A new adventure: the Isle of Lanzarote!

Barren.
Black-brown, reddish brown, pitch black and a bit of bright red.
And bone-dry.

That was our first impression of Lanzarote, one of the Canary Isles, west of the Moroccan coast.
The (Spanish) Canary Isles are a very popular tourist destination in Holland. No wonder: it's only a four hrs. flight, it's cheap and it's lovely warm weather all year round.

So when winter came and we very very much wanted to have a bit of a rest (and get away from it all - Holland in November is not the place to be and you've got a whole dreary winter ahead of you!) we opted for these isles and pref. not the touristy ones.

Hence Lanzarote, where we arrived early one morning with a booklet full of tips, must sees and must eats. So you're in for a lot of wonderful and amazing stories, I promise!

Early that morning - 8.30, we had started at Schiphol at 3.00 AM - we got out of our plane and inhaled scents similar to the tropics in dry season.
We nodded to each other: this we could deal with.

The bus to our holidaypark drove from the barren land via a couple of brand new and deserted highways into streets upon streets of small, white, angular houses: the residential areas (or habitaciones, as they are called in Spanish). Then, near the sea, massive, multy-storied hotels. The ones with five pools and bars alongside them. Next a view of a typical tourist street with souvenir shops, money changers and cheap restaurants. And finally to our destination, a recently built park of 250+ apartments, a swimmingpool, a couple of villas, entertainment in the evenings and it's own, huge, water treatment plant (tucked away at  the very end of the place).

There we were told our apartments would be ready at 1 o'clock. Or perhaps a bit later. Right.
We arranged our rental car to arrive in 15 mins and were off for our first trip.

We saw the barren inland, the volcanoes, the lichens and succulents that manage to grow there and we ended at the northernmost point of Lanzarote where we had a breathtaking view of the ocean. That's for my next blog, so read on!

(the little humps on the photos are volcanoes. On the island - 65 x 25 km. - there are a whopping 300 of them. So it's really a place like nowhere else in the world!)

Lanzarote and our two major mistakes

After a sleepless night we made two major mistakes at the end of our first day in Lanza. The first amazed us - please keep in mind we're city dwellers - and the second was so embarrassingly stupid I hardly dare recall it.

The first: after the Mirador del Rio we tried to get into Arrecife, the island's capital, to get a bit to eat. The distances on the island are negligible so we could get from the northernmost part to the capital in less than an hour and have our first food after we had got off the plane.
Not.

Arrecife is surrounded by partly built (and highly EU-subsidised) highways (ending in a dump, or on gravel, or petering out into a rather dire part of the city) and has an incomprehensible inner city. Even with a map of the town at our disposal.
When we finally found a parking lot we couldn't find the pedestrian area and we ended up on the wrong end of the sea side: new Marina, office blocks, not a charming little restaurant studded with locals in sight. No Supermercado either, so a bit grumpy we decided to get back to our apartment, and go to the local (tourist) Spar market.

No way. We simply couldn't get onto the highway we saw in front of, and above!, us that would take us via the airport to our holiday park. I don't know how we managed - clammy, hungry, groggy with sleep - without having a major relation fall-out. But we did. And we had freshly baked bread, still warm, a lump of good old Spanish goat cheese and a nice bottle of Malvesia wine as a reward, half an hour later.

The apartment appeared to be really good: spacious, walk-in shower, a good kitchen and a private porch where we spent most of our time when not driving around.
So breakfast outside, a bit of sunbathing, reading, doing nothing and then deciding where to go.
After our journey into Arrecife we decided to forget city life and head back to the country side.

Ah. Our second mistake.
Yes.
Let's state clearly: we know how to sleep in the Tropics. You take every precaution possible and with a bit of luck your night is bug-free.
But here we weren't in the Tropics, right? This was - still - Europe, right? Nice and warm for November, ok, but nowhere near the trials and tribulations of a tropical night. So we decided against the fan (sooo unnatural), threw open the windows and fell asleep.

Not for long. In the middle of the night we were raiding everything that had flown into our bedroom and zoomed noisily around our heads.
Followed the Lanzarote Massacre. Ashamed to slash the island's insect life - and even more ashamed of this no.1 mistake newbies in the Tropics invariably make.
(ps: a couple of days later we found mesh and velcro, and made our own mosquito screen. Have a quiet snigger and please don't mention it again).

Some pics of our apartment and the park. The park btw. is inhabited by 1) Germans (elderly couples) and 2) English, mainly young couples from the North and 3) a couple of Dutch. The staff is fluent in German and English, no need to know a word of Spanish!

