Tag Archives: Fuerteventura

Hosting

MIRADOS DE LOBOS GOLF RESORT, CORRALEJO

The tourist accommodation offer in Corralejo is wide and varied. On this occasion we’re going to find out Lobos golf lookout point, located in Corralejo and offering another accommodation alternative, with the hallmark of being detached, at the outskirts of the town. Of course you don’t need to be a golf player to go to this resort, on the contrary, the offer is so good that many tourists chose this accommodation option in our little paradise. On this occasion we talked to one of the receptionists, Carolina, who let us get into these beautiful villas.

  • Name and position: Carolina, receptionist.
    Start date: November 2012.
    
Kind of accommodation: Detached villas, framed within a golf course.
    Number of beds: 60 villas with 3 rooms (6 beds).
    Average age of tourists: it’s difficult to establish an average as the tourism coming here is very diverse, families as well as groups of friends of diverse age.
    Offer: Two different kinds of villas, with a single floor or duplex. All of them have a garden, private swimming pool, parking, barbecue… they also offer bed and breakfast.
    Average price: 70-90 € per night/villa in low season, and between 110-140€ in high season.
    
Nationality of most customers: depending on the season, but from every country. Those days we are having lots of Canarian tourists (Spanish), as well as Italian and German… a bit of everything.

Your opinion about the quality of the tourism getting to the island:

It’s a tourism that appreciates our island very much, and often enjoys our leisure offers.
Of course, in the high season they usually come from a higher social status and they can afford investing more money in leisure and holidays.

How could the island improve so as to bind tourism?  

By completing unfinished works, mainly in Corralejo. It would also be important to look for environmental improvements, focused on renewable energies; from the tourist point of view this would create a concept that fits Fuerteventura perfectly.

What turns this island into a privileged place to spend your holidays?
We are in the middle of the ocean, but protected by the African continent and the islands surrounding us. Our sea, the sun…. that is, weather conditions are unbeatable. This turns us into the perfect place to practise outdoor activities and sports, water sports of all sorts. Besides, our fine sandy beaches… we are a perfect destination for the tourism looking for sun, beach and activities.
Main strong points of your hotel offer
Our villas, apart from being very beautiful, are located within a golf course, so they are surrounded by vegetation, a gorgeous landscape. The most important thing is that they are big, private, intimate and quiet. Being just 15 minutes away from downtown Corralejo, you can enjoy the comforts of the town without losing the quietness and privacy we have in our villas.

Do you offer your customers leisure offers not linked to the hotel?
 Yes, we offer surf lessons, boat trips…. we like to offer all kind of options to our customers.

Do they usually request boat tours around Fuerteventura?

Yes, they do. And they are usually delighted when they come back.

Events

III La Entallada “Lighthouse Triathlon”

Next Monday, March 24th, the third “Lighthouse Triathlon”,as it is already known by the regulars of this event, will take place, organized by the hotel complex Playitas Resort.

La swimming trial will consist of 1,5km that triathletes will have to swim in Las Playitas, and this trial will be the starting point of this event at 8h in the morning.

Then they will have to face 40km cycling, a harder trial this year as compared to the 35 kms in previous events. The itinerary of this trial will take place around areas in the municipality of Tuineje, such as Las Casitas, Juan Gopar… and this will be followed by the 13km running, which will culminate climbing  “La Entallada” Lighthouse, a beautiful enclave in the South of our island with breathtaking sea views, the best place to close this event.

Among the event’s updates, we must highlight the introduction of this event in “Series Canarias de Triathlon”  which makes up “La Copa de la Federación Canaria”. International athletes, such as Anja Beranek and Konstantin Bachor, champions in the female trial in 2012 and male trial in 2013 respectively, or such as Víctor del Corral, champion in the male category in 2012 will take part in this event too, trying to ratify their awards in an event that this year foresees an increase in the number of participants.

On the other hand, the team category is also pushing hard, and up to now the Calima Triathlon and the Triscan Clubs will take part in this event with a high number of participants.

The target of “La Entallada” Lighthouse Triathlon is to attract as many triathletes as possible to this event, residents and visitors alike, in our island’s attempt to go on with the tourist and sporting promotion that has been carried out up to now.

Fuerteventura is an unbeatable place for the practice of several sports and disciplines, either water or land activities, but we also applaud this kind of initiatives promoting healthy tourism, in harmony with the environment in our dear Fuerteventura.

