Corralejo as their landing site. They made the crossing from the Lanzarote fortress in October 1402, landing on the Island of Lobos to hunt the local seal population that lived there. Lobos is positioned north east of Corralejo and made a convenient base to hunt (with the island's seals being valuable for food, while their skins were used to make simple shoes). After a few days on the island, La Salle sent Levedan back to the fortress on Lanzarote to replenish their supplies, with the group in particular need of water- Lobos has no fresh water source. Another mutiny on Lanzarote meant that, on its arrival, the boat Levedan was in command of was taken over by the mutineer members of Béthencourt's army of conquest. This left La Salle and his men trapped on the island of Lobos without a source of food or water. Those who remained loyal to Béthencourt on Lanzarote would use a flimsy boat to rescue La Salle and his men from Lobos. Tourism Corralejo has existed for most of its history as a humble and unimportant fishing village, where a handful of poor fishermen worked long hours to provide for their families. In the early 1970s, with its extraordinary beaches and expansive dunes, the tourism that had arrived in the south of the island in the 1960s began to venture north. Corralejo had very humble beginnings as a tourist resort. John Mercer, who visited the then village in the early 1970s as research for a book on the island, left a record of the humble first steps Corralejo took into the tourist industry: "The village, however, unattractive and quite without interest. Why anyone should wish to spend any time there until its development is over and the dust and noise have died down is not clear.. a visitor or a purchaser can wake up any day to find a house or a hotel starting a metre or two away." -John Mercer, Canary Islands: Fuerteventura. 1973 Mercer prophetically said that Corralejo would "long be simply a spreading building site, dominated by concrete mixers, lorries, floating discarded cement bags, falling rubble and staring whistling oafs." Tourism continued to develop in the town through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, reaching a peak in the 2000s. Hotels, apartments and villas sprang up. Many British and Irish tourists fell in love with the resort and felt happy to relocate there