When we reached the north of Fuerteventura, we had strong winds, which the kite surfers might appreciate, but we didn’t. We went to visit Corralejo where we had a great lunch at Tapas Oscar. There is a bay with little beaches and boats, many restaurants and shops and numerous tourists wandering around. We even found a wool shop and Cordy could stock up her yarn stash.
South of town lie the dunes of Corralejo, which we couldn’t enjoy very much with the strong wind, but we found a little bay called Playita de Poris, where we had some wind protection.
We chose a quiet place to park for the night and continued the next day to El Cotillo, another surfer hot spot. The clouds were coming dark over the sea towards us, and the sea broke into impressive waves. We drove to the Faro de Tostón, waiting there for the rain to stop before we got out and braved the wind while the sun came out again.
From the lighthouse, a gravel road leads along the coast, all the way back to Corralejo. We decided that would be a good way to explore the area and slowly drove along, watching surfers with boards and others with kites using the more protected bays.
We reached the popcorn beach “Playa del Bajo de la Burra”, where white popcorn-like stones form the beach. They are actually dead Rhodoliths, calcareous nodules composed of more than 50% of coralline red algal material, consisting of one to several coralline species growing together. Rhodoliths deposit calcium carbonate within their cell walls so they create small hard structures just like hard corals do. This hard structures are what was washed ashore on this beach.
However, Rhodoliths are unlike coral since they don’t attach themselves to any rocky substrate or seabed. That’s why they’re often called tumbleweeds because they roll around the sand and have thin branches. They produce energy through photosynthesis so they only survive where it’s shallow and light can reach the little Rhodoliths.
We could see the island of Lanzarote from here and watched the ferries making their way through the waves. Tomorrow we will be riding on one of them to get to our last island, let’s hope the waves decrease until then – more soon!