Lanzarote As part of our ongoing mission to visit all of the Canary Islands, this time we went to Lanzarote. Strictly speaking we had already visited Lanzarote, as we had two day drips there when we were staying in Fuerteventura in 2000. However, we’d never actually stayed there before.
Playa Blanca Saturday - We arrived in Playa Blanca after a very pleasant flight from Gatwick with Monarch. It was definitely worth paying for the extra legroom seats. Having checked into our hotel (the very excellent Princesa Yaiza), we went for a stroll down the sea front. This was the view of Playa Flamingo, near the Timanfaya Palace hotel.
Palm Trees Palm trees and blue sky. Things were looking promising.
Beer And lovely cold beer. Thing were definitely looking promising. Somehow a nice pint of Bombadier or London Pride just wouldn't feel quite right here.
ND10 One of my things-to-do for the week was to try out my new ND10 filter, which allows photos to be taken using very slow shutter speeds even in bright sunlight. As you can see from this photo, taken on the rocky shore near our hotel, the 4-second shutter speed creates an interesting mist-like effect with waves.
Sunset Sunset over Playa Blanca.
Montana Roja Sunday - I'd decided to walk off my breakfast with a stroll up the volcano closest to Playa Blanca - Montana Roja - the summit of which is a modest 646 feet (196m). Despite bringing a dozen pairs of shoes, Judith had neglected to bring anything that she could actually walk off-road in, so she decided to give the walk a miss.This was the view of Playa Blanca looking east from the rim of the crater.
Fuerteventura Looking south, I could see Fuerteventura in the distance.
Lighthouse Looking to the south-west, I could see the western "suburbs" of Playa Blanca and the Punto Pechiguera lighthouse, with Fuerteventura in the distance.
El Golfo As it didn't taken long to walk up Montana Roja, afterwards we took a short drive to another volcano at El Golfo (that's the volcano on the left of the photo) and stopped for a drink in one of the seafront restaurants.
Rocky Although there are quite a few sandy beaches around Lanzarote, most of the shore is made up of this black volcanic rock.
Pebbles While I was taking ages trying to line up an interesting photo, Judith took this photo of pebbles on the beach. This is a very similar pattern to a rug I saw in John Lewis a few months ago. Nice.
Marina We returned to the hotel to drop the car off and started walking east along the seafront, with a view to maybe making it as far as Playa de Papagayo. The first notable location that we passed was the Rubicon Marina. There were lots of attractive bars and restaurants around here.
Building The white buildings looked very picturesque against the blue sky.
Playa Mujeres Eventually we made it as far as Playa Mujeres, which is about two thirds of the way to Playa de Papagayo. Unfortunately it was getting late in the afternoon and it was a fairly long walk back to the hotel, so we decided to turn round and head back.
Sunset We made it back to Playa Blanca just in time to see the sunset.
Mirador del Rio Monday - We decided to drive almost as far as it's physically possible to get from Playa Blanca on Lanzarote, to the view point Mirador del Rio at the northern tip of the island.
Mirador del Rio The view point is at the top of a 1,600 foot cliff, looking west towards Isla Graciosa. As you can see, the view was magnificent. We could see loads of dolphins swimming in the El Rio channel between Lanzarote and Isla Graciosa. Unfortunately they were too far away to be able to photograph (with my 200mm lens at least).
Orzola After leaving the Mirador del Rio, we took the short drive to Orzola on the northern coast. This is a photo of Judith walking through the volcanic rocks at Playa de la Canteria, with the fantastic cliffs of Punta Fariones rising in the distance. In the far distance, on the right, you can just see the northern end of Isla Graciosa.
Jameos del Agua After leaving Orzola, we took the impressive coast road across the Malpais de la Corona lava field to the Jameos del Agua, which is one of Lanzarote's most famous tourist spots.
Jameos del Agua The word "jameo" refers to a volcanic cave with a collapsed roof, which in this instance has revealed the presence of the previously hidden tunnel and lake shown in the photo.
Crabs The small lake in the tunnel is home to thousands of these tiny, blind white crabs. Goodness knows how they got there.
Jameo This jameo had been transformed into a very picturesque garden, with a swimming pool, bars and a restaurant.
Reflections There was a very interesting museum that provides a lot of information about how Lanzarote was formed and about volcanoes in general. For some reason, one of the exhibits was a pair of large circular mirrors set in a sort of clam shell configurarion. If you peered in you got this rather interesting optical effect.
More reflections It was so interesting I felt that I needed to have a go too.
Cuevas los Verdes Having spent an entertaining couple of hours wandering around the Jameos del Agua, we drove the mile-or-so up the road to the Cuevas los Verdes. The Cuevas los Verdes (Green Caves) are part of the Atlantida cave system that was formed by eruptions of the Corona volcano some 3,000 years ago.The photo shows part of the main tunnel, which is around 50 feet wide and 50 feet high and, at over four miles long, is one of the longest known volcanic tunnels in the world. The last mile or so extends out under the sea, which means it's a) full of water, and b) not been fully explored yet.Note that the caves are Green not because of their colour, but because the land they’re on used to be owned by the Green family.
Cuevas los Verdes Parts of the cave system were not quite to comfortably spacious.
Cuevas los Verdes They had created a concert hall with seating for several hundred people in part of the cave.
Vineyards On the way back to the hotel we stopped off in the vineyards at La Geria. Each vine is planted in one of these horseshoe-shaped pits to protect it from the occasionally fierce winds. Which must also make it a real pain to pick the grapes.
El Golfo As sunset was rapidly approaching, we decided to pop back to El Golfo to watch the sun go down. These people appeared to be engaging in some sort of surfing-related photo shoot on the beach.
