Food and breaks on tours with kids: what actually reaches the table on board

A child announces hunger when it is hungry, not when the boat is back alongside. On a catamaran off Isla de Lobos there is nothing in between. Of the 190 offers in our inventory, twelve mention anything to eat or drink in the title. For all the others you find out once you are on board — or you read the booking page more carefully than anyone here actually does.

Where catering really is in the price

A catamaran trip carrying “food and drinks” in its title costs €79 over 4 hours. The glass-bottom boat has “lunch and drinks” in its title, €75, also 4 hours. The dolphin trip out of Morro Jable has gathered 5,142 reviews, more than any other offer on the island; it costs €49 and runs 2 hours — drinks and a swim stop are in, a meal is not.

Against that: out of Corralejo the crossing to Isla de Lobos costs €16 on the speedboat and €17 on the ferry. Catering is not an issue there, because the crossing takes a quarter of an hour. On the buggy safari in Corralejo, three hours at €60, the description mentions neither food nor drinks; the same goes for the jeep to Cofete, three hours at €65. Whether at least water comes along is something to settle on the operator’s page before booking.

The gap between a Lobos catamaran trip with lunch — €62, €69 or €75 depending on the operator — and the plain crossing at €16 is not the price of a plate. It is the price of four hours of boat, snorkelling kit and drinks, with the plate folded into it. Anyone costing out the food alone is doing the wrong sum. Across a full week for four people it still adds up noticeably; how it does so is in the week-long budget.

“Lunch included” here usually means paella

Read the descriptions rather than the titles and it gets specific. The catamaran trip from Corralejo to Lobos at €75 mentions paella. So does the Lobos trip at €69, there explicitly as a paella lunch. The boat trip to the south-east coast at €69 lists Canarian tapas and paella. And the glass-bottom boat, which carries lunch in its title, says not one word in its description about what is served.

Paella is good food. To a five-year-old it is a plate of rice with things in it that have eyes and claws. Canarian tapas are not chips. Expect your child to eat the rice, the bread and the drinks, and to leave the rest — and to be hungry again two hours later, well out on the water.

The reliable answer is unglamorous: a small packed something you know and your child likes. Not instead of the included meal, but alongside it. Plain bread, fruit that does not turn to mush, something salty. It costs nothing and spares you the argument in the one situation where you cannot win it.

Three hours or seven — the difference sits in the shape of the day

The inventory divides up clearly: 29 offers run 3 hours, 22 run 4 hours, 19 run 2 hours. Six run 7 hours, eight even 8.

A three-hour tour starting at ten is back before lunch. The midday nap survives, the meal happens ashore. A four-hour tour from eleven covers exactly the window in which both would have to happen. A seven-hour tour covers the whole day, and then it is the operator who decides when people eat, not you.

On top of that comes the Spanish rhythm, which on Fuerteventura is no different from the mainland: in the restaurants in town, lunch runs roughly from 1pm to 3.30pm, after which the kitchen closes until evening service. If a tour gets back at 5pm, you land in that gap. Inside a resort it makes no difference; in El Cotillo or Betancuria it does.

What works on board and what does not

Crumbs spread across the whole deck of a catamaran and stay there. Open cups do not stand up in a swell, they tip over — screw caps rather than straws, which sounds petty and saves you a soaked rucksack. Nothing is kept cold on board except what sits at the drinks service; a cool bag in the sun on a foredeck is, after two hours, simply a bag. And the rubbish sails home with you.

On Lobos that is not a matter of manners. Bins exist only at a handful of spots around the jetty and El Puertito, not along the paths, and the only drinking water on the island is what you carry over or buy there. Anyone crossing with children for a four-hour slot carries a fair amount of water — with wind and sun, more than you would guess at the jetty.

Dust instead of salt water

On a buggy or jeep tour the opposite applies. Nobody eats while moving, because the helmet, the wind and the gravel dust settle the question. The two-hour dune buggy tours in the north at €129 and the Jandía tour at €140 consist of driving and photo stops. The buggy prices in this text — €60, €129 and €140 — are per vehicle, not per person: €60 and €129 for a booking with one person, €140 for up to two.

On the trips to Cofete — 3 hours for €65, 4 hours for €57 — the supply situation is unambiguous: there is neither a kiosk nor a toilet at the beach itself. The small settlement before the beach has one restaurant whose opening hours you should not rely on. On that track, carrying water is not a suggestion but a precondition, for adults and children alike.

A full stomach and a swell

That a child reacts differently to a swell on a full stomach than on an empty one belongs to this subject — the advice about it belongs in another article, the one on seasickness in children. What you do or do not give your child is a conversation for a pharmacy on the island, or for a paediatrician, not for a travel site. What stands here is only the planning side of it: if the included lunch is served halfway through and you are still out for another two hours afterwards, that is a different order of events from a swim stop first. Which types of boat make this comfortable at all is sorted out by the piece on boat trips with children.

What you do not book on a two-hour cycle

If your child needs something every two hours, the long combination tours drop out. Lanzarote and Timanfaya come to €83 and a day of 7 hours: ferry across, coach to the national park, coach back, ferry back. The order is set by the timetable, not by you. The trip to the wild north, which picks its guests up in Morro Jable and Costa Calma, is put at €77 and likewise 7 hours; it mentions free time in Corralejo, but not when that time falls. That is what you have to settle on the operator’s page before booking, because it decides whether the free time is your lunch or merely a stroll at half past three.

The other way round, the fifteen minutes to Lobos are harmless in this respect, and two hours of dolphin watching can be planned around. For the age question — from when a given trip works at all — there are separate texts, such as the one on Fuerteventura with a toddler.

Breaks ashore

Where you board decides whether you can pick anything up beforehand. In Corralejo the ferries, the speedboat and the catamarans to Lobos leave from the Puerto de Corralejo, with the ticket booths at the harbour entrance opposite the Bar La Lonja. The Muelle Chico, the small old jetty a few hundred metres further into the old centre, has a ticket office too, but the boats leave from the main harbour. Supermarkets, bakeries and cafés are a few minutes away on foot, so you can shop until shortly before departure. The harbour at Morro Jable sits at the western edge of town behind the church hill, a good ten minutes on foot from the promenade — that is not a quick errand between arrival and departure. Anyone leaving from there at nine is better off shopping the evening before.

On Lobos there is one place to eat in El Puertito, and the queue is handled in order of arrival, not by telephone; the seats are few. Turning up hungry on the afternoon slot from 2pm to 6pm is therefore a gamble. We deliberately name no restaurants here — where you actually end up on an excursion day depends on the hour and on whether anything is open at all. Which beaches suit a quiet break between two fixtures you will find under family-friendly beaches; the wider frame is in Fuerteventura with kids.