Lanzarote We were looking for some winter (arguably spring) sun, but didn’t want to go too far. Madeira was looking good value for money, but Judith fancied a return trip to Lanzarote, even going so far as to book us into exactly the same hotel as we stayed in the last time we visited in 2011.
Playa Blanca Saturday - We were on a lunchtime flight from Gatwick, which got us into Arrecife late in the afternoon. By the time we’d got through customs, been reunited with our bags, picked up the hire car (I have no idea why this still takes such an enormous amount of time) and got checked in to the wonderful Princesa Yaiza in Playa Blanca, the sun was fast approaching the scenic horizon.
Harbour We just had time for a bit of a stroll and a few photos on the promenade near the hotel before grabbing some dinner in the hotel’s Italian restaurant.
Marina Rubicon The rocky beach near the Marina Rubicon.
Playa Dorada This is the beach in front of our hotel. It was one of those lucky in-the-right-place-at-the-right-time shots. The sky actually looked a fair bit darker than it does in the photo and they’d just turned on the beach floodlights.
Hotel Room We’d just booked a “standard” room, which turned out to be identical to the room we had the last time we were here, even in the same part of the hotel, albeit a floor lower and with a slightly worse view courtesy of an enormous palm tree in front of our balcony. However, it was very spacious and comfortable.
Isla de Lobos Sunday - As part of our room package, we had the option of avoiding the daily breakfast buffet melee and have our breakfast in the child-free peace and quiet of the Isla de Lobos restaurant, which you can see in the photo. It’s set on a shady terrace by the promenade, with lovely views over the beach. A wonderful and highly recommended way to start the day.
Walking On this morning I had decided to walk down a scenic bit of the south-western coastline. So Judith dropped me off near the Salinas de Janubio, which was about twelve miles from our hotel and off I went. This was the view looking north from pretty close to my starting point.
Cliffs There was mile after mile of these spectacular rocky cliffs.
Rubicon Desert Looking inland a bit, in the distance I could see Montana Roja, the volcano at the western end of Playa Blanca. My hotel was a couple of miles beyond that, so it gave me a rough indication of how much further I had to go.
Rubicon Desert Looking directly west across the Rubicon Desert, I had a good view of the hills/mountains in the distance, where I planned to go walking later in the week.
Rock Pools Apparently these rock pools are quite well known. Although calling them “pools” would be a bit of an injustice as I reckon some must have been well over ten feet deep. However, being at the bottom of a sheer cliff that was maybe sixty feet high, I could see no way to get down to them for a closer look.
Fisherman A fisherman enjoying the nice weather and the views.
Atlante del Sol Another well known landmark on this section of coast is the abandoned hotel Atlante del Sol, which appears to have stood in this derelict state since for many years. Which is a shame because on the face of it, it’s in a pretty nice, secluded location on the top of some very scenic cliffs. I had a bit of a search for information about it on the internet, but there is surprisingly little available other than the fact that it exists at all.
Altante del Sol Up close you can see that all that’s left of the hotel is its concrete skeleton.
Atlante del Sol All of the rooms would have had lovely sea views. Judging by the state of it, I reckon it must have been abandoned long before it was completed.
Lighthouse A while later and I was starting to get some good views of the lighthouse that sits at the very western end of Playa Blanca. By the time I reached there, I would only be about three miles from the hotel.
Rusty Approaching the lighthouse, there are estates of beautifully maintained villas. However, on the promenade itself, it doesn’t look like anyone has been performing any maintenance at all. All of the paint has long since flaked off the lamp posts and the bare metal is rapidly succumbing to the ravages of the sea air.
Lighthouses I finally reached the lighthouse. Or lighthouses as it turned out. The one in the foreground is the old one(obviously).
Montana Roja From near the lighthouses I had a good view of the Montana Roja volcano surrounded by the suburbs of Playa Blanca. The thought of living in a house built on the slopes of an allegedly extinct volcano does not appeal to my risk-averse nature.
Marina An hour or so later I made it back to the hotel and met up with Judith. As I’d only walked about fourteen miles so far that day (!), we decided to go for a stroll to the Marina Rubicon.
Beer At least they had some lovely cold beer at the marina.