For further information, www.lighthousetriathlon.com

Fuertecharter’s Team.

 

Events

Fuerteventura and Corralejo, tourist week at the international tourist fair in Madrid (Fitur)

•    Corralejo promotes itself as one of the most important emergent destinations in Europe

•    Corralejo highlights in Madrid the prize awarded by TripAdvisor

•    The new American ambassador in Spain visits Corralejo’s exhibitor in Fitur LGBT

•    The mayoress will give a speech tomorrow about LGBT sector together with Maspalomas and Ibiza

•    The importance of this town after having been used as cinema set in the shooting of  “Exodus” and “The Dictator” has been highlighted.

Corralejo Grandes Playas and the rest of La Oliva have started their tourist promotion this week in the International Tourist Fair in Madrid (Fitur),  highlighting the recent award by Tripadvisor, which certifies that the tourist area in the North of Fuerteventura is the most important emergent tourist destination in Europe and the 9th in the world. An award won thanks to the opinions and scoring by TripAdvisor users, one of the most important tourist portals in the continent.  
The Mayoress in La Oliva, Claudina Morales, and the Councillor of Tourism, Marcelino Umpiérrez, attended the inauguration of the fair in Madrid, the most important in Spain, and the third most important in Europe along with London and Berlin, aiming to deepen in the promotion of this town among the tour operators in the Peninsula. The symptoms of recovery regarding peninsular tourism registered in the last quarter of 2013 could extend to the year 2014, according to the forecast by the tourism management in Madrid.
Moreover, Corralejo Grandes Playas inaugurates its own display in the so called pink corner, where some of the destinations and companies supporting the LGBT sector (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transsexuals) gather. This initiative places Corralejo next to two already consolidated destinations in this sector, which will allow the specialised press to get to know the tourist area in the North of the Island even better, and its attractions for the LGBT community. We must highlight the efforts by Fuerteventura and Corralejo to promote as a tolerant and “gayfriendly” destination. We will also remark the presentation of the poster for the next “Rainbow Fuerteventura”, which will be celebrated from the 4th to the 8th of December.

The increasing importance of this town after being used as a film set after the shooting of “Exodus”, by Ridley Scott, the American film “The dictator” or “Invasor”, the last production by the director Daniel Calparsoro has also been highlighted.
Another interesting proposal in Fuerteventura are the boat trips in Corralejo, and Fuertecharter has also done its bit to get this award by Tripadvisor, as we are the first attraction in The Canary Islands, something we feel proud of.
With our trips in Fuerteventura, the boat trips and boat chartering we contribute to letting the tourists find out the wonders in the Northern area which has been so promoted and that visitors like so much, thus getting customer loyalty.

 FuerteCharter Team

 

Fuerteventura

Fuerteventura and fishing

Historic evidences and archaeological remains point out the importance that fishing has had as an essential activity for this island’s inhabitants, and also its importance as a feeding source for the «majorera» population, especially in periods of drought and famine. The productivity of our sea (the biggest in the Canarian archipelago, even today) has contributed to keep this important sailing tradition.

Inshore fishery in Fuerteventura, one of the island’s hallmarks, has been one of majorero sailors’ main activities, who on board of little boats (roar and Latin sail boats in the old days, engine boats nowadays) have been fishing in their shores. The ancient settlers in Fuerteventura, The «mahos», practised fishing and shell fishing as a complementary activity to their predominant pastoral economy. The importance of shell fishing is determined by the existence of several middens (accumulations of sea mollusc shells like limpets, mussels or « burgaos», together with some ceramics and stone gadgets) found in several spots in the coast, as well as in some villages and settlements. Majorero aborigines used to fish in the shore, coastal fish like «Viejas», «samas» or morays.

Among the techniques used by aborigines we find: night fishing with torch wicks, fishing with rods and bone hooks, and fishing with traps made of rush. The most interesting technique used by ancient majoreros is «el barbasco» or «embroscado», which consists of catching the fish in little puddles at the shore, when the tide was low. To do this they dissolved the sap from either the «cardón» or the «tabaiba» (mullein) into the puddle water. The toxic properties of this milky sap made fish sleepy and allowed catching it even with their own hands.

Fuerteventura’s coastline is splashed with little fishing villages, many of them with a long fishing tradition. Some of these villages were, in the beginning, improvised shelters, caves or temporary shacks, where fishers went at determined periods of the year in search of better fishing; this is the case of Los Molinos or Pozo Negro.

