Magical dunes

During a week's holiday in Lanzarote we decide to take an excursion to nearby Fuerteventura, where we will return in 2005. We had hired the car in Lanzarote for 3 days and discovered that, if there are 4 of you, ferrying it across practically costs nothing and you also save a lot compared with organised excursions, while having far more freedom to move around. There are plenty of clouds as we pass by the island of Lobos. We moor at Corralejo; there are too many buildings and too many cranes. We're a little daunted by the fact that Fuerteventura is twice as long as Lanzarote, so we don't have the courage to push all the way south in a single day, towards the Jandia peninsula. We settle for a loop concentrated on the north, reaching Cotillo beach through the little village of Toston, with a fine lookout tower.

We then carry on to Antigua, the old capital, where we have lunch with the hotel's packed lunches (the Spaniards worship "packed lunches"... they're so generous they amount to a full meal). We circle around the capital, Puerto del Rosario, and then head for the dunes in the Jable Park area, and here the colours are stunning; the sand is white and abundant, the tall dunes reach down to the sea, blending with the black rocks in an alternating play of colours, and then the emerald blue of the sea. We stop to swim and enjoy this enviable climate, thinking of the scorching summer we left behind in Italy — here you sit in the sun without a parasol.......