Lanzarote

Today was the tour that I had organized and had 89 people depending on me having made the right choices and co-ordinate all the activities.  Elva and I were the first people off the ship so I could meet my group and give them a colored name tag to match the sign in their bus window.  That makes it easy to find your bus in a sea of buses since all the ship tours and private tours tend to go to the same places.  These are the places that everyone has come to see – the highlights of the island or port.  Our ship has over 2,000 passengers and, for example, we saw when we docked that there were four other ships in port!  So you can imagine how much I like having colored tags and signs!  It comes from years of herding five kids, flocks of Cub Scouts, a gaggle of Girl Scouts or various groups of teens or school kids to many places.  A little pre-planning makes a world of difference.

Speaking of ‘difference’, Lanzarote is it!  It was the first of our Canary Islands and the most autonomous of the group.  It is an amazing place.  A volcanic eruption in about 1763 (I don’t remember the exact date as our guide gave us so much information) covered the whole of the island in lava and ash.  It is practically barren!  There are no trees…nothing over about two feet tall.  A few trees were planted and sunk into lava bubbles and look like shrubs.  Amazing is really the appropriate descriptive word!

Aricife is the capitol city and is striking in that every building is by custom stark white with either green or brown trim away from the sea and blue along the shore.  This became custom at the behest of Cesar Manrique.  He must have been an interesting character. He was an artist, architect, and environmentalist.  Born on Lanzarote he did not live there his whole life but did return and helped to develop the country.

Our first stop on the tour was at Jameos del Agua.  Jameos describes the bubble of the lava, particularly one that allows people to enter.  This one was being used as a garbage dump when Manrique said no, it needed to be preserved.  He built walkways down into the lava tube and took advantage of a large, deep pool of crystal clear salt water that was home to blind, albino crabs.  The tiny creatures happily live in the dark but the ceiling is actually open.  The steps and walk is a little difficult but well worth the stop.  As you pass through the pond area you come to his man made swimming pool of white enameled basalt and come to a natural, underground amphitheater with perfect acoustics.  This is seats about 400 people for a variety of concert performances.

Going back up another spiral staircase we came out to our buses and continued to the Manrique Fundacion.   In Spain a ‘fundacion’ is a sponsored museum or home of a famous person.  This was his home.  Built within a connected series of bubbles and enameled bright white are several rooms which remain an even cool temperature under the burning Lanzarote sun.  Two have walls with naturally built-in couches with deep cushions, one room is yellow and the other red.  There is a bedroom and bath, and, of course, kitchen with wine cellar and pantry built into the walls and a more public living room.

I am not sure without my photos to add yet that you can realize the starkness of this black island.  A few small sparse plants have been left by birds or attempted by citizens.  Manrique’s property had maybe ten or fifteen succulents to add some color – green / grey.  The broad windows were pristinely clear as there is no dust or dirt to disturb the view of the distant volcanic hills.  What will help is that when we left the home we traveled on the ‘lunar route’ through the wine district to an included lunch.

With great foresight and hope, when this fundacion was to be opened, Manrique asked the city to build a round-about at the intersection in anticipation of many visitors wanting to come there.  He said that he feared that someone would be killed there.  The request was refused and sort of laughed at.  Sadly, Manrique himself was returning from lunch one day shortly after the opening and was killed at that very intersection in an auto accident.  The round-about was immediately but belatedly built!

Picture a vineyard anywhere you may have been, perhaps Napa, or Italy, or France.  Then hit your mental delete key because that is not the Lanzarote vineyard by any stretch of the imagination!  Here black lava rock provides excellent drainage for whatever might grow.  So the vintner builds a low, foot high, semicircular lava wall to block the never ending wind.  He spreads imported soil here after breaking out a two foot hole.  He plants his vine which grows as you have seen but stays very low since it starts out below the surface.  Since, while we are here, the grapes have already been harvested the vines are cut back to below the level of the wall.  So futuristic in appearance that you would never see this site and immediately say – vineyard!  Stunning starkness!

We had a delightful luncheon buffet that was quite a nice offering of variety.  Wine was included but we thought perhaps there was some Eucharistic event since it was well watered down.  But it was included in our 50 Euro tour cost, se we drank it all!  We had finished lunch and still had about twenty minutes until it should have been time to go.  I asked our guide if, since we all agreed that we were ready, if we could continue.  She agreed and we made up during the day, by being prompt at every stop, the time we lost because the guide had arrived late to our motor coach at the beginning of the day.

We continued up to the highest point at Timanfaya National Park – Fire Mountain.  The drive was fascinating to me because the only respite from the charcoal lava was the wind polished obsidian.  At the top, in the park nature center, we had a demonstration of how hot the rock was just 30 meters below the surface.  The ranger had a pile of tiny stones and gave us each a handful.  I think one gentleman and I were the only two who could actually hold it.  It did feel like you were burning.   Next a ranger picked up a hay fork of a little straw.  He dropped it into a hole and smoke rose and then flames in just a matter of seconds.  The next ranger sprinkled a little water into a tube to sort of wake up the mountain and then poured in a bucket of water and a geyser sprayed into the sky.  The fourth demonstration was in the restaurant.  A pit was dug and chickens were roasting over the hol.  No further heat source required!

On our way back to sea level we stopped where the camels were that you could hire to ride up the hills.  So much fun to see the people on the twin English Chairs that a Dromedary can carry.  The chains of four legged transportation were especially interesting because they were the only signs of creatures we had seen.  There are no dogs or cats, but somewhere there are imported goats and cows for their food value.  There are insects that come out at night but the only evidence of birds were the plant seeds they left behind.  With literally no trees the island is not friendly to avian species.

Our next stop was at a winery were we sampled wither a dry or a sweet wine, not both.  I don’t think anyone bought any wine or goat’s cheese and we were not there long.  I do think people would have bought more if the winery had made their Wi – Fi (pronounced here as it is in most of Europe as Wee – Fee) available for our access.  People on ships are always anxious to find free Wi – Fi and are will to buy things to get a login code.

On the way back to the ship we made a second unscheduled stop in the physical center of the tiny island at a Manrique statue that was at first greatly disliked by the public. Then it was explained, as sometimes modern art must be, that it was a tribute to this hard working population who had survived a volcano in days gone by and gone on to build a desalinization plant which brought life and maintains it on this river less, lake less landmass.  Then they loved it and honor his memory with great respect and regard.