In the old days, sailors used to have great economic difficulties; fish was cheap, and there was no money in Fuerteventura. Bartering was the basis of the home economics for a long time.

The shortage was one of the reasons why children went out into the sea so soon, to learn this trade which passed on from fathers to sons and that has traditionally been an exclusively male trade; a lot of children, younger than 10, were sailing on their fathers’ little boats, and they even embarked deep sea fishing in Africa when they were hardly 12 or 14. Meanwhile, women were the ones running the house due to the almost permanent absence of their husbands (fishing on board). Even the agreements with middlemen for the sale of fish were female tasks; they controlled the fish weight and were paid.

Majorero fishermen, experts in the fishing arts, the seabed, the wind and the most interesting species were also expert sailors, but they never needed either nautical charts or equipment; they fixed their position by taking a bearing from land just using their good eyesight and sense of orientation.

Nowadays fishing survives thanks to the sailors’ initiative, as they have known how to keep the majorero sea’s resources. But building, mainly touristic building on the coast, the pressure by other production sectors and the rise in the cost of living made it difficult, at the end of the XX C, to devote to inshore fishing, a profession that has been partly recovered today.

If you want to know every single detail of the fishing history in Fuerteventura we invite you to visit the «Museo de la Pesca Tradicional del Faro de Cotillo».

FuerteCharter´s team

Fuerteventura

FuerteCharter´s setting

As we said in the introduction of this blog, living in an island like Fuerteventura is a real stroke of luck. Anywhere you look at nature offers you spectacular sights.

FuerteCharter is lucky to carry out its daily activity — boat trips on Kayak, SUP and Snorkel— in the north-east of the Island of Fuerteventura, in the coastal town of Corralejo.

Corralejo —a town of seafarers that life turned into the most visited tourist site in the North of the island —is the link between Fuerteventura and our neighbour island, Lanzarote, from which “El estrecho de la Bocaina” separates us (15km), and in the middle of these two islands, wild and isolated, the islet of “Lobos” stands out. It seems that in ancient geological ages “El estrecho de la Bocaina” didn’t exist and the two island — as well as the islet of “Lobos” — made up a single tract of land.

The strait offers perfect conditions for sailing, due to the trade winds channelling, so this is the favourite daily route of FuerteCharter which, depending on the conditions, offers either trips to Lobos or journeys to the neighbour island, Lanzarote.
The branch of sea that separates Fuerteventura from Lobos is a canal known as “El Río”. It’s located 2km away from Corralejo, and its waters aren’t deeper than 10m.

The islet of “Lobos”, with an area of 6km2 and a maximum height of 127m at the volcanic cone of “La Caldera”, took its name from the ancient inhabitants of its coasts: a colony of monk and fur seals. This islet has a unique landscape and it is part of the Natural Park “Dunas de Corralejo”, a beauty which doesn’t leave indifferent to visitors and residents alike.  It’s an area of great wealth and biological value — land as well as sea bed, and it has been declared marine reserve— which we’ll describe more in detail in next articles, where we’ll tell you about the lighthouse-keeper —Antoñito—  and his family, who inhabited it until 1968, about its marine species, its wetlands, its beach of “La Concha” and its pretty little harbour.

Another of the charms we can highlight in this area are the different recommended scuba diving spots, like “El Veril del Calamareo”, with vaults and caves and corridors among rocks, “El Veril de La Bocaina”, “El Bajón del Río”, with a mix of rock and pristine sand, “El punto de los Becerros”, standing out because of the great amount of fish, and the area of “La Carrera”, with little currents and very protected from the winds.

No doubt, FuerteCharter enjoys a great privilege. Would you like to come and share it with us?

FuerteCharter’s team

Fuerteventura

FuerteCharter: more than a sailing trip

If you walk along Corralejo’s Wharf you will probably meet Ildefonso Chacón — better known as Fonfo—, a sea lover from the North of Fuerteventura, and the manager of our company FuerteCharter.

The relationship of Fonfo with the sea started when he was very young, as despite being from Puerto del Rosario his parents always had a house in Corralejo, in Waikiki beach. So, being knee-high to a grasshopper he had his first boat and in the different stages of his youth he practised all the water sports he found in his way.

Fonfo remembers the years when Fuerteventura, mainly Corralejo, was a desert paradise, with waves for the few people who dared ride them, and he also remembers some athletes visiting the islands, famous nowadays — like Björn Dunkerbeck — who were not but children then, displaying water tricks that majorero inhabitants could not have imagined.

