Fuerteventura - The Grand Finale

With our flight home not until 5pm, we checked out of our apartment at 10am and decided to take a slow drive to the airport, stopping off anywhere which took our fancy along the way. We'd passed a sign for the Eco Museum just outside the village of Tefir the previous day but initially dismissed it, imagining an exhibition on recycling, crop rotation and wind power being a bit dull, but after looking it up online decided to head there first. 

La Alcibiades Eco Museo is actually an ethnographic museum showcasing the various architectural styles of Fuerteventura, how the islanders had lived in years gone by with live demonstrations of the traditional crafts of the island by local artisans, a Canarian version of the Black Country Living Museum. We were very excited to see donkeys and camels, too - important animals on the island both for transport and for farm work.

At 10am we had the place to ourselves and, as we'd found throughout our time on the island, it was assumed that we were Spanish. The museum staff were very apologetic when we told them we were Brits as the only tours they ran were in German and all of the signage was in Spanish but fortunately there were QR codes we could scan to translate the information into English.

Mujeres De Tierra Y Sal (Women of Earth and Salt) is a travelling exhibition attempting to transmit the life experiences that the women of Fuerteventura shared, working the land from dawn to dusk, collecting grains, walking along the shore to obtain seafood, salt and bait, preparing fish & cheese for sale in addition to the collection of cochineal, orchilla and tomatoes which were shipped to distant places. I'd have loved to have learnt how women took care of their communities, healing the body and the soul through the use of herbs and infusions, rituals and remedies explaining how certain afflictions such as  Getting the sun out of the head, putting the mother into place or the damage caused by the evil eye or the curse were dealt with.  

We saw weaving, lace making and pottery demonstrations but was too engrossed in the work to take photos!  

We headed towards Corralejo to have a look at the defence casemates near Bristol harbour, part of a set of fortifications built along the north of the island during WW2 as a defence against the potential occupation by the Allies.

We continued along the coast road to the island's capital.

In 1860, Puerto de Cabras, which translates to Port of Goats, took over from Betancuria and became Fuerteventura's principal city. In the 1950s, the city was renamed Puerto del Rosario.

Puerto del Rosario is a vibrant, dazzlingly clean city with a beach to die for. There's outdoor sculpture park, cool street art and a colony of well-fed, contented cats living in the rocks beside the harbour. We had to snigger at the signs extolling visitors not to feed the cats as their "Zealous yelling upsets the residents", by the bowls of biscuits nobody must take a blind bit of notice. 

Although there's several galleries and museums within the city, none of them were open on a Tuesday - bad timing!   

Imagine being able to spend your lunch hour on this beach? 

We were very impressed with the charcones, a natural sea water pool protected from the waves. 

Suddenly ravenous we ended up in a hole in the wall cafe full of builders and, after trying one of their house speciality bocadillos, I'm not surprised - freshly made, delicious and cheap and despite our poor Spanish, we couldn't have been made to feel more welcome.

After dropping Lexi back at the Goldcar kiosk we passed through security and sat outside in the sunshine with an ice cold pint of Dorada. Possibly the most civilsed departure lounge we've ever visited!

And so ends our third trip to La Islas Canarias in 14 months (You can read about our previous travels in Gran Canaria HERE and Tenerife HERE).  I've definitely disproved my previous theory of The Canaries being a cultural wasteland. In this day and age, it's so easy to do some up-to-date, pre-trip research, there's no reason at all to stay in a soulless, purpose-built resort unless, of course, you want to!

Where will we go next? We're hoping to squeeze in another adventure before Glastonbury.