Puertito de los Molinos

Puertito de los Molinos is not a resort and does not pretend to be one. A handful of low white houses sit above a cove on Fuerteventura's west coast, about 20km southwest of Puerto del Rosario, with black cliffs closing in on either side.

The beach is small — roughly 200 metres across — and the setting does the work: dark basalt walls, a strip of sand and stone, and the open Atlantic straight ahead. The cliffs shelter the cove, which makes it noticeably calmer than the west coast's reputation would suggest, but there is no lifeguard and no supervision of any kind.

This is the west coast at its most unvarnished. It appears on very few tour itineraries, and on a weekday you may have the place largely to yourself.

The cliffs beside the settlement are cut through with sea caves — three main cavities, the largest of them known locally as the Herminia cave. They are what most people who make the trip out here come to see, and they are visible from the shore rather than needing to be hunted for.

How close you can get depends entirely on the sea and the tide. This is an Atlantic coast with a real tidal range, and cave mouths at the waterline are not places to be caught out. Go on a calm day, on a falling tide, and keep an eye on the water rather than on the camera.

The rock itself is the attraction: black, layered basalt worn into caves and overhangs by centuries of swell. It photographs best in the late afternoon, when the low western sun lights the cliff face instead of silhouetting it — and the same west-facing aspect makes this a fine, and very quiet, place to watch the sun go down.

Bring everything. There is no supermarket, no beach kiosk, no shade and no toilet block — Los Molinos is a hamlet of fishing houses, not a resort, and the nearest reliable shopping is back towards Puerto del Rosario. Water, food, sun protection and something to sit on cover the essentials. There are no bins either, so your rubbish goes home with you.

If you want more coastline, keep going south. A little over a kilometre beyond the hamlet lie Playa de Jarugo and Playa de la Mujer, two larger and emptier west-coast beaches. They are exposed rather than sheltered, so treat them as a walk and a view rather than a swim, and apply the same caution the whole of this coast deserves.

Getting here is straightforward but slow: about 20km southwest of Puerto del Rosario on quiet inland roads, ending at the hamlet where there is space to park by the shore. Allow around half an hour each way, and pair it with the villages of the island's interior if you are making a day of it.