They were other times, as he says, and although the deep solitude of the desert landscape hardly exists nowadays he is delighted with an island full of visitors and residents from so many different nationalities who have done their bit — and keep doing it — to enrich this paradise that his Island, Fuerteventura, is.

His sea calling, as we have said, took place when he was very young: we could say that salty water flows in his veins. And so did the business calling, as his charter company Fuertecharter, which nowadays is about to become 10, stemmed from other family companies: Deportes Chacón and Naútica Chacón.

At present Fonfo runs FuerteCharter together with his wife Inma Morales, also accompanied by an excellent working team, whom he is sincerely thankful for taking Fuertecharter to what it is nowadays: a charter company in Corralejo with many added values.

FuerteCharter’s main aim is to share with our clients —and infect them with— our love for the sea. It’s not all just about taking them on a sailing trip to Lobos, it’s not just about enjoying that sailing trip and the wonders of nature but about going beyond that, encouraging them to get challenges they had never considered before, offering them different activities like learning how to use a kayak, a SUP, breathing through a snorkel tube, having a bath surrounded by schools of fish, feeding them… Being open to learning new things every day!

In order to carry out these activities, Fuertecharter counts on two different kinds of vessels: a catamaran and an inflatable motor boat to rent for private sailing trips (closed groups) as well as for open groups. The experience and the knowledge of the area turn the combination of both vessels in the same trip into the best way of visiting our neighbour island, as apart from the incomparable sailing trip around Lobos Island, the inflatable motor boat will let you explore the little ponds in this place, a true paradise, difficult to describe with words.

We can go on to talk about Fuertecharter’s professionalism and pampering when dealing with all those people embarking on their adventures, but the best thing is that you come to try and tell other people about it. We’ll be waiting for you!

FuerteCharter’s team

Fuerteventura

Living in an island

 Living in an island, even for just a few days, makes you different.

Just the feeling of being surrounded by the sea calms you down —hence why people joke about the islanders’ placid character—. Maybe the majesty of its waters, which seems to stop time, makes you stop too and watch the sunrises and sunsets, the vast starry sky…

There are thousands of islands, some of them desert and some others inhabited, some closer and some farther away from civilization, some colder and some others warmer, many of them are paradise islands, but very few of them like Fuerteventura, enjoying good weather 12 moths a year and a 265 km coast line, which turn it into one of the preferred sun and beach tourist destinations and into one of the best European “aquatic parks”.

There is no feeling like that of waking up early in the morning, getting a foot out of the bed and almost feel the fresh morning mist on the beach sand. The sea is calling you, with the ceaseless lapping of the waves on the shore, so that you get ready to enjoy a new day bathed by the wind, the sun and the salt on the sea breeze.

Corralejo’s wharf is waiting for you, a little lethargic this early, and you hear the clinking of the sheets on the masts, as if impatient to meet the sea, as if the night had been too long and they had rested so much that they felt over-energetic and needed to take that boat ride.

And this is because Fuerteventura is a paradise that invites everyone to go on the sailing adventure.

Just looking at the horizon and following the sinuous outline of Lobos, with its latent magic, makes you feel attracted to the sea. A deep blue which becomes lighter and lighter until it turns turquoise; thousands of sea species that say hello to you and seem to even caress your boat and make you feel that you’re a part of this whole that the ocean is.

Living in an island like this one binds you to the sea almost unavoidably. In the wide offer of water activities there are options for everyone, from fishing, boat rides, to thousands of water sports: surf, kitesurf, windsurf, SUP, scuba diving, kayak, snorkel… all of them at your fingertips so that you decide, according to the conditions of the day and your skills, which one you prefer. Maybe today you fancy a catamaran ride!

Living in an island like this one is a fortune that from this moment and in this blog we’re going to share with all of you, letting you know about the environment, the activities, the fauna, the history, the interesting facts about this land, and its people, irredeemably bound to their surrounding sea.

If you are lucky to live in this paradise you’ll understand us perfectly well, and if you’re visitors or future visitors in our coasts, once you have lived for some days in the peace and quiet of this desert paradise, we know you’ll never forget Fuerteventura, and you’ll be able to follow us so that the island remains in your memories and you don’t miss the chance, if you have it, to visit us again.

                                                                                                                                                           FuerteCharter Team