Lanzarote Island. Days 1 to 6 of the trip

On February 16 we woke up early, though we had gone to bed late because, as usual, we had spent forever packing our suitcases. Even though we had the whole day for it, we still finished everything at the very last moment. In fact, the trip itself had been in doubt, because four days earlier Sveta had come down with a runny nose and a mild fever, and we did not know what to do. But just one day before departure she started noticing that she was feeling better. In principle, canceling the trip would have been easy. I would have canceled the round-trip plane tickets and paid only a small penalty. We probably could have gotten the insurance money back as well, and that would have been about it. So it was not a package tour where you instantly lose a fortune if you do not go. We got ready, I loaded everything into the car, and we headed for Sheremetyevo. Since it was Sunday, there were no traffic jams. We drove into parking lot P12, where there were still spaces available: 150 rubles for the open-air lot and 200 for the covered one. I chose the covered parking so that the car would not get too dirty while standing there for a long time, a full 15 days. We arrived at the airport. There were not many people. Sveta put on her protective gear: clear construction goggles and a mask, because she was afraid of the coronavirus. At that moment Russia had two cases and Spain also had two, one of them in the Canaries. We checked in and waited for departure. At some point we somehow lost track of time and had to run to boarding because it was announced unexpectedly for us, and they were already saying it was about to close. On the plane everything was as usual. Sveta watched movies on the screen, and I read some Habr articles I had downloaded to my phone, and the seven hours flew by unnoticed. For me, time always passes quickly on planes. You sit down, settle in, watch takeoff, and they are already serving food. Then you read a bit more, and soon they are handing out tea. After that you do not even notice how landing begins. I remember my first truly long flight, to New Zealand. Back then I flew from Moscow to Dubai and counted the minutes to landing, unable to understand how I could possibly sit there for so long in such cramped conditions. But already on the next leg I somehow got used to it and stopped noticing how time passed. I can never really sleep on planes, only doze off for short stretches.

While we were flying, I took out the Geiger counter I had packed in my backpack and started watching the readings. At first the radiation level was 1.8, but then it climbed to 3.33, which is about 20 times higher than down on the ground. So from the point of view of accumulated radiation, every minute in flight is like 20 minutes of life on Earth.

We landed and tried to get off the plane as quickly as possible so we would not have to stand in long lines, and it worked. We were among the first people at passport control, and as usual the setup there was such that the whole plane's worth of passengers were funneled toward two officers, so you could easily stand there for an hour. We got through in 20 minutes and ran off to pick up the car. This time they gave us a silver Seat Leon. Otherwise it was no different from the ones we had before. It had 25,066 km on the odometer, almost new. I remember that in New Zealand they gave us a Hyundai Getz with 163,000 km on it.

While the car paperwork was being done, I remembered that for some reason GPS on my phone always catches badly right after a flight, so I turned it on in advance so I could get into the car and drive off immediately. That is exactly how it went. Not long after, we were already at the guesthouse of our old acquaintance Ruslan. We chatted with him a bit and checked into our room. Sveta had a snack, took a shower, and went to bed because she had a headache after the flight. I grabbed my backpack and drove into the coastal town to buy food. Since we had arrived on a Sunday, there was a real chance we would end up with nothing to eat. But beforehand I had found a store on Google Maps that was open on Sundays. I got back from the store about 40 minutes later. Sveta had not even noticed I was gone because she had fallen asleep immediately. We had a bite, Sveta went back to sleep, and I started preparing our move to Lanzarote the next day. I bought a ferry ticket from Tenerife to Gran Canaria, then another one from Gran Canaria to Lanzarote. The second ferry was overnight: we were supposed to board at 23:50 and arrive on Lanzarote at 6 in the morning. I booked a double cabin there. There was also an option called full interior double cabin, and both cost the same, so I did not understand the difference. The translator explained that the interior cabin meant no porthole, so of course we took the one with a porthole. In the end there was nothing to look at through it anyway, because we were sailing in the dark.

All right, I got everything done and went to sleep. The next morning we had plenty of time to reach the other end of the island. We were staying near Los Cristianos, and we needed to catch the ferry in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. That meant driving 79 km, but most of the route was on the highway that circles the whole island of Tenerife.

