Offshore And Engine Damage

We are surprised by a heavy downpour at the bus stop. One of three rainy days in November on Fuerteventura is now a thing of the past. The bus to Flag Beach is cheap, but you still have to walk a kilometre with 30kg of equipment. Sport before sport is bearable, sport after sport is absolute rubbish.

There are things that are simply never good together: blow-drying in the bathtub. Blind cow on the motorway. Unprotected sex in South Africa. The wind only blows from the east 10% of the time here, so fully offshore. Today is 10%. Wouldn’t be too bad on its own. But together with an engine failure on the only rescue boat far and wide, it’s hell in heaven.

The students are all going out in hired boats, we’re standing on the beach looking stupid. There’s only one solution: we have to go where the wind is onshore. Off to the city, hire a car, drive off. At the northern tip, surfers play with waves that are easily 3 metres high in 25 knots of wind between nice lava rocks. We drive along a washboard track and through a plain full of lava rubble to a small town… a collection of shacks on the north-west coast.

We would only have found it thanks to Ovi Maps on my mobile phone. It’s not on any map. A couple of shacks on a small bay that absorbs the waves, which are typically at least two metres high on the west side. The price for the fun: entry into the water over 30 metres of extra slippery lava rocks with nice sharp edges, line-eating hooks and deep knuckle-breaking holes. 20 metres downwind, more sharp rocks, which I almost have to include in my route planning at the beginning thanks to the slightly weaker wind.

Then the wind picks up, I move to windward and everything is fine for an hour. Onwards over mogul tracks through lava fields to Cotillo, the surfing Mecca of Fuerteventura. Steep cliffs, a sandy beach and huge waves in front of it at wonderfully close intervals, from different directions, interspersed with nice strong currents.

Just the right place for Dominik’s first ride on the ocean. They give him a good wash. The wind is fully onshore, and even on the beach the waves break one metre high in ten-metre waves. Further out, the waves are easily 2.5 metres. And that’s not much, a surfer told us. After an hour, Dominik is clean.

In the middle of the lava landscape, we find the Mahoh country hotel in Villaverde. Everything in the restaurant display is fresh, the food is plentiful, good and cheap. For every starter we order, we get two more for free on the house’s recommendation. We must have looked pretty hungry. Stupid from the meal afterwards.