Warning: Goats!

As we looked out of the plane window, Fuerteventura, one of the larger Canary Island specimens, was a craggy moonscape. It wasn’t until we hopped in our blue Citroen, exchanged less-then-friendly words with our travel agency on account of the cockroach-infested accommodation, and made it to the coast that we understood why beach enthusiasts from all over Europe storm these strands throughout the year.

In fact, these weren’t beaches per se, but rather fields of sand that bordered on the ocean. The sands swept by the strong winds from Africa peppered the landscape each day, forming rolling dunes and carving deep furrows into the cliffs. Countless years of sand barrages made it possible for you to walk almost a half-mile out into the surf with the water reaching no higher than your waist.



Couldn’t sit still…well, I couldn’t, and we hit the roads to various beaches on all points of the compass. Dodging the random goat, we made our way to various parched destinations in the island interior and sojourned at an eclectic mix of culinary pit stops. The cuisine catered to the two main groups of tourists who frequent the island: the Germans and the British, both of which seem to be striving to take over the Americans in the obesity category.

During one visit to the beach, we were over taken by a pair of middle-aged men. Once they advanced from our peripheral vision, we noticed that each held two ski poles, striding valiantly and briskly along the surf and donning beige T-shirts, rucksacks, sunglasses – and nothing else. Nordic walking nudists! Their sun-burnt posteriors had recently visited the cosmetologist, and the confidence in their gate betrayed two facts: they were German, and they were of the other sexual persuasion. What made the whole episode that much more hilarious was that Kate and I saw the line of tourists making their way toward us, who also beheld the spectacle and fell like laughing dominos as the semi-nudists frolicked down the beach.

Kate and I fled the tourist rush by heading out to “the open sea,” trying out some scuba diving, jet skiing, and deep-sea fishing, and visiting the volcanic precipices of Fuerteventura’s northern neighbor, Lanzarote. On a particularly touristy day, we retreated to a Sauna, where we squatted in overly heated saltwater and where Kate enjoyed a one-hour massage. We spent a good deal of our time chilling back at the bungalow, where we played host to the odd stray cat.

Eleven days we spent on the island, purging the hard work of 2006 from our minds – playing card games on the terrace and partaking of the cheap-but-good cerbeza de las Canarias.