Costa Teguise; Wednesday, 24 November, 2021

I had a day tour booked to take in the key sights of the island, which had a very early pickup, so I had breakfast almost as soon as the restaurant opened and then headed down to my pickup spot. As I found would be a recurring theme with tours in Lanzarote the first 90 minutes of the tour were spent wandering slowly down the coast doing multiple pickups – the only advantage of getting on in Costa Teguise was that I had the first choice of seats, which on this tour wasn’t a major issue do to limits imposed at some of the days stops on numbers, but for other tours did mean actually getting a window rather than being stuck on the aisle all day.

With the pickups completed and a quick diversion to Yaiza to file the required paperwork for the National Park we were off to our first proper stop of the day – Timanfaya.

Prior to the 1730s this part of the island was rich agricultural land, home to many villages, but in 1730 a fissure opened up in the volcanoes and started to erupt. The initial major eruption lasted for 19 days, but after this the eruptions continued on – building and waning in intensity – for the next six years, after which around a quarter of the island of Lanzarote had been covered in lava with more than 30 villages destroyed. Today the almost lunar landscape is a stark reminder of the power of the earth. Due to the dry, arid climate of Lanzarote very little other than lichen has grown back in the 300 years following the eruptions.

Just because the eruptions have stopped it doesn’t mean the area isn’t still geologically active, with hot spots all over the national park meaning the volcano is still considered to be potentially active – and it’s to one of these hotspot areas that we initially visited, the main visitors centre shows how hot the land still is by taking you through four experiments. The first involves a ranger popping a few volcanic grains on your hands that have been dug up from just below the surface. The grains are very hot – almost too hot to hold, with most people either juggling them between their hands or dropping them back on the ground within a couple of seconds. At the second experiment a ranger holds some dry scrub to the walls of a small hollow in the rocks. After a couple of seconds the brush starts to smoke and a few seconds later it all bursts into flames – all from the heat given out by the rocks. The third experiment sees a ranger pouring cold water down a 10m pipe bored into the ground. A second or so later the water is ejected from the pipe as a steam geyser. The final experiment is the grill – located next to the restaurant, this griddle is located over a hole in the ground that still has heat blasting up from it. The heat is more than enough to cook all the meat for the restaurant that they place on the grill.

The next stage of the tour was a panoramic drive through the lava field that the volcano left after it’s eruptions – and this is where the advantage of being on a coach tour, rather than being in your own car, comes into play as coaches are allowed to drive round the route themselves, whilst motorists have to board one of the parks own coaches for the tour. The tour takes a circular 10Km route round some of the most spectacular parts of the lava field – including large gaping craters, collapsed lava tunnels and a climb up the side of one of the peaks to see the string of volcanic peaks laid out in a straight line along the 14Km or so of the fissure.

From the park we then drove north up through the island, past Teguise and over the highest pass on the island – passing close to the highest peak, before descending down into the valley of 1000 palms for a stop in Haria for a buffet lunch.

After lunch we drove the short distance to the Cueva de los verdes. The caves are in fact lava tubes formed when the outer layers of lava cool into solid rock, whilst the lava continues flowing underneath. When the lava stops flowing the cave structure is left behind. Occasional a part of the outer crust gives way creating an opening into the cave, and this is what has happened here. The tubes are from the Corona volcano which erupted around 4,000 years ago. The cave structure is spectacular and we had a long tour round the inside – taking in the multiple layers and the stunning precipice cavern.

The lava tubes continue down towards the coast – though not accessible from the Cueva de los verdes, but the next opening in the ground does have access to the sea, with a small lake in the cavern being home to a unique species of albino crabs. This complex – the Jameos del Agua was expanded and decorated by the Lanzarotta artist César Manrique creating a series of spaces which include a restaurant, café, pool and at the far end an auditorium capable of housing 600 people, all built into the lava tubes.

The Jameos del Agua was the last stop of the tour, and from there it was a relatively short drive for those of us staying in Costa Teguise back to our hotels – some of the later pickups in the morning were looking forward to another 90 minutes worth of driving back to their hotels.

After freshening up in the hotel I headed down for my booking in the restaurant.