Morning of February 17. We got up. We had slept badly, probably because of the flight. At 5 a.m. someone started hammering on our door. I got up and opened it. It was a woman from the neighboring room. She thought the kitchen was in our room, even though the actual kitchen was visible from far away. After such audacity there was not much chance of falling asleep again, so I just lay there thinking for a while, then started reading while Sveta slept. Later we got up, and I went to the kitchen. The same woman was sitting there with her son. She apologized for the nighttime confusion, we chatted a little, and she asked where the nearest store was. Then they got ready and left. I had the impression they had arrived without a car, and I honestly do not understand how anyone could check into that guesthouse without one, or what there would even be to do there. The nearest beach was around 10 km away, and you simply could not reach it on foot. I really do not understand how people vacation like that. It feels less like a vacation and more like hard labor.

This is what our guesthouse looked like. Our window is on the right:

Then we got ready. Even though we had woken up early, we only left the guesthouse around 10 because I had another talk with Ruslan. I told him that this was most likely our last trip to the Canaries because we had already driven around everything there, and if we were going to keep traveling, our road would now lead to Canada. Unexpectedly, Ruslan said that he and his family were also going to be there in the summer because they were planning to move there permanently, and as it turned out, they had chosen Calgary. We had been thinking of flying either into Calgary or Edmonton ourselves. He said that if we came there, we should call and meet up. He also said that they had decided to move because education on the Canaries was not great, and the children would only really be able to work in tourism.

We packed up. I fitted the car with locks to secure the suitcases, laid things out in the little compartments, then we had a bite, said goodbye to Ruslan and his family, and drove to Santa Cruz de Tenerife to take the ferry to Gran Canaria. We still had plenty of time, so we decided to drive part of the way not on the main highway but along the upper parallel road. There were a few pretty places there. Mostly we just drove and watched how people lived. We took that upper road until a point we had already reached on our first trip, though back then we had not driven it all the way through. This time we covered the missing section and then continued on the highway. We got there quickly and still had to wait a long time for the ferry to arrive. While waiting, I sat in the back seat and ate chocolate-covered mushrooms. Sveta rested too.

The ferry itself was the usual story, nothing interesting. This time I did not even feel like going outside. We sat in the cabin, felt a little seasick from the waves, and even had to skip our favorite ferry ritual of getting food. Usually you can buy all sorts of snacks there quite cheaply. We docked, drove the car off the ferry, and immediately saw a beautiful view that we had not even marked on our map. We quickly found parking for 2 euros at the entrance. There were big beautiful waves, but as we walked farther we found nice artificial pools by the ocean where one could go for a swim. Since we were afraid of getting sick at the beginning of the trip, I marked the place for the return journey instead. It was windy there but fairly warm, and in principle if it had been our last day I would have gone swimming. People were swimming there, though not many. This is what it all looked like:

We drove on. We still had loads of time to reach the port, which by the fast road was only 45 minutes away. But we were not looking for easy routes, so we made a seven-hour detour. First we climbed into the mountains above the sea:

By the way, there was a man there selling food out of a car with a trailer. As soon as we arrived, he walked up to us, asked where we were from, and handed us two skewers with some kind of cake on them.

It was beautiful there, although we lost a lot of time because we ran into a dead-end road under repair and had to go all the way back down and continue along the normal road. After that we drove farther inland, where the road was insanely twisty. There we checked out a few sights:

Then we headed for the next point but realized the sun was already setting and we would have to find our way out of all this in the dark. So when we got there, we decided not to leave the car and not to climb up on foot. We just photographed the view:

Then we headed toward the ferry. After a while it got dark, and we were already driving with the headlights on along a road that twisted back and forth. At one point a cyclist with a headlamp even overtook us; I had been looking in the rearview mirror and thought it was a motorbike. Then we started getting lost on the roads. First the navigator led us onto some sketchy road we decided not to take. We turned around and lost time. The next road was closed. We had to lose more time finding another road down to the coastal highway. We must have driven like that for two hours. Sveta started complaining that she was getting carsick, that she felt nauseous, and that she might throw up. I wanted to get to the ferry as quickly as possible, so I started driving more smoothly but still tried not to lose the pace.

And then, finally, the long-awaited highway with a 120 km/h limit. That is how we reached the town with the port from which we were supposed to leave for Lanzarote. But Sveta was hungry, so first we went looking for some place to grab food. We wandered around for a while, eventually found something, ordered fried chicken and fries, ate, and then started the quest called "find where Armas departs from." We had to visit three different places. In the end I even asked a policewoman how to get there, and finally we found the right place and still did not miss the ferry. We had a 10-15 minute buffer.

Boarding the ferry began. We drove on. A man speaking something Canarian tried to show us how to position the car. No one had ever told me anything like that before. As it turned out, you were supposed to drive the wheels onto little bumps so the car would stay in place better if the ferry rolled. After that we started thinking about what to take out of the car so we would have enough for the night. We were about to spend the night in a ferry cabin. We had never done that before. The cabin cost 100 euros extra. The alternative was a daytime four-hour ferry, but then we would arrive at midnight and would no longer be able to check in anywhere, and besides we did not want to inconvenience anyone. This way we also saved time, because we were moving while asleep instead of wasting waking hours on transit.