Lobby Back at our hotel in the evening, after dinner in the hotel’s tapas restaurant I decided to have a bit of a wander around and take a few photos. This is the hotel’s lobby. Fabulous ceiling.
Staircase A miscellaneous staircase that created a nice pattern.
Garden This is the hotel’s spectacular indoor garden.
Corridor Looking along one of the corridors in our wing of the hotel.
Caldera Blanca Monday - I had managed to tempt Judith out for the short(ish) six mile walk to the Caldera Blanca. Even though we got there fairly early, it appeared that there were already quite a few people out on the trail ahead of us.
Trail That’s Caldera Blanca off in the distance. Actually there are two caldera (calderas?) there - a smaller one in the foreground, with the larger Caldera Blanca behind it. To get there we first had to trek for about two miles across the lava field that you can see Judith standing in/on.
Little Lizard There were very many of these little lizards all over the place. However, this was one of few that was prepared to pose for photographs. I’ve no idea what they ate given that there seemed to be few insects or plants.
Caldera Blanca Finally we reached the smaller caldera, the lower slope of which you can see on the left of the photo. Caldera Blanca is in the background. It’s a shame there’s nothing in the photo to provide any scale because Caldera Blanca rises several hundred feet above where Judith is standing, but there’s no feeling of that scale in this photo.
Lava Field As we began to ascend the volcano we started to get some fantastic views across the lava field we’d been walking across for the last hour or so.
Caldera Blanca Finally we reached the rim of the caldera. We could see people walking along the rim in the far distance, but in this photo they’re far too small to make out.
Caldera View Looking north, with Judith standing on the rim of the caldera.
Caldera View The view looking east. From here we could see that the lava field we’d walked across just went on for miles and miles.
At the Top At the highest point on the rim was one of those concrete waypoint markers. Handily it had a flat top, which was ideal for balancing my camera on and allowed me to get this rare photo of both of us. Unfortunately we didn’t have long to get into a relaxed pose as my camera only has a two second shutter delay.
Down Starting our descent. Again there were people visible in the distance, but again they are far too small to see in this photo.
Trail Judith on the trail back down to the lava field.
Vineyards Having safely made it back across the lava field to the car, we headed back towards the hotel. On the way we drove through the grape growing region of the island, which you can see in the photo. Unfortunately the vineyard we were intending to visit appeared to have gone out of business since the last time we were here, which was a shame because they had a really nice restaurant. So we popped into Gaia instead and bought a bottle of wine to drink on our balcony later.
Hotel Tuesday - This is a photo of the big block of volcanic rock out front of our hotel with the hotel’s name on it. Just to remind me where we stayed.
Pool View Judith had arranged to get her hair pampered in the afternoon, so I had decided to do the walk I was going to do in the morning in the afternoon instead. This gave me a bit of time to spend after breakfast wandering around the hotel taking photos.This is a photo looking across the hotel grounds from the lobby bar’s terrace.
Fuerteventura This is a zoomed in view of the top left corner of the previous photo, with Fuerteventura visible in the distance.
Hotel View Another view down one of the hotel’s corridors, but this time on the top floor so you can see the roof. In some ways the roof looks like a bit of an afterthought. Perhaps this wing of the hotel was originally built without a roof, then they saw the plans that Hull City Council had to build a big umbrella over their city centre and decided to do broadly the same thing to the open wing of their hotel? Probably not though.
Promedade View The view of the promenade from the end of the hotel, with Fuerteventura on the horizon.
Promenade The flower-covered hedge in front of the hotel.
Femes So the afternoon came and Judith went off for her hair pampering. I’d found a circular walk that started and ended in Femes, a small village a few miles from our hotel. So I parked our car in the town square and headed off into the hills. This was the view of Femes from near the start of the trail.
Trail The trail was a little more challenging than I was expecting based on my previous experiences of walking about in Lanzarote. You can just see it coming in from the right in the middle of the photo and heading off across the hillside.
Looking North The view from the trail looking north.
Looking South A few minutes later I crossed though a small pass onto the south/west side of the hill, from where I had a fabulous view all the way back to Playa Blanca and what should have been the horizon beyond. Although you can’t quite make it out in this photo, the horizon is missing, completely obscured by heavy clouds and torrential rain.
