Oasis Wildlife Fuerteventura

Oasis Wildlife is a commercial wildlife park, and it helps to arrive knowing that. The animals — several thousand of them, across around 250 species — live in enclosures, and while the park runs breeding and education programmes, it is a zoo rather than a rescue centre or a reserve. Judged on that basis it is a good one: paddocks are large by Canarian standards, the arid climate suits many of the species, and the site is landscaped rather than concreted. If paying into captive-animal attractions is something you would rather avoid, this is not the one for you, and the island has plenty of alternatives.

What you get for a full day is variety. Camels — the park's original business, long before the zoo grew around them — still carry visitors on short rides across the hillside behind the enclosures. There are giraffes, big cats, primates, reptiles and a large aviary, plus scheduled shows with sea lions, parrots and birds of prey that run several times a day. The shows are the part children remember, so pick up the schedule at the gate and build the rest of your visit around them.

The botanical garden is worth the ticket on its own. Its Cactarium is presented as the largest cactus collection in Europe, with tens of thousands of specimens from a couple of thousand species — everything from thumbnail-sized globes to columnar giants taller than you are. In Fuerteventura's dry heat the plants look entirely at home, and this is the quietest, shadiest corner of the site in the middle of the day. Plant people should allow a good hour here alone.

Allow four to five hours for the whole park; families with small children often stay from opening until mid-afternoon. Buggies and wheelchairs manage most of the main paths, though a few garden sections are stepped or gravelled. Entry costs somewhere in the region of 35 to 40 euros for an adult and roughly half that for children, and booking online is normally cheaper than paying at the gate — rates are revised every season, so treat that as a guide rather than a quote. There are cafés and a restaurant inside, but bring water: shade is limited and La Lajita gets hot.