We went up from the garage to the passenger deck. At reception a man checked our passports, handed us a key card, and gave us the cabin number. We found it quickly and were mildly horrified: for 226 euros and a six-hour crossing we got some awful little cabin that looked almost like a prison cell. It had a toilet, but the whole thing was still depressing, and it was cold. There was no way to make it warmer. Air was being forced through ventilation that smelled like exhaust. We ended up hiding under the blanket and warming the air under it with our breath. Still, we fell asleep quickly. I had been afraid I would feel seasick, but as it turned out, I worried for nothing. When you are lying down, you do not really feel that you are sailing.

We actually had something to compare it to. In 2016 we sailed by ferry from Stockholm to Turku and paid roughly the same amount for that trip. It was a daytime crossing and lasted 11 hours, but it also included extras we had greedily added for money: an all-you-can-eat buffet three times a day and a cabin with a porthole. That trip was excellent. This one was a letdown. Still, it was an experience too.

February 18. We slept badly. I kept imagining that someone was trying to break into the cabin, and Sveta was afraid that the ship might quietly sink while we slept. In the morning a Spanish voice over the ceiling speaker woke us up, and rather early too - 40 minutes before arrival, at 5:20. I looked out of the porthole and saw the coast of Lanzarote glowing with city lights in the night. I checked our phones. The ship had some odd power situation: Sveta's phone had only charged halfway. We washed up, packed our things, and slowly made our way to the car.

When we drove off the ferry, we did not immediately understand what to do in all that darkness. It was 6 a.m. outside and pitch black. We drove to one place first, thinking we might meet the sunrise on a hill, but when we got there we found a closed gate. Then we drove to a beach, stopping for fuel on the way. The beach was windy and still too dark. There was nothing to do there either, so before check-in we decided to go to El Diablo after all. We had plenty of time. We reached the barrier about 30 minutes before opening, but there was already a line of cars. We were about fourth. One car ahead of us tried something clever: it left the line and drove through the barrier toward El Diablo. About six minutes later it came back; apparently they had turned it around, and it ended up joining the line behind us. Then the man from that car came over and started asking us whether he was standing in the right place even though he had already bought a ticket. I do not know why he was asking us instead of the ticket office.

We waited for opening. At the entrance the cashier took our payment and let us onto the road to El Diablo. It was not a long drive, winding across a road laid right over the lava. Once there, an employee helped us park and told us that we could board the sightseeing bus. We decided not to, because that bus was already packed. We waited for the next one so we could sit nearer the front. While waiting, we walked around the place a little. Then we boarded the next bus, which took us to the area where private cars were not allowed. The road there was narrow and one-way. I still do not understand how the driver squeezed such a huge bus through the lava. He handled the turns with incredible grace. Sometimes it looked as if the bus were sliding sideways or rotating like the hand of a clock. Here is one of the views I photographed from the bus. El Diablo is visible in the distance:

The tour lasted about 25 minutes and used a prerecorded audio track. The driver just switched on the tape and drove, while the recording explained in several languages how all of this had formed. There was dramatic music too.

After the tour we went into El Diablo itself. We wandered around and watched a man pour water into a pipe, and a few seconds later steam burst out of it. Somewhere else they put straw into a hole in the ground and it burst into flame. We even touched the stones on the ground; they were hot. Then we went to watch how they cooked chicken over a volcanic vent. This is what it all looked like:

The smell was so good that we went to find out how we could eat that food ourselves. It turned out the restaurant only opened at 12, and it was still just 10:30. But the bartender said she could bring us chicken and potatoes and ring it up through the cafe. That is exactly what she did. Everything was delicious. One chicken was enough for the two of us. They also had Canarian potatoes, something like potatoes in their skins, heavily covered with salt.

We ate very well. Sveta cheered up, looked refreshed, and gained the power of chicken. Then we headed toward the car. Before leaving, I decided to take one more look around, and then I saw a huge line forming in the distance at El Diablo:

And here is that line from the car as we drove past:

So it was good that we had come early. Apparently travelers in the Canaries do not like waking up early and only start arriving around 10 or 11.

While we were at El Diablo, the person whose place we were supposed to check into texted us. He asked us to come earlier because it was his birthday and he was planning to celebrate in the evening.

When we were getting into the car, someone from the neighboring car swung his door wide open and left an enormous scratch on ours.

