Corralejo - A Holiday to Fuerteventura
Our first week-long holiday abroad with our 5-year-old was to Corralejo in Fuerteventura, and it turned out to be a great choice.
Holidays are a chance to leave work behind for a week or two. However, if you are a small business owner with operations, systems, and servers that run 24/7, with deadlines set by artists and clients, taking time off may not be feasible. In the past, we have tended towards city breaks and weekend getaways rather than a “proper” holiday. However, these trips can be rushed, especially for a small child. So, in 2020, we decided to start taking longer holidays. Unfortunately, nobody took a holiday for a while.
So, in April 2023, we embarked on our first week-long holiday abroad with our 5-year-old. We were looking for a destination that wasn’t too hot or cold. Not too busy, but not too quiet either. It had to be Spanish-speaking, as that’s what our daughter was learning in school. We also wanted a place with lots of water for swimming. Thankfully, good internet is easy to find these days. In the end, we settled on Corralejo in Fuerteventura, and it turned out to be a great choice.
We stayed in the Barceló Corralejo Sands. It was an excellent hotel, and we spent much more time there than expected, primarily due to the team entertaining the kids. There were organised activities for the kids for an hour or two in the morning and afternoon, followed by a kid’s disco after dinner. I think the idea was for the kids to go to bed and for the adults to enjoy the nightly musical acts, but it was still mostly the kids who stayed and danced.
We visited the dunes and beaches of Parque Natural de Corralejo twice. There are miles and miles of unspoilt beaches and dunes, except for two horrendous-looking hotels on the northern beach. Head south, and it’s beautiful. The first time, we parked at the hotels and walked south; the second time, we drove past the hotels, parked by the roadside, and walked over the dunes. The waves made the water unsafe to swim in, especially for children, but the beach was shallow enough for lots of paddling. Like most out-of-town beaches in Fuerteventura, swimsuits were entirely optional. The proportion of naked people varied, and almost everyone walking along the beach was clothed. Nobody cared, and it seemed much more natural than having separate beaches for clothed and unclothed use. It certainly made getting changed easier.
Our first excursion from Corralejo was a ferry and bus tour to Lanzarote. While seeing the stunning landscapes formed by volcanic activity centuries ago was enjoyable, the trip tried to pack in too much. We would have been better off using the time to explore Fuerteventura more.
Our next trip was to Isla de Lobos, a thirty-minute catamaran ride from Corralejo. Our daughter loved the rollercoaster effect of the waves as we sat at the very front and got the whole experience, getting very wet in the process. Although we didn’t have much time to explore the islands, we did spend some time paddling and swimming in the lagoon, surrounded by fish.
Our final trip was to the lagoons north of El Cotillo. We drove out of town and found a rough car park beside the beach. We arrived about 2 hours before high tide and got to play in the lagoon and rockpools before watching them slowly get covered by the ocean as high tide approached. The area is outside of the town, so clothing was optional again. We want to return at high tide sometime to watch the pools reappear.
Apart from iPhones, our only camera was a GoPro Hero. For the first time, we only took one laptop - a SurfacePro 9 - that couple ran almost everything we all needed, backed up with the occasional log-in to the Mac Studio back home.
We flew with Jet2, who were excellent, apart from the bizarre decision to keep the lights on full through a nighttime flight home so they could sell more “gifts”.
Next year’s spring break? Very likely, it will be Barceló Corralejo Sands again.
We flew with Jet2. We stayed at the Barceló Corralejo Sands. We went to Isla de Lobos with OBY Catamaran.