Back from Lanzarote

Sep 11, 2011
- Travel

Yesterday we came back from a week of holidays in Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands.

Black sand which is so typical from Lanzarote. We took that little trail to go to the beach and in search of dinner.
The next day we decided to investigate the area by bike. Between more touristy areas you could see lovely corners with almost no one on sight.
Yellow pedal based vehicles packed to the roofs with bright red skinned British and Germans. Little kids would use the horn whenever we passed by them and a second later the whole shrimp family would giggle all at once.
Even though there were irish restaurants and pubs on every shopping center we were able to enjoy more traditional Spanish dishes.
Our apartment was advertised as being operated by a company but we soon discovered that the real owners were the cats. They were everywhere, they would enter through open doors and windows, jump into hanging towels with their claws, meow to death or wrestle in front of us before breakfast.
Lanzarote is a volcanic island of 80km long by 25km wide and, at one point in the last 200 years or so, one fourth of its surface was covered with magma from the last big eruption in the island. During our visit to Timanfaya Park, shown above, we could confirm first hand the out-of-this-world feeling of the resulting landscape.
Friendly camels resting between one group of tourists and the following at the Timanfaya Park.
El Golfo was originally a full blown crater but time has taken its toll and has transformed it into the beach that you can see above. The atypical water color is due to the amount of minerals in the crater crust.
Loes trying to get me drunk, and I trying to find a difference between that wine and vinegar.
A few days later we visited a cactus paradise with 900 different kinds of cactus.
People from Lanzarote use volcanic rock and black sand everywhere, the cactus paradise was no exception.
Later that day we visited Jameos del Agua. It takes its name from an underground cavern that we were told was really impressive. Regrettably we didn't find it as astonishing as for example this swimming pool a few steps away from the cave.
After Jameos del Agua we travelled north and reached a really nice viewpoint from where you could see nearby islands like Fuerteventura or La Graciosa.

We finished our trip by a visiting Cesar Manrique’s house. The house has rooms above and below ground. The underground rooms were carved out by lava and Cesar made rooms out of them like this one and the one in the next photo.

After several months in Dublin with its lack of sunlight it was a very nice change that reminded us of the energy that full days of sun have.