There were a number of factors that made us decide to go to Fuerteventura on holiday. Firstly and probably most importantly, we were on a very tight budget, our mortgage is large and my wife has not yet returned to work following the birth of our son. (He’s two years old) , anyway we felt we needed a break ( who doesn’t at the moment) and we decided to see if our local travel agent had any late deals on offer. Secondly, it being March, we wanted somewhere that would be reasonably warm and not too busy. We didn’t mind nightlife, but with a two year, old we need as much sleep as possible. We could have used the internet to book the holiday but my wife said that with a small child we didn’t want to rely on my booking skills, we’d probably end up in an apartment above a night club.
The travel agent suggested Fuerteventura and alas my O level geography proved useless and we had to look it up on the map. She said Canary Islands in a rather impressive manner and I knew vaguely that they were somewhere off the coast of Africa. It seemed a long way away ( 4.5 hours from Gatwick) and having never travelled abroad before with a small person I immediately thought of all those poor people on the plane having to endure my screaming son for that period of time, but then the agent told us the price and I lost that thought.
When we initially enquired about a late deal, i assumed it would mean within the next four weeks, I didn’t think it would mean going on holiday within the next three days but luckily my boss, probably fed up with looking on my run down demeanour, gladly said i could take the time off, we were going.
Our flight was from Gatwick, and we did use the Internet to book our Airport parking at Horley. I was trusted to do this as my wife said that even I could not mess up something as simple as Airport Parking. This was easy, we turned up, left them our keys to park the car and they bundled us on the bus with quite a few other people all looking equally as tired and cold. Have you ever noticed that package holidays always seem to leave and the most inconvenient times ? We needed to be at Gatwick at 4 in the morning and I thus decided that, rather than get up at 2, we simply would not go to bed, that was a big mistake. I was Ok until about 12.30am but after that, tiredness and the sheer stress of thinking about travelling to the airport brought on a hangover type headache. Never again, my tip if you are going to get a flight and have to leave early in the morning, just go to bed earlier or stay near the airport overnight in a Hotel.
The check in at the airport passed reasonably smoothly, I assumed that we would be first in the line for check in and was amazed that we were nearly last. Ah well never mind, i stood with the bags and my wife wheeled our young one round at high speed on the trolley, of course he was sick, but then that’s a fairly regular occurrence. One thing about early morning flights, ive never had one yet that has been delayed and this was no exception, it left bang on time and the flight passed without incident. ( By incident, I mean child being sick or turbulence).
I know most people knock airline food, but I think that’s a bit unfair, bearing in mind , nearly 200 people have to be fed from a kitchen the same size as a toilet, i think they do a wonderful job. I am a vegetarian so, am grateful; for any food offered to me, i naturally assume im not going to be fed on any package holidays.. Yes it all looks clinical and like it s just popped out of a vending machine by my bread roll, vegetarian breakfast and tea was quite Ok.
As soon as we stepped off the plane we noticed two things.1- It was very hot, surprisingly hot for March and secondly, there was a fairly decent wind blowing. Apparently something in the Islands name was a dead give away for this, but that fact had escaped me. My son, got a blast and some sand in his eye and immediately started crying. We reached the airport terminal in about ten seconds and this is one of the smallest airports ive seen. As per usual, there were no trolleys ( i think there is a universal shortage of trolleys so that didn’t surprise me). The terminal building is very small and basic, again, this is not a problem unless you decide to turn up here early for a spot of shopping, big tip, don’t. Our coach was waiting and we were taken to our apartments at Caleta de Fuste. We were quite impressed, this resort is very clean and the locals are very friendly, alas quite a few places were shut , either as it was too early in the season or they had simply shut down. There is a lovely sandy horseshoe shaped beach which was pleasant to sit on although the water was absolutely freezing. You simply cant escape the wind on this island and one of the problems with this, is you cannot always notice how much you are getting burnt. I burnt the back of my knees and ended up in agony for the most of the holiday. My son wasn’t to keen on the wind and spent most of the time on the beach under a towel, he simply didn’t want any more sand in the eye
Any way, away from the beach, the walks were pretty good and the evenings were quite and peaceful and we found a good number of places to find something to eat. After 3 days of trying to go to go to the beach, we decided to splash out and hire a car on our credit card. I hired a some kind of Spanish Vauxhall and this was a big mistake, we became stuck in the dunes and had to reply on some rather large Norwegians to push us out. Perhaps I should have studied the pictures more closely , this is a desert like island with plenty of sand. That aside, we were really impressed with the scenery. It really does feel that you are on a desert island, we drove down to the tip of the Island to a place called Jandia and it was incredible. I would recommend this island to anyway that really wants to get away from it all, apparently , there is a lot of nightlife on the north of the island, but we stayed well away from that. The landscape made it for us though, its simply breath taking. Minus points- Island is very very windy, you keep hoping it will drop but it doesn’t, there isn’t a great deal of food for vegetarians, plenty of pizza & chips and you can just about live off that for a week.