Caldera Because the El Golfo volcano is right on the coast, the sea has eroded half of the caldera away. The inner side of the other half can be seen behind Judith.
Nearly sunset
Even more nearly sunset
Finally... ...the sun started to dip below the horizon.
Hotel Pool Tuesday - Judith had decided to spend the morning by the hotel's pool, while I went out to take some photos. This is the hotel's salt water swimming pool.
Atrium First I head indoors to take some photos of the hotel's impressive plant-filled atrium/courtyard. Due to the sunlight flooding in, there were areas of extreme brightness and deep shade, which seemed to provide an excellent HDR photo opportunity.
ND10 Then I headed outdoors. This was taken using a 4-second shutter at f/11 (ISO100). The ferry to Fuerteventura can be seen in the background.
Montana Cuervo In the afternoon we decided to drive to the Montana Cuervo and take the relatively short walk around its caldera. The guidebook says that this is one of the very best examples of an exploded caldera. It didn't look very exploded from here.
Montana Cuervo It didn't look exploded from here either.
Montana Cuervo View I decided to climb the couple-of-hundred feet to the top to see if I could get a better view of the explodedness from there. It wasn't a bad view on the way up. You can just see Judith in the foreground.
Montana Cuervo Crater View Ah, so there's the exploded caldera with the whole of the north side (on the left of the photo) blown off. The volcano in the middle in the distance, which isn’t exploded at all, is Montana Negra.
Inside the Crater A few minutes later and we had managed to find our way into the crater through the big gap that had been blasted in its side.
Crater Panorama A panorama of the inside of the crater. You can just make me out on the path about three quarters of the way across.
Montana Roja (again) As it was still only mid-afternoon and Judith had now managed to procure herself some more appropriate walking shoes, we decided to return to Montana Roja on the edge of Playa Blanca. As you can see, it's pretty featureless on the way up.
Montana Roja View The view from the top, looking north, was excellent.
Punta Pechiguera Wednesday - The day had started pretty overcast and windy, so we decided to just walk west along the seafront from the hotel. After a few miles we reached the Punta Pechiguera lighthouse, which is at the south-western most point of Lanzarote. Here I have used the cunning art of perspective to make the lighthouse look very small (or Judith very tall).
Montana Roja As we started back towards the hotel, we got an excellent view of Montana Roja, where we were walking the previous afternoon.
ND10 On the way back to the hotel I took a few more ND10 photos. This is a 10-second shutter at f/18 (ISO200).
ND10 This is a 6-second shutter at f/14 (ISO100), with the Timanfaya Palace hotel in the background.
Airport Thursday - The end of the airport runway is right next to the beach at Matagorda (the photo shows the runway landing lights extending out into the sea), so we thought we'd pop down there and take a few photos of the planes coming in to land.
Plane! Doh! A bit too close. I needed to move slightly further back.
Plane That's better. This was almost as exciting as being at the Farnborough Airshow.
Puerto del Carmen After watching the planes for a while, we drove the short distance to Puerto del Carmen, where there is an enormous, fabulous and near deserted beach.
Waves The waves were making interesting patterns.
Effort Just in case you thought these photos appear by as if by magic, Judith captured the lengths I'll go to for a great shot. It was at about this time that a nice old lady came over and explained that my nice DSLR camera almost certainly would not be happy if it got dunked in the sea.
La Isleta In the afternoon we drove to the weird resort of Club La Santa, which is apparently not, as its name might suggest, where Santa Claus hangs out in the summer. It's some sort of professional sports resort with an althletics stadium, Olympic-sized swimming pool, etc. Needless to say, it was largely populated with young, tanned, althletic-looking people that made me feel decidedly old, pale and lazy. So we left there and drove next door to La Isleta.As far as I can tell, La Isleta is a natural island about a mile in diameter that someone evidently had big plans for, as it's covered with a network of roads and roundabouts. But there's not a single building. What they do have though is continuous and totally awesome waves crashing onto a rocky shore, some of which you can see in the distance behind my hire car (it's important to get at least one decent photo of your hire car).
La Isleta I took loads of photos of the amazing waves, but none of them managed to capture the scale and noise, which was a shame. But I've included this one anyway, just to remind me.
Timanfaya Friday - Our last full day on Lanzarote and we'd saved the most popular tourist destination on Lanzarote for last - the Timanfaya National Park. This is the sight of the last major volcanic eruption on Lanzarote, from 1730 to 1736, which covered 20 square miles of the island with lava. Even though the eruption was almost 300 years ago now, the area is still pretty active. The temperature just 40 feet below the surface is as high as 600C.Access to the park is very carefully controlled and you can only travel around on one of the supplied coaches, which wind their way along a specially prepared trail through the amazing landscape. This is a photo of the view from the coach looking towards the Caldera del Corazoncillo. A bright yellow coach has conveniently driven across the scene to provide some much needed scale.
Timanfaya You can see the visitor centre on the left of this photo. If you're in Lanzarote, this place is definitely worth a look. But if you're not on an organised coach trip, try to turn up late in the afternoon as it gets really busy earlier in the day.
A last look at the view Saturday - We just had time for one last look at the view across the hotel grounds before heading for the airport. We had a really great time in Lanzarote and very much enjoyed our stay at the Princesa Yaiza. Hopefully we'll have the time and opportunity to come here again sometime soon.
Clouds Ordinarily that would have been the end of the holiday photos. However, I spotted this cloud somewhere over northern Spain. Is it just me, or does it look very similar to the shape of the British Isles?
Clouds A few seconds later, as we had partially gone past, I took another shot and now there were two clouds that appeared to resemble the British Isles and Ireland. I'm almost tempted to send them to Metro.Anyway, that's it now.The End.