Rain! As I stood watching, my view of the coast disappeared, then gradually my view of the Rubicon Desert began to disappear too. At this point it became very apparent what was going to happen in the very near future.I just had time to get my camera into my rucksack and put on my waterproof jacket before the heavens positively opened. I’d only brought my waterproof jacket with me because it’s the lightest windproof jacket I have and I hadn’t bothered packing my waterproof trousers because, well, I was going to the desert island of Lanzarote where they would clearly be wasted space in my bag. Doh!Within a few seconds my not-waterproof legs were soaked. Within about a minute I was as wet as I was likely to get, even if I’d gone and stood in the shower for a few minutes back in my hotel room. So I thought I’d be as well to press on with my walk. I had gone a couple of hundred meters before the visibility had reduced to about fifty meters. As much as I like a good walk, I also like to not have to be rescued by the emergency services, so I decided to cut my losses and headed back to the car. Fortunately I’d only gone just over a mile by this point, so I was back at the car in about twenty minutes.Back at the hotel I had pasta for my tea in the hotel’s Italian restaurant.
Puerto del Carmen Wednesday - We’d decided to head out and do a bit of sightseeing. First stop was Puerto del Carmen, which has a nightmarish one way system at its west end that makes progress east challenging to say the least. Eventually we managed to find somewhere to park near the beach and went for a bit of a walk.I was lucky to get this photo of the sunbeds before people turned up and made the scene look messy.
Lag Omar I stumbled across a leaflet for Lag Omar in our hotel lobby and didn’t think much about it at the time. But as we were out and about we thought we’d be as well to pop in for a look. And I’m glad we did because it was absolutely amazing. A solid top five entry in the list of things to see when visiting Lanzarote.The story behind the house is that it was originally built for the British designer Sam Benady. But in 1973 it was seen by Omar Sharif, who was on Lanzarote filming The Mysterious Island. He fell in love with it immediately and bought it. As the story goes, Sam Benady was unhappy about this and challenged Omar Sharif to a game of bridge, during which the house was wagered. Omar lost and Sam got his house back.Whether this story is true or not is irrelevant because the house itself is a fabulous magical mystery tour of caves and tunnels and walkways that has to be seen to be believed. Highly recommended.
Lag Omar A water-filled tunnel with stepping stones in Lag Omar. Just what everyone should have in their house. Brilliant.
Courtyard One of the many courtyards in Lag Omar, complete with sails for shade.
Living Room The surprisingly modest living room at the top of the house. Excellent view though.
Garden I guess this is what would pass for the house’s garden.
Jardin de Cactus Having thoroughly enjoyed our visit to Lag Omar, we headed for somewhere else we didn’t get round to visiting the last time we were on Lanzarote - the Jardin de Cactus.
Jardin de Cactus I never knew there were so many types of cactus.
Tiny Cactus This cactus was really tiny, so I had to get down on the ground for this close-up shot.
Climbing Cactus Well I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it for myself - a climbing cactus. It attaches itself to the rocks using little tendrils, in much the same way as regular climbing plants do, but it’s a cactus. And quite a big one at that.
Cacti I think these big round cacti were my favourites. The largest were maybe three feet in diameter. You wouldn’t want one of those to drop on you from a height.
Jardin de Cactus A panoramic view of the garden (if only I’d had my super-wide lens in my bag I’d have got it all in - doh!). The covered over bit in the bottom left is the restaurant/tea room.
Cactus Close-up A close-up of one of the big round cacti.
Windmill This windmill sits at one end of the garden. It appeared to be in perfect working order.
Big Cactus As far as we could tell, this was the biggest (albeit not the tallest) cactus in the garden.
Cactus View Judith with our favourite round cacti.
Garden View Judith admiring the view over the cactus garden.
Megane Having departed the Jardin de Cactus, on our way back to the hotel we passed these strange rock formations, which looked like they would provide a good backdrop to the obligatory photo of our hire car - a Renault Megane. It was quite pleasant to drive and had an interesting speed limiter function.It’s funny how a few years ago you rarely saw a white car and now I reckon 80% of the hire cars on Lanzarote are white.