An overview of Lanzarote

Hm, incorrect title.
It's more: our overview of the island.
We like unusual, uninhabited places.

I've been blogging about this island as if we've been living there for years. No - we've been there only a week. Let's say that's an indication of the impression Lanzarote made upon us!

Since there are so many photos I'd love you to see I decided upon this final blog, just to be able to show you parts of the island I haven't mentioned before.
So now, to end my blogs about Lanza, the last of the photos I want to share with you!

Lanzarote - an uninhabitable island. Our first Manrique

You know the feeling when you're jet-lagged, and your senses seem to be on high alert?

We hadn't slept the night before we came to Lanzarote - useless, since we had to be at Schiphol Airport at 3.00 AM, so we started 1.30 AM from our home.  The Lanza landscape we encountered when we had picked up our car hit hard.

And we loved it.
It was as barren as we had ever seen.
And dead silent: no other traffic when we headed inland towards the volcanoes. The rocky landscape was amazing. Empty. At first sight devoid of life - no wonder since the island has no natural sources, it's only a bit of rain and the morning dew that gives some water.
So why for Heavens' sake had people been living here in the old days? How could they have survived? The other islands have rains and wells and sources - we were dumbfounded. Must have been the true frontier attitude - or the people were simply too poor to move to greener pastures.

In the middle of the island, a part riddled with volcanoes - they are old (and inactive) and they look like nice little round hills - we parked the car and walked into the land. We saw there was life after all: lichens, in every bright and happy colour imaginable (the island hosts 180 different species, btw).
Then succulents, leathery shrubs clinging on for dear life, a lot of them even blossoming.
They looked like little trees - they probably are, but since the trade winds are relentless year round they consist of a small wooden stem and branches that grow flat out on the surface. Horizontal trees. The ground around them was clay-like, and pulverised when you stood on it.

We headed to the Northern part of the island where Manrique had built a beautiful outpost.

Here comes Manrique into our story and he'll remain with us during the rest of our holiday.
César Manrique - born on the island, left it for Spain and the USA, met all sorts of very famous people and came back, by then a renowned artist and a architect.
He immediately occupied himself with the 'preservation' of the island. Many of the Canaries had by then fallen into the hands of pretty ruthless development companies who were feverishly building concrete tourist highrises all along the pristine beaches.

Manrique had a major influence on the planning regulations in Lanzarote: no highrises, a traditional Spanish-Moroccan building style, all houses whitewashed and with green or blue doorposts and window frames. Apart from a couple of hotels in the tourist areas the island still keeps to these 'rules'. And it works! Outside the tourist area's the island feels very unspoilt and that's IMHO a major achievement.

On the island he developed tourist attractions at every interesting spot: the view of the ocean in the north, a restaurant in the middle of the volcano park, a group of buildings and underground plateaus around a hidden volcanic lake. And his own underground house, featuring in architectural and lifestyle magazines ever since. We've been there too so there'll be photos of that to come!

Plus numerous 'Juguete al Viento': wind toys. Just about every roundabout on the island sports a Manrique wind toy, and at the end of our stay when we spotted one of them we knew exactly where we were - and what direction to take to go to our next destiny. Signposts!
In a sort of 60s-70s art style they were easily recognisable and some of them very intricately made.
Btw, we now have a miniature of the most colourful one in our garden..

Anyway.  
See some pics of inland Lanza, and this Mirador del Rio, the Manrique Viewpoint at the northernmost point of the island, overlooking the ocean and the small island of La Graciosa. The building is hardly visible and that's another of Manrique ideas: buildings should never be intrusive. So you only see a low wall made of rocks and a small entrance. But then!

Arabic Haria in Spanish Lanzarote

Lanzarote is an intruiging combination of Spanish and Arabic (Moroccan) influences.
There are Spanish and Arabic villages. Driving around it's one moment Spanish, then a definite Arabic atmosphere.They used to have camels instead of mules on the island. We hardly saw any dogs (haram?!), where Spain is riddled with them.

Haria feels very much Moroccan. When entering it you see a green oasis. Also known of the Valley of a Thousand Palms, due to a tradition of planting a palm tree when a child is born (erm, two for a boy and one for a girl...).

Nowadays Haria is a very popular tourist destination, due to its green environment, its traditional buildings and the market on the plaza Léon y Castillo, the only square on the island with fully grown trees around it: Eucalyptus trees, Indian laurels and even cinnamon trees. An artisan village, with the Sociedad La Tegala as the hub for residents and artists from all over the world who came to reside here. It offers culture and social activities (see the photo of the festivity hall) plus good and cheap food and drinks.
Each Saturday there's a very popular local craft and produce market - whre we bought the best mojo rojo (the red spicy sauce) we had on the island.

