Corralejo; Saturday, 12 March, 2022

I had to be up and at breakfast for when it opened as I had an 8am pickup for a jeep safari to the south of the island, so after a quickly eaten breakfast I was standing outside the hotel just before 8 where I proceeded to wait for over 45 minutes waiting for the tour pickup. I tried WhatsApping the booking agent but didn’t hear anything back from anyone. Eventually I just gave up and instead decided to put together my own ad-hoc tour to the south using the local buses.

I walked down to the harbour and picked up the number 6 bus which runs from Corralejo down to the islands capital in Puerto de Rosario, after picking up through Corralejo the bus heads out through the dunes that form a national park to the south of the town, and it was a very impressive start to my impromptu tour with the almost Saharan landscape disappearing over the horizon complete with some pretty large sand dunes.

The bus terminated at the bus station in Puerto de Rosario where I was then able to change onto the number 1 bus to continue my journey South to the southern town of Morro Jable. It was whilst on this bus that I finally got a response back from the booking agents apologising for the mix-up with the pickup never having been booked in.

In the end I probably got to see more of the island by taking the local bus than if I’d been on the jeep safari as that would have shot straight down the main highway that runs close to the coast and gets you down to the southern tip of the island in less than an hour. Instead the local bus headed down through the centre of the island, taking in the stunning views of the changing landscape from the volcanic mounds of the north and centre before the island gave way to sandier and less rugged terrain.

The bus took over 2 hours, but we eventually arrived in Morro Jable where I hopped off and went for a wander around the town. The town itself is set on a long sandy beach that curves round the coastline that marks the southern most point of the island. The town has several viewing platforms from where you can take in the best views of the landscape.

I stopped off for a quick ice cream in a seaside kiosk before it was time to start the return journey. The only downside with using the local services was that it had taken over 3 hours to get down here, and I needed to head back after an hour if I was to get back to the hotel in time for dinner.

I took the buses back the same way I came down, but with the views from out the opposite side on the way back which were equally impressive but also different – almost as though the road the bus was travelling on formed some sort of boundary between different landscapes in the country.

I was able to hop off the number 6 at the bottom of town and wander back down the main drag to my hotel, rather than heading all the way back to the bus station or port. As it was such a pleasant day, and I still had a little bit of time before dinner, I decided to get changed into some swimming shorts and headed down to the beach for a little paddle. Unfortunately I’d timed it right with low tide, so only my ankles got wet, but that was enough to tell me that the water was a little too much on the chilly side to want to go any further.

After a quick paddle I headed back to the hotel to remove the vast amount of sand that had attracted itself to my body in such a short period of time, and then head down for dinner.