After El Diablo we drove on. We decided to take the road that runs through volcanic rock along the ocean coast. It was great there. The waves were strong. The first thing we visited was the green lake:

There were a lot of beautiful views there:

We did not go farther because time was running short. We had to get to check-in. On the way to Luka, the owner of the apartment, we stopped at Mercadona and stocked up on groceries. I had booked that place early in the morning while we were sitting on a beach in the twilight. I chose the location so that it would be in the middle of the island and convenient for reaching both sides of it.

We rested in the apartment for a while and then drove to the next two nearby points. But then a problem came up: for some reason GPS stopped working on all our phones. So Sveta had to act as navigator too, guiding us by landmarks rather than by our position on a GPS map.

The first place we visited was a fortress that had been closed the night before. We arrived and realized it would stay closed for a long time because it was under restoration. After that we went to the house museum. In fact it was really the museum of a single house, the house of a man named Omar, who had designed everything on Lanzarote and built this house for himself. To me there was nothing particularly special about it. A house is a house. Living in such a place would be inconvenient, with water running everywhere, complicated staircases, and so on.

After that we drove home to eat, rest, and sleep. It was supposed to be our first proper night in the Canaries.

February 19. Morning. We got up reluctantly to the alarm. We had not slept properly for a long time, and now again we could not sleep in because we had to leave early to fit everything into the day. We ate, got ready, and left. First our route led to two caves. Since we had started with time to spare, we also stopped at a beach on the way. The weather was a bit cloudy, so the beach was not very impressive. Then off to the caves we went. There are two of them. We picked one at random, and it turned out to be the right choice because it was the more interesting one. As I said, travelers in the Canaries do not like getting up early, so we had to wait until a group had gathered. Once it had, we went down into the cave with the guide. At first I did not expect much. A cave is a cave. The only remarkable thing was that it was long. We walked a lot inside it, and it was sort of two-level. We entered on the lower level and came out on the upper one, which meant we did not cross paths with the next group. The cave even had a concert hall, though they did not play any music for us. And now for the highlight. Warning: if you plan to visit this cave yourself, do not read the rest of this paragraph. Just look at the photos, not the text. So, they led us to a spot where it looked as if there were two levels of the cave visible. We were standing on the upper level and looking down at the lower one, and it was all very beautiful. But of course that beauty was created by the lighting. The guide said he wanted to demonstrate an acoustic effect and handed a stone to a girl so she could throw it into the lower cave. She threw it, and instantly the lower cave disappeared. It turned into dark black water. It turned out that the lower cave had been an illusion all along: it was actually water, reflecting the cave we were standing in. Since there was no wind, the water was perfectly still and reflected nearly 100% of the light. But as soon as the stone disturbed the surface, the reflection vanished completely. Below I show one photo with the water still smooth, and another after the stone was thrown:

We came out of the cave, got into the car, and drove to the other cave nearby. It was closer to the ocean, and the whole complex looked more impressive, though the price was the same in both places: 10 euros per person. We went in, and there was hardly any cave at all. There was more like an arch that could be called a cave only with some imagination. There was a large pool with clear slightly bluish water, and on the stones below the surface were tiny white dots. I tried to see what they were. It turned out they were little crabs.

At the exit there was also a large pool. I do not know why it was there or whether anyone ever swims in it:

We drove on. Next on the plan was El Rio, a very beautiful place. I will not show photos of it yet because the weather was poor when we arrived. We came back the next day, so those photos will come later. In general, El Rio is a kind of viewpoint with a cafe from which there is a beautiful view of a neighboring small island. We had wanted to sail there and ride bicycles around it, but for some reason in the end we decided not to. Access to the viewpoint itself costs money, I think around 5 euros per person. In principle, though, you can see the same panorama for free nearby; the paid viewpoint just puts you 5-10 meters higher. In the end we even managed to get seats by the window in the cafe and had coffee and a donut there.

All right, onward. On the way we stopped at several beautiful places from which one could admire the ocean:

Then we stopped at a place where there were signs warning people to watch their cars. In the parking lot we noticed broken glass lying on the ground. Apparently cars had been broken into there and things stolen from them, just as had once happened to us in New Zealand. So one has to be careful.

After that we rushed to the cactus garden because we realized it might close soon. We got there exactly an hour before closing time. The entire garden is built inside a quarry so that the wind does not destroy everything that grows there. And a lot grows there. It is hard to imagine how long it all had been growing. Some cacti looked like century-old plants that must have been planted decades ago. This is what it looked like:

After the park we drove back to our apartment to rest and eat.

