Hotels in Tarajalejo

Tarajalejo

Tarajalejo is a former fishing village on the south-eastern coast of Fuerteventura, in the municipality of Tuineje, with roughly 1,300 residents who still live from fishing and, increasingly, from tourism. It sits directly on the FV-2, the road linking Puerto del Rosario with Costa Calma and Morro Jable, about 50 kilometres and 45 minutes south of Fuerteventura Airport. Playa de Tarajalejo runs for some 1,400 metres and is around 45 metres wide, a semi-urban beach of fine dark volcanic sand mixed with gravel and pebbles. The water is calm and unusually clear, and the western end, sheltered by a rocky headland, is the best stretch for swimming, though water shoes are worth packing because of the stones. The beach has a lifeguard, showers, toilets, sunbeds, accessible access and a volleyball court, yet it stays quiet even in August because it draws island residents rather than package tourism. Behind the sand runs a rebuilt, palm-shaded seafront promenade lined with bars and fish restaurants, where boats are still pulled up in front of the fishermen's houses. That promenade doubles as the MARESEUM, an open-air sculpture museum created at the first international sculptors' meeting, Fôrmar, in November 2017; the first work you meet is Pescador de sueños by the Majorero artist Juan Miguel Cubas, a fisherman gathering his nets on a block of basalt. A bronze statue nearby honours Juan Martín Hernández, known as Juanito el Cartero, who carried the post on foot across the empty south of the island for 34 years between 1946 and 1980. The bay suits windsurfing, diving and kayaking, while inland the 691-metre Montaña Cardón, a Natural Monument protected since 1994, sacred to the indigenous Majos and home to rare rock-dwelling plants, offers a half-day hike to the El Tanquito cave chapel, and the 464-metre El Caracol ridge closes the horizon to the south. Winter is the real draw: January highs average around 21 degrees with a sea temperature near 19 degrees and just 14 millimetres of rain, on the sunniest coast of an island declared a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 2009 and a Starlight Reserve in 2015.