs and sponge colonies, which attract tourists. From Fuerteventura, boats run here every hour and a half. There are no hotels on Lobos itself, there is only a small village with a restaurant for tourists.
Eco-trails with information posters have been laid across the island. You can climb the central peak of Montaña la Caldera - this was also once a volcano, so the path to it lies through desert lava fields, or you can walk to the beautiful lighthouse at the northern tip of the island.
Salt Museum
On the west coast, there is a salt factory that produces quality sea salt. Swimming pools are arranged right on the shore, in which salt undergoes a natural evaporation process, and then a strong salt solution is filtered, distilled from one pool to another. The fact is that in sea water, in addition to salt itself, there are many impurities, here you can see unrefined salt, and even try it if you wish. The bottom of the pool is made of special red clay, which "pulls" impurities onto itself. This method of salt extraction is more than six thousand years old.
The closed exposition of the Salt Museum tells about the industrial extraction of salt in large industries, there are numerous diagrams and photographs, and a short film about salt is shown. And the most important exhibit of the exposition is a real whale skeleton, towering on the seashore.
Salt produced here can be purchased at the shop at the factory.
Aloe Vera Farm
In addition to sea salt, Fuerteventura has another iconic product. Whole plantations of medicinal aloe vera grow here, and here they produce a lot of products from it. Aloe vera is a succulent that does not care about the bright sun or the arid climate, and it contains many beneficial substances.
The aloe that can be seen on plantations is very different from what grows on our windowsills. Only here, in natural conditions, you can find almost one meter tall plants.
You can take an excursion to the farms that grow aloe from any resort town on the island. They will tell you in detail about this plant, show you how the precious juice is extracted from it and offer you to buy medicinal cosmetics produced here.