Megane Now that I’m here I might as well get a photo in from the back too.
Montana Roja When we got back to the hotel it was still a little early for dinner, so I decided to go for a quick walk up Montana Roja, the small volcano at the western end of Playa Blanca. From where I’d parked the car, it was only just over a mile up the trail to the top, so it didn’t take long to get up there. The view across Playa Blanca was rather nice. The last time I was up here, it was early in the morning and the sun was right in my face when I tried to take this picture.
Ferries From the top of Montana Roja I had a nice view of the ferries that travel between Playa Blanca and Corralejo in Fuerteventura. Although this was a tricky photo to take because a) the ferries were rather a long way off, so I was on full zoom, and b) it was ever so windy, so it was tricky to hold the camera still.The ferry heading to the right is the “slow” Armas ferry. The one heading to the left is the “fast” Fred Olsen catamaran. Both carry cars and both are fairly expensive for tourists to use (EUR30-40 per person) and surprisingly cheap for Canary Island residents (about EUR9 per person).
Playa Blanca The view of Playa Blanca beyond the rim of the Montana Roja volcano.
Mountains In the distance to the east I can see the hills/mountains that I was on yesterday when I got caught in the rain (pretty much right between the two peaks in the middle).Anyway, that was the adventures done for the day. I went back to the hotel to meet Judith and we went into Playa Blanca and had a curry for tea.
Femes Thursday - Judith dropped me off in Femes, where I’d started my failed walk on Tuesday, to start my most adventurous walk of the week - over the mountains/hills to the coast and then all the way to the southern tip of Lanzarote before returning to the hotel. The first couple of miles followed the same trail as I’d walked on Tuesday.
Hacha Grande The peak of Hacha Grande is on the left, with Playa Blanca just visible in the distance on the coast. Montana Roja, where I took a photo of this hill/mountain from yesterday evening, is just visible on the right. It looks rather tiny from here, despite being around 450 feet (141 meters) tall.
Hacha Grande Trail Having turned away from the fabulous view, I could see my trail slicing across the side of Hacha Grande. It’s visible here coming in from the right.
Trail Once I was out of the mountains/hills, the trail, which was often rather difficult to follow, wound its way across this desolate landscape. As you can see, there were few clouds in the sky and zero shade. I had also passed no people since leaving Femes, although I did see a couple in the distance earlier.
Signpost After about five miles I passed this solitary signpost. It seems likely that if one has managed to navigate one’s way this far without the assistance of any signposts, the presence of this lonely signpost would be rather irrelevant to your further progress. I had still passed no people.
Path At regular intervals the trail was crossed by what looked like paths, but I think were probably the gullys where rainfall on the hills drained away into the sea. Just out of interest I decided to follow one.
Secret Cove The trail ended in this lovely little secluded cove. Given that I had been walking for two hours and had seen no people at all on the actual trail itself, I can imagine that this pretty little cove is probably only visited by a handful of people each year. It also had some shade, so I hung around for ten minutes and admired the view while I cooled down a bit.
Cliffs Back on the main trail I continued south along the coast. After about three hours of walking, I passed a person (or, to be more accurate, he passed me because he was going at a fair old lick given the conditions).
Playa Blanca View After about four hours I made it sufficiently far south that I could see all the way across the peninsula to Playa Blanca, which was still looking distressingly far away.
Papagayo Beach So I made it all the way Punta de Papagayo at the southern tip of Lanzarote and started heading west along the coast. A short distance from Punta de Papagayo is Papagayo Beach, which is spectacularly beautiful and just off the right-hand edge of this photo. Just look at the colour of the water. As you can see from this photo, there are lovely beaches all along this bit of coast.
Papagayo Beach This is Papagayo Beach iteself. It would have been lovely to have stopped here for an hour and had a paddle in the sea, but I needed to press on because there was still a fair way to go.
Rubicon Marina Just over an hour later, and about five and a half hours after I’d set off, I met up with Judith at a bar at the Rubicon Marina, which was still sadly about a mile from our hotel. Still, it gave me time to have a leisurely beer in the shade before struggling down the promenade back to the hotel.In the evening we went back to the Rubicon Marina and had tapas for tea as we watched the sun go down over the marina. Lovely.