We lunched at La Tegala, very cheap (think less than 5 euros for a full meal) and very good  too.
Lanzaroteinformation.com gives a lot of additional information of Haria, so check out this site if you plan to visit it.

Extraordinary vineyards and the Land-Art of Lanza

The tiny island of Lanzarote hosts something the MoMa acknowledged as Art: Land-Art.
Yes, the MoMa. The gorgeous Modern Art Museum in New York. The Museum found out about Lanza's Vineyards thanks to - here he is again - Cesar Manrique.

When you see the pics (and google 'la Geria' for even more stunning ones) you 'll see why.
It's Art with a capital A.

There's this strange and barren island. Hardly fertile, but with a benign climate.
A climate just right for growing grapes.
And somehow or other the Lanzarotians found a way to grow them - in pits. In 'hoyos', holes in the ground. Not your common or garden hoyos in the ground, but endless fields of symmetrical pits, the black earth changing colour at even paces, and in the centre of the changed colour - the pit - one tiny, bright green grape vine, growing almost flat on the bottom of the pit, surrounded by pícon: small poriferous lava stones that retain water. Around the pit a low wall of lava stones to protect the vine from the trade winds.

Don't ask me how they manage to keep these vines alive, or how they harvest them. I have no idea.
But wine comes from it, and a lovely wine it is: the rightly famous, dry-and-sweet Malvasia.

The tourists came and they had to be entertained. Looking at the artfully pitted fields didn't urge them to part with their money, hence the tourist shops next to the wineries.

They offered the most extraordinary and vulgar stuff imaginable. Airport quality and far worse.
So don't go there, feast on the landscape instead.

As much as we were in awe of the vineyards we felt sordid after visiting the tourist infrastructure around it. We moved on: to a nice Lanza restaurant with good food and a bottle of the wonderful Lanzarote wine. We soon forgot the shops, and could give the vineyards their proper due. Amazing, they are!

Blind crabs in a lava tunnel: the Jameos del Agua

Lanzarote is a gem, if you ask the geological enthusiast. Or the flora/fauna - marine or mainland - enthusiast, for that matter.
Here we please both with the lava tunnel of the Malpaís (badland) de la Corona, or, 'the Tunnel of Atlantis'.

This tunnel is one of the most impressive geological oddities on Lanza. It originated some 20.000 years ago when la Corona volcano was active. The lava tunnel is, with a lenght of 8400 metres (yes, 8 km. plus!), the largest submerged lava tunnel in the world, ending way into the sea.
On the mainland the tunnel collapsed in places or accumulated gases blew the ceiling off, thus forming sink holes - in Lanza speak a 'Jameo' (the J pronounced G as in loch, see last photo).
You can thus trace the tunnel from the volcano on the mainland to the sea by searching for these Jameos (16 in total).

A famous part of this tunnel is the Jameos del Agua, near the sea and below sea level. The part accessible for visitors is i.a. an underground lake, filled with extraordinarily clear tidal sea water.
Nowadays the Jameos del Agua is (especially in marine life loving circles) famous for a tiny, blind albino crab that lives - undisturbed in absence of competition and predators - on the dark, rocky lake bed.
In no need to hurry and scurry they reshuffle every once in a while. The only threat comes from the coins people keep tossing into the lake.
This miniature crab - its pincers make up most of its size - originates from the deep sea.
Deep as in 3000 metres below sealevel.
Apparently nowhere else in the world but at the Jameos del Agua you can see this crab IRL.

Manrique saw the potential of the Jameos.
In the sixties he developed the place into a nightclub (!) with an underground pool, a restaurant, a bar that still features regularly in design magazines today and a concert hall: a natural auditorium in one of the caves (said to have wonderful acoustics).
Nowadays there's also a reception area and an exhibition room, but the underground gardens sloping steep towards the lake (also designed by Manrique, the gardens, that is) are still there.
You descend a large winding staircase through the tropical gardens, where a path is built towards the other side of the lake. You're in 'a bizarre lava-tube-cum-sixties-night-club' I read somewhere. Bang on.

The auditorium is normally crowded with visitors, but when we were there the hall was empty and I could sit alone in one of the seats and enjoy the silence, the view of the low, rocky ceiling and the bluish lit stage below.

Highly recommended. You're in for a wonderful experience.