Experience the best of Puerto del Rosario

Puerto del Rosario is the capital and main port of Fuerteventura, the dry, wind-blown Canary island closest to Africa. The town, called Puerto de Cabras until the 1950s, is a working harbour with a low-rise centre, a seafront promenade and dozens of sculptures set along its streets. The writer Miguel de Unamuno was exiled here in 1924, and the hotel where he stayed is now a museum.

The island's interior is a landscape of bare brown mountains, ravines and ancient villages. Betancuria, the old capital founded in 1404 and set in a valley, has a whitewashed church and a quiet main street, and the sacred mountain of Tindaya was a place of ritual for the island's original people. Long beaches of pale sand line the coasts, with the great dunes of Corralejo in the north, and ferries cross to the islet of Lobos and to Lanzarote.

Goat is the island's food, from queso majorero, a protected-origin goat's cheese, to stews of kid. Papas arrugadas with mojo, fresh fish such as parrotfish, and gofio, a toasted-grain flour, are also found. Winds blow almost constantly and the sun shines most of the year, with mild temperatures throughout.