Time for tee
driving around the interior of the island you can spot local goat farms where you can sample the cheese and see how it’s produced. At the one we stopped at, the farmer had 4,000 females and four very happy males.
Back at Caleta de Fuste we strolled along the coast to visit Las Salinas del
Carmen where salt for the island has been produced for generations and where there is now a salt museum to explain the industry.
As well as learning the history you can wander around the salt pans where the ocean is harvested and left to dry out leaving the little white crystals which are eventually gathered up. At one time Roman soldiers were apparently paid partly in salt, leading to our present day term salary.
As we left the salt museum I couldn’t help noticing a scurry of furry little characters as some of the local chipmunk population came to join us.
These curious creatures are tame and come up close in case you have food.
Fuerteventura might be the second largest island in the Canary Islands chain but is still under-developed compared to Tenerife and Gran Canaria with the main tourist destinations at the extreme north and south ends of the island.
For years British tourists used to frequent the north while German visitors headed for the south.
Both have dramatic beaches with probably the most spectacular in the south.
And it’s a little known fact that these beaches are so good that several episodes of the original late-1980s
Betancuria is full of typical white houses around the cathedral of Santa Maria
Baywatch series were filmed there and passed off as California.
Both locals and the tourist office told me that there were concerns about sharks at the original American location and the producers, looking for Californian-style beaches, chose Fuerteventura because of their close similarity.
It was obviously a good choice because hardly anyone knew the location shots weren’t in southern California.
But that’s just a Hoff the record comment...