This past weekend I went to the island of Lanzarote, one of the seven islands in the Canaries, which belong to Spain but are off the coast of northern Africa. Lanzarote, like the other islands, is pretty small, only 40 miles from the southernmost to the northernmost points, and a maximum of 15 miles wide. It's also completely volcanic, and several of the beaches are "volcanic" and have black sand, which I think is really cool. It's also really hot and really humid, although it gets very little annual rainfall.
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Playa Grande in Puerto
del Carmen |
On the first day we just explored the part of the island where we were staying, Puerto del Carmen. There are several "golden sand" beaches there and a lot of touristy restaurants and shops. Tourism is the main industry in Lanzarote, and there are a LOT of Germans and British people that go on vacation there (so much so that the airport signs are first in German, then English, and
then Spanish). Anyway, we sat on the beach during the afternoon, and then after that we went to explore the area a bit more.
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Really pretty volcanic crater in Timan-
faya National Park |
On Saturday (the second day), we decided to do a day-long excursion that took us all over the island with a tour guide, which was really great because although there are buses on Lanzarote (called
guaguas), they don't go everywhere. The tour bus first took us to el Golfo, a volcanic rock/sand beach with a sea-level crater filled with yellow-green water that gets its color from the algae in it. Then after that we went to Timanfaya National Park, were you can see all the volcanic mountains up close, which may sound boring but they are actually really pretty and many of them are lots of different colors. There's also a restaurant on top of one of the volcanoes (a semi-dormant one), and they cook their food primarily with the heat of the volcano. After that we went to a restaurant in a nearby town for lunch. We had potaje, a stew made of vegetables and chick peas, which was really good. Then we had fish with potatoes with the two sauces typical of the Canaries,
mojo picon and
mojo verde. The first one is red and spicy and the second is green and really garlicy. After lunch we drove through some of the vineyards on the island, which are much different from what most people probably picture as vineyards. The vines grow really close to the ground and grow in the soil that is below the black lava sand/rocks. Apparently the wine industry is really challenging because of the lack of rainfall in Lanzarote. Severe heat waves as well as rain too early in
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| Vineyards |
the season can more or less destroy the crop. We stopped at a winery where we were able to try a couple of different wines, which I wasn't a huge fan of (they had a strange, gasoline-like flavor to them). But apparently the wines of Lanzarote have a good reputation (as well as a certain goat cheese, which I sadly did not have the change to try). After that we drove up towards the northern part of the island, first through the Valley of a Thousand Palms, where supposedly in the 17th and 18th centuries (I think), the townspeople used to plant one palm tree for every girl who was born and two for every boy (how rude). As a result, the area has the greatest density of palm trees on the island. Next we stopped at a lookout point on the northwest coast, where you can see another small island, La Graciosa, which belongs to Lanzarote. Unfortunately it was a really hazy day so the view wasn't too clear. After that we went to Jameos del Agua, which is basically a volcanic cave. That was the last main thing we saw on the excursion. Over the course of the day we saw various works of art/architecture that Cesar Manrique, a famous architect and artist from Lanzarote. Some of the things he designed were the restaurant on top of the volcano in Timanfaya National Park, various statues, (at the entrance to the park, at Jameos del Agua, etc.), a huge cactus garden (which we didn't get to see),
windmills, and
Monument to the Peasant. All of his works are pretty interesting, although some are really abstract (in particular the Monument to the Peasant).
On Sunday, our last day, we decided to go to the town of Playa Blanca, where the beaches have practically white sand (looked more like normal sand to me, but hey). It's also right north of another island in the Canaries, Fuerteventura (although we didn't go there). We spent most of the day on the beach or walking around the town. Unfortunately I only have a few pictures of Playa Blanca because that's when my camera pretty much full-out died...but oh well.
