Hot Holiday Attractions On The Island of Fire

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Hot Holiday Attractions On The Island of Fire

The most easterly Canary Island of Lanzarote is best known as a bucket and spade beach holiday destination. Thanks to the fact that the island enjoys a year round clement climate and boasts over 90 great stretches of sand.

But Lanzarote offers visitors much more than just sunbathing and swimming – as the island is also home to some unique tourist attractions as well as some genuinely breathtaking natural beauty spots.

On first inspection this arid volcanic island off the coast of Africa seems to offer visitors little more than guaranteed sunshine. But hire a car and escape from the main resorts and Lanzarote proves be a treasure trove of natural beauty. Thanks largely to the fact that island has remained largely undeveloped.

In the south of the island lies the Timanafaya National Park – home to the volcanoes that famously submerged around one quarter of Lanzarote beneath a sea of molten lava back in 1730. These eruptions lasted for six years, causing widespread devastation and forcing many Lanzaroteños to abandon their island altogether and emigrate abroad for pastures new in Latin America and Cuba.

Today, the Timanafaya National Park is the most popular tourist attraction in Lanzarote. As the landscape here resembles the surface of the moon, or a land just born. With eerie twisted lava shapes and spent volcanic peaks predominating.

Other volcanic hot spots on the tourist trail include the green lagoon at El Golfo. Where an inland lake has formed and been coloured green by algae. So unusual is the contrast here between the green lake and the black volcanic sand of the beach that the location has been used by various film makers over the years. Most noticeably for the sci-fi classic ‘A Million Years BC’, which memorably featured Raquel Welch in an animal skin bikini!

Elsewhere on the island volcanic activity has been married with artistic inspiration to create unique spots such as the Jameos del Agua. A collapsed lava tube which was transformed by the artist Cesar Manrique into an underground grotto.

A short ten minute drive away and visitors encounter the island’s famous Cactus Garden. Which is home to around 10,000 of the plant world’s spiniest species and which has been built into an old disused quarry.

Head for the North of the island and the scenery changes dramatically again – from arid and barren lava fields to green and verdant valleys in and around villages such as Haria and Maguez.

The greenest jewel in the crown here is the Valley of 1000 Palms – where villagers used to plant one palm for the birth of a baby girl and two for a boy. A politically incorrect policy that nonetheless has helped to create a scene of intense natural beauty – with the crowns of giant Canarian palms swaying gently in the breeze.