Volcanoes, vineyards and white villages

Lanzarote is the easternmost of the Canary Islands, about 125 kilometres off the African coast, and about a quarter of its surface is less than three hundred years old. Between 1730 and 1736 a chain of eruptions buried villages and farmland under lava and ash. What remains is a landscape of cones, craters and fields of black cinder in shades of rust, ochre and charcoal, with very little rain and hardly a tree.

What people have built here is just as distinctive. The artist and architect César Manrique, born in Arrecife in 1919, persuaded the island to keep its houses low and whitewashed and its roadsides free of billboards. He also turned lava tunnels, a quarry and a cliff top into the sights the island is now known for. Since 1993 the whole of Lanzarote has been a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.

The beaches lie mostly in the south and east: the long resort sands of Puerto del Carmen and Costa Teguise, and the undeveloped coves of Papagayo near Playa Blanca. On the north-west coast, Famara is a wide surf beach beneath high cliffs. Inland, order papas arrugadas with mojo, grilled fish and a glass of Malvasía Volcánica from the vineyards of La Geria.