Fuerteventura with a toddler: what a two- to five-year-old actually lasts through

At two, your child walks. At five, your child walks for half a morning. In between sits the age group for whom the most important number never appears on an operator’s page — not the price, the duration. On Fuerteventura you can look it up, and it runs from a quarter of an hour to seven hours.

Fifteen minutes to seven hours

The shortest trip out on the water is the crossing from Corralejo to Isla de Lobos: 15 minutes by speedboat, €16 return, or €17 on the ferry. It isn’t really a boat trip, it’s a bus ride over water. That is exactly why it works with a three-year-old when so much else doesn’t.

Dolphin watching from Morro Jable lasts 2 hours and costs €49. With 5,142 reviews it has more than anything else on the island, and at 4.2 stars it also carries one of the weaker scores among the twenty most popular offers. Two hours is the ceiling for many children of this age. On a boat there is no way off when that ceiling arrives after one hour instead.

After that it gets long. The jeep safari to Cofete is listed at 3 hours and €65, the tour to Cofete beach with the Villa Winter at 4 hours and €57. A catamaran trip with food and drinks runs 4 hours at €79, the glass-bottom boat likewise 4 hours at €75. The tour into the wild north, booked from Morro Jable or Costa Calma, is listed at 7 hours and €77. Morro Jable and Corralejo are around 111 road kilometres apart, a good hour and a half each way by car and longer in a coach with stops. Of those seven hours, your child spends more than three sitting in a vehicle.

Half a day is a money question here too

The 190 offers on the island have a median of €69, and the expensive entries are almost all the long ones. If your child manages ninety minutes of a four-hour catamaran, you have paid €79 and spent the rest of the time sitting in the shade of the sail, waiting for it to be over. The quarter of an hour to Lobos costs a fifth of that.

At this age, half a day isn’t a compromise, it’s the better product at the lower price. That is rarely so clear-cut; on this island it is.

Getting into the water: east and west are two different islands

The east and south-east lie in the lee, and you can see it in the water. Caleta de Fuste has a harbour breakwater in front of the bay, so the water stays calm and the beach shelves gently. Playa del Matorral at Morro Jable also runs in flat, fine pale sand, kilometre after kilometre. Costa Calma has small waves and the same soft gradient.

At Playa de Sotavento on the Jandía peninsula, a lagoon forms behind a sandbank whose water level depends on the tides — a few centimetres at times, waist-deep at others, and sometimes nothing but exposed sand. On a good day it is the loveliest place on the island for a small child to get wet. Reckon with the kitesurfing and windsurfing schools being there as well, though, because that same shallow expanse is their training ground.

The west coast behaves the other way round. Cofete, La Pared, Ajuy, Garcey and Los Molinos are open Atlantic beaches with strong currents and no lifeguard cover (Los Molinos supervised seasonally). At Cofete the current pulls in water no deeper than your knee, there are no lifeguards, and people drown there. Cofete is a beach to look at. If you book one of the jeep tours out there, plan it without swimming and say so to your child beforehand, not at the water’s edge.

El Cotillo in the north-west is the exception worth knowing. North of the village lie the lagoons, shallow basins behind rock barriers where children can stand up and splash. South of the village the surf beach begins, open to the swell. Two beaches ten driving minutes apart, and they could not be less alike.

Wind is at its worst at knee height

The north-east trade wind blows here at force 4 to 5, often 5 to 6 close to the coast. July is the windiest month, averaging 27.4 km/h. At Costa Calma and Playa de la Barca a funnelling effect strengthens it further, which is precisely why the surfers stand there. Calm water on this island does not mean still air.

For a child a metre tall this is a different experience from yours. The sand drives along close to the ground, which is to say at face height for a two-year-old, while nothing much happens up where you are. A windbreak, a dune at your back or a small cove instead of the open stretch changes more than any time of day. The Grandes Playas near Corralejo run along the edge of the dunes, shallow and beautiful and fully exposed; the small coves in the town itself are more sheltered.

Nap time against departure time

A four-hour tour eats either the morning or the afternoon, and a seven-hour tour eats the day. A child who still naps costs you half a holiday day twice over: once for the tour, and once for whatever the missed sleep turns into by evening.

For Lobos the island’s own rhythm happens to fit. The natural park requires a free authorisation, issued in two time slots, 10 am to 2 pm and 2 pm to 6 pm, with 200 people on the island at any one time. It is applied for through lobospass.com; some operators handle it with the booking, many do not, and the rules can change. Sort it out beforehand. With the afternoon slot the trip falls after the nap rather than through the middle of it.

From the landing stage to Playa de la Concha is about ten minutes on foot, and the bay is sheltered and shallow. There is no shop on Lobos and barely a tree; the single place to eat by the harbour doesn’t open continuously and books out quickly. Everything you need, you carry across and back again yourselves.

What this age group won’t carry

Buggy and quad from €60, median €99, are simply not a question for a two- to five-year-old. Nor is the jet ski from Morro Jable, 30 minutes for €80. The day trip to Lanzarote and Timanfaya runs 7 hours and costs €83 — ferry, coach, volcano, coach, ferry. Even the finest volcano loses against a child who has been on a coach for four hours.

You will deliberately find no figure here for minimum ages. The short descriptions of the tours named above give none, operators set different limits, and what applies is on the relevant booking page. Which boat types suit this age at all, and how to recognise a trip that fits, is covered in the article on boat trips with children. If a younger sibling is coming too, the sums change again: see Fuerteventura with a baby.

When the sea is out for a day

Oasis Wildlife Park at La Lajita charges €41.50 admission, holds more than 3,000 animals and, at 4.7 stars from 3,596 reviews, is the island’s second most reviewed offer. Honestly: it is a sprawling site, and with a two-year-old you will see a third of it. That is no argument against the park, only against the plan of getting round all of it.

How the rest of the day divides up and what else the island holds for families is in Fuerteventura with kids; what there actually is to see along the way is in what to see on the island.