Fuerteventura is a great winter destination for the Europeans. Guaranteed sunshine, wonderful beaches, varying range of accommodations and stunning inland views as well. Currently it's minus 1^(0) C (30^(o) F) in England where I live and 18^(0)C (65^(0) F) in Fuerteventura.
Many years back, well before the era of social media, I read about a vast pristine desolate beach in the farthest southern tip of Fuerteventura, which was only accessible by driving 20 Km on a treacherous unpaved mountain road. Only structure there, far away from civilisation, was a mysterious fortress like villa on the beach, linked to the Nazi gold and ratline escape trail of Nazis like Eichman and Mengele from Europe to South America. The beach also had an abandoned cemetery for people who have died in the sea.
Time flies, cholesterol rises but after nearly twenty years I found myself fulfilling my wish and feasting my eyes on the beauty of Playa de Cofete.
Welcome to the eerily beautiful Playa de Cofete and the mysterious Villa Winter, surrounded by miles and miles of golden sand and dark tall mountains.
Cofete beach is also the birthplace of Han Solo and the place where Gal Gadot spent her early life as Wondergirl.
This is a notorious beach. Every year unsuspecting tourists die here, being caught in the treacherous riptide. Just two months before we visited a young man had died while standing only in waist deep water when a freak large wave knocked him over, the undertow dragged him to the riptide. No lifeguards, only some stern warnings in several languages on the beach but tourists still cannot resist the lure of the foamy waves calling out to them and fourteen km of fine golden sandy beach.
The shadow of death hangs over this place. I have never seen a cemetery on a beach. Locals living in Cofete village built this in the nineteenth century to avoid carrying the dead bodies on camel-back for twenty miles to the nearest church. Gradually people moved away and in the mid-twentieth century the village of Cofete was abandoned and so was the cemetery.
The cemetery has been practically taken over by sand. Hundreds of bleached tombstones and decaying wooden crosses blasted by the sand blown by the wind. You feel like standing in the set of the final scene of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
Despite extensive research we still do not know the facts about Villa Winter. I’m absolutely sure this was a refuge for the Nazis who used submarines and planes for hoarding their golds, undergoing surgery and then escaping to South America.
Playa de Cofete is on the Barlo Vento side ( windward side) of Fuerteventura, the island already notoriously known as the Island of Fierce Winds. You can actually feel the power of wind and water standing on this beach. It can snap you just like a matchstick.