Camels, caves and cacti in Lanzarote

We spent a couple of days relaxing and exploring Lanzarote. Up until this point on the trip we had been pleasantly surprised as to how cool it had been but I certainly felt it had got a lot warmer since arriving in the Canaries.

We hired a car for the day and drove through the scenic landscape, which was very barren and desert like. Most of it was quite rough with volcanic rock at the roadsides but there seemed to be a lot of terraces on the hills with stonewalls which were unusual. We had lunch at a small picturesque village with white buildings and bright flowers. After lunch we went to a some caves in the north of the island which we were told have a species of small white crabs which you can only see in Lanzarote and they are “truly spectacular and you haven’t seen Lanzarote without seeing them” to quote the lady in the tourist office. I am not sure I would quite agree. We walked down into this cave, which had wallowing music as if it were some kind of shrine to the crabs. All you could see were tourists crowded around a dark pool with some white specks, taking hundreds of photos. I must admit I was not particularly impressed, as they seemed to charge us a fortune to see a bunch a white dots.

We moved onto our next site on our ticket, the cactus garden that was more impressive. This was an area full of different types of cacti with ponds and terraces, which was nice to walk around. Both this and the crab cave were put into context when we visited Caesar Manrique’s house who was a major architect and designed both of these sites. His house was quite spectacular with sofas in what appeared to be caves below with a small pond and waterfall. I can imagine it would have been very relaxing to sit there in the evenings. On reflection the cave and the cactus garden were much more meaningful if you viewed them as a design rather than a site.

In the south of the island there is the Timanfaya National Park, which is the area where the volcano erupted. This was even more of a rugged landscape and much more like a desert. There was the option to go on a camel ride, which looked fun, but seeing the poor camels and the hundreds of tourists I changed my mind! The National Park was not quite what I was expecting. We left the car just inside the entrance where we got on a bus that filled up with tourists very quickly despite it only being open for 30 minutes. We were then driven around the park with some interesting ‘atmospheric’ music whilst the majority of people on the bus took pictures of literally anything they saw. I was quite disappointed that there was no stopping point on the tour but given they receive 2 million tourists annually I could see this would be difficult to manage. Overall it was very different and interesting scenery but it was a highly entertaining bus ride to see the responses of some the passengers!

It was good to see Lanzarote and get off the boat but it was very different to what I was expecting. It was far more built up and touristic than I had imagined which was interesting to see. We then sailed on to Fuerteventura where we stopped off at the small island of La Lobos to have a swim. This was very refreshing and the sea was 24 degrees, which was amazing!

We are currently waiting for a front to go through before we head to our final destination of Las Palmas before we set off across the Atlantic. The marina is not the most sheltered as we have been bouncing around and the ropes snatching, meaning there is a constant creaking sound and jolting so we are hoping the weather will improve soon!