The Kite Festival of Fuerteventura

For 27 years every year a growing number of people gather on the island of Fuerteventura to celebrate the colourful three-day-long Kite Festival. As we had never seen one before we got on the ferry again, hired a car in Corralejo and drove down to see the famous kites.

The Festival is organised within the Corralejo National Park, amongst the sand dunes on Playa del Burro. We weren’t exactly sure where that was as the National Park is 7km long so we decided to just keep driving until we spot them. We didn’t have to wait for long and soon saw them flying in the sky.

In my mind I had the preconception that kites have a ‘kite’ shape and need people to skilfully keep them up in the sky. Well, these ideas were very quickly ruined. These kites came in a huge variety of shapes and sizes and thanks to the constant wind they did not require a human hand to stay in the air, a bag filled with sand did the trick just as well.

We were absolutely enchanted by the colours and the diversity of these kites. We kept pointing out the ones we hadn’t noticed before and praised the creativity of some of the more innovative ones.

There was even a workshop set up where children could make their own kites. Here’s a little girl flying her newly acquired possession.

One of our favourites was definitely the giant octopus that dwarfed everything else around it.

The Festival is always organised on the weekend closest to the 8^th of November and is free to attend for all. It’s a great opportunity to go to Fuerteventura and enjoy the coveted sun, sand and sea, peppered with colourful kites.