To break our holiday pattern of travelling typically with 1-3 nights per location and seeing as many towns and places as possible, we chose for our autumn holiday 2014 one week in an all-inclusive hotel called Magic Life, located near the southern tip of Fuerteventura. We had been told there would be good sport facilities, and our plan was to do various sport activities and enjoy ourselves as a family playing card games and splashing in the ocean and the pool.
Sports facilities ok, but spare us activity schedules on holidays!
Magic Life lived up to our expectations. It wasn’t a veritable sports resort, and the range of activities wasn’t as overwhelming as, for instance, at La Santa Sport on Lanzarote, but it was good enough for our needs. However, the fact that the use of some facilities was limited to scheduled times was rather annoying. We could not spontaneously book e.g. a tennis court; instead we had to plan days ahead. As if we don’t have enough scheduling in our everyday life!
We went on mountain bikes, and we ran on the beach, which was long and straight with fine, hard, white sand. Beach runs were best at sunrise where the temperature was comfortable and we were spared the sight of German nudists. We also used the fitness facilities, we practiced yoga, we tried archery, and we went hiking up the mountain slopes in the area.
Dine in town
From our hotel we could walk a few kilometers along the beach into Morro Jable, a nice little town on the southern tip of the island. There was a fair selection of shops and restaurants along the quay, where we ended up dining, after having tested all four Magic Life restaurants. They were as these kinds of restaurants so often are in all-inclusive places; easy, especially for families with young children, with buffet, reasonable food, and cheap wine. Not surprisingly, the restaurants in town were better.
Fuerteventura is volcanic, and we read on a sign at a view point that parts of the island used to be lush green. Unfortunately, grazing and weathering have caused erosion, leaving virtually only barren mountains (of which some are ancient volcanoes) and rolling desert landscapes, interrupted by small villages that are rapidly explored. Although rain is rare (out of all the Canary Islands, Fuerteventura is the one that gets the least rain) enough rain falls in the winter to allow the dry, spiky plants scattered around the desert landscape to transform into a bloom of yellow and pink flowers. We didn’t see this because we came in October, but a hotel receptionist told us about it. Aloe Vera is grown on a large scale, and tourist shops around the island abound with Aloe Vera products.
Been there, done that, ready for new adventures
All in all, we had a lovely holiday, but experience-hungry types like us will most likely opt for other destinations in the future. We heard from friends that other hotels on Fuerteventura have a wider range of sports facilities, and if sports holiday is on the agenda, Fuerteventura can be great, with lots of white and black sand beaches and the opportunity to practice water sports, cycling, fitness, golf, and much more. Our family is probably just too curious to stay in one hotel for more than 3 days. The world is big and there are so many places to explore!