Salinas de Janubio Friday - On this morning I was out and about looking for crashing waves to try to take some photos using my ND10 filter. On my way up the coast I passed the Salinas de Janubio, which is apparently the largest salt refinery in the Canary Islands. It certainly looked pretty expansive from where I was standing.
Megane Just up the road from the Salinas de Janubio I found a large, deserted car park that offered an excellent opportunity to take a photo of the car with some crashing waves in the background. So I parked up and walked fifty meters across the car park to make sure I could get plenty of scenery in. Just as I was lining up my shot, a Corsa crept into my field of view, drove slowly across my field of view and then parked absolutely directly right in front of my car, as seen above. Unbelievable. They couldn’t have blocked my view more comprehensively if I’d put cones out and a sign that said “park here to completely block my view”.
Megane Anyway, with a bit of patience I got my photo.
Charco de los Clicos A few miles further up the coast is the small village of El Golfo (which has absolutely nothing at all to do with the sport of golf, so don’t go there looking for a golf pitch if you’re a golfist). It’s also right next to a rocky beach that had just the sort of waves I was looking for.
ND10 This is something like a six second exposure of the waves crashing over the rocks.
Colour ND10 Again at about a six second exposure.
ND10 Still sticking with a six second exposure as it seemed to be working okay for me. However, in retrospect I think I should have tried to mix it up a bit, just to see. I’ll try that next time.
Colour ND10
ND10
ND10 Last one.
Charco de los Clicos A couple of hundred meters from the beach is half of a very impressive caldera. The other half has been eroded by the sea over the years. Unfortunately, even with my ultra-wide lens on, I couldn’t get the whole thing in. Although I imagine I was seeing an awful lot more of it than most of the tourists that were standing around me taking photos on their iPads.
Charco de los Clicos Panning slightly to the right, I could see the point at which the end of the caldera disappeared into the sea. There’s a nice and rather deserted beach too. This is a really good place to watch the sunset from.
Beach Here’s a view of the beach I was taking my ND10 photos on from the viewpoint at the Charco de los Clicos.
Playa Blanca Having finished photographing waves at El Golfo, I met up with Judith back at the hotel and we went for a walk along the promenade into Playa Blanca.
Sunset A bit later on, we hung around on the beach in front of our hotel to watch the sun go down on our last full day on Lanzarote.
Sunset It's going...
Sunset Nearly gone now.Once the sun was well and truly set, we went back to the hotel for tea. We finished the week as we started the week - having a lovely pizza in the hotel’s Italian restaurant.
Balcony View Saturday - I thought I’d best take a photo of the view from our balcony, just to remind me to try to book a room with a better view if I come back again. Still, it was private and it got the sun in the morning.
Mirador del Rio As our flight home wasn’t until the evening, we had pretty much all day to occupy ourselves. So we drove almost the whole length of the island to the Mirador del Rio viewpoint. This is their bar/cafe with its giant windows looking out at the view.
Mirador del Rio And what a fabulous view it is, even though it was blowing a freezing gale and it felt like we almost had our heads in the dark clouds above, which we pretty much did. That’s Isla Graciosa in the distance. You can get a ferry there from Orzola, which is just up the coast a bit. But I’m not sure why you’d want to because there doesn’t look to be anything there.
Malpais de la Corona Having left the Mirador del Rio, we drove to Orzola right at the northern end of Lanzarote, didn’t get the ferry to Isla Graciosa, then headed down the coast road that runs across the Malpais de la Corona lava field. As usual the roads were empty and smooth.
Green It’s a strange feature of the geography of Lanzarote that the northern end of the island appears to be much damper than the south, as is demonstrated by this display of greenery.
Costa Teguise As we continued making our way south back towards the airport, we stopped off on the Costa Teguise, which looked rather nice.A while later and we were back at the airport for our flight home, having completed a(nother) fabulous week on Lanzarote and a(nother) fabulous stay at the Princesa Yaiza. However, as much as we’ve enjoyed ourselves, it’ll likely be a while before we come back to Lanzarote though as there are many other Canary Islands to revisit and, at the time of writing, I’ve yet to visit La Gomera at all.The End.