Lanzarote

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Lanzarote, a lunar island shaped by the volcanic eruptions of 1730–1736, is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. The architect César Manrique turned this island into an open-air museum by weaving art into the volcanic landscape. Timanfaya, its sunken vines and its wine cellars make for the island's absolute originality.

The island an artist designed

Lanzarote is the island César Manrique saved. Between 1730 and 1736 a quarter of its surface was buried by six years of continuous eruption, and the result — the black lava fields and red cones of Timanfaya — is the most unearthly landscape in Spain. In the 1960s and 70s, as mass tourism arrived, Manrique, a painter and sculptor born on the island, persuaded the local authorities to ban high-rise building, keep the villages white and green-shuttered, and build instead a series of sites that fuse architecture with lava: the Jameos del Agua, the Mirador del Río, his own house in the Taro de Tahíche. UNESCO made the whole island a biosphere reserve in 1993.

Timanfaya is a national park visited from a coach on a single road — the ground is still hot enough to light straw a few metres down, and the restaurant grills over a volcanic vent. Just south is La Geria, the strangest vineyard in the world: each vine planted in its own hollow dug into black ash, sheltered by a half-moon wall, producing a dry Malvasía that tastes of the place.

The coast is varied: the white sand of Papagayo in the south, Famara's long surf beach under the cliffs in the north, and La Graciosa, the eighth Canary Island, a sand-road village reached by a half-hour ferry from Órzola.

November to April, and the wind

Lanzarote is warm and dry all year — 21 °C in January, 29 °C in August, barely 150 mm of rain — and the cheapest, quietest months are May–June and October–November. The constant trade wind is the defining local weather: it keeps summer bearable and makes Famara and Costa Teguise a world centre for windsurfing and kitesurfing, but on the north coast it can be relentless. The calima, a Saharan dust haze, rolls in a few days a year, mainly in winter.

Small enough for a week by car

Arrecife airport is ten minutes from the capital and twenty from Puerto del Carmen; Lanzarote is Spain — no formality for EU citizens, euro. The island is small (60 km by 25) and a hire car is the right choice: the Manrique sites, Timanfaya, La Geria and the north are spread out, and the roads are excellent. Buy the combined ticket for the Manrique centres; it covers the seven main sites.

Eat grilled fish in El Golfo or Arrieta, papas arrugadas with red and green mojo, and the goat's cheese of the island; drink the Malvasía of La Geria at the bodegas themselves, most of which welcome visitors. Timanfaya is best early, before the coaches from the resorts arrive.

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