February 20. I woke up a few minutes before the alarm was due to go off at 7 and left the bedroom to deal with things and make a plan for the day. A little later Sveta woke up too. We ate, got ready, got into the car, and drove off. First we stopped at some beach marked on our map. When we got there, we realized there was not much to see. The water was far away, and we did not feel like walking to it. So we kept going. Our route led to a trail from a parking lot up to the crater of a volcano. We changed clothes and set off. It was about a 30-minute walk to the crater and the same back, all on a trail without elevation changes, so we covered it quickly. I would not say the crater itself was especially impressive. You do not really feel as if you are standing in something that used to erupt lava.

We drove on. Somewhere halfway we stopped at a place full of vineyards. But they do not grow there the way they do in Russia or mainland Europe. Here each vine grows on its own in a specially dug pit lined with stones to protect it from the wind.

When we were there, we did not even see leaves. Instead of lush vines there were just weird sticks sticking out of the ground. Maybe February is not their season and they simply do not bear fruit then. But the view was great. The vineyards were scattered over a huge area.

Next we drove to the place we had skipped on the first day of our trip around the island because we had to go check in. We rode along the ocean shore and watched the enormous waves:

It was great, but windy. The place had also been specially arranged by people. There were paths everywhere and little balcony-like platforms in the rocks for watching the waves.

Next on the route was a beach where, according to what we had read, you could collect olivine stones. I suppose they are gemstones, though I have no idea how much one could sell them for on the black market. In any case, we went there to collect some just for ourselves. Even now, sitting at home, I still have not fully figured out what kind of stones they are. They have joined our home collection of travel stones that will stay with us forever. This is what they look like:

They are green little stones. In Russia you might see something similar on a beach and assume it is pieces of green bottles polished by the water. But here they are real gemstones. There are lots of them, and the really tiny ones are beyond counting, so we only picked the ones that were at least somewhat large. This is what the black beach looks like. All around it sparkles with these greenish stones, but they are very small, so we did not take those. The larger stones require some searching.

We spent a lot of time walking on that beach, but we still had plans for the rest of the day, so we had to leave. Here are the salt works next to the olivine beach:

After that the most beautiful beach on the island was waiting for us. It lies at the westernmost point of the island, and that is where we went. But it turned out not to be so simple. The drive was long, and for about 8 kilometers the road was a dirt track with deep grader grooves. Still, we made it to the beach. The car ended up covered in dust, though:

The beach itself was nice enough, but we had not come there to swim. We came for the scenery, and there was plenty of it. Everywhere we looked there was clear turquoise water, and from above you could see everything beneath the surface.

After walking around there, we headed home along the same dirt road. In the end I managed to shorten the route a little by cutting through a town so that we had less of the dirt track to drive. On the way out we caught a beautiful sunset. Sveta photographed it right from the car:

February 21. I woke up and could not tell what time it was. Maybe still night, maybe already morning. Once the laziness wore off, I got up and went over to the phone. It turned out I had approached it just in time. It was 6:58 and the alarm was set for 7:00. As usual, I went off to plan the day while Sveta kept sleeping. A little later she woke up too. We took our time getting ready and only left around 10:00. Just when we were ready to go, disaster struck: the strap of my backpack, which had gone with me on all my trips since 2015, tore apart, and I had to urgently move everything into Sveta's backpack. Oh well, I had wanted to buy a new backpack for a long time anyway.

That day we decided first of all to revisit El Rio, because the weather was good and we wanted to see the view from that viewpoint in nice conditions. We were there by around 10:30. First we went to the free part, then decided to pay again and go inside as well. This is what the view looked like:

After walking around there, we had coffee and a donut once again and then drove to the next viewpoint we had visited the day before yesterday. It offered a slightly different view of the neighboring island:

We followed the same road and stopped once more at the place where we had previously looked down on the beach from above:

After that we went to Timanfaya Park, the same one where El Diablo is located. This time we just drove past the checkpoint and also stopped at the museum. From there there was an exit onto the lava, which in general lies all around that whole area:

After that we once again ran through some of the places we had already seen on previous days. And then Sveta wanted to collect gemstones one more time on the olivine beach. I really did not want to, but I had to give in.

We headed home. We stopped by a couple of beaches, wanted to watch planes landing near the airport, but missed the turn and ended up continuing onward. We drove into Arrecife. There we spent about 15 minutes looking for parking. We first entered one lot, found out it was paid, and left without paying. Then we drove to another that was free. But there were some people there helping drivers park. They did not ask for much money, just said I could give whatever I wanted. I gave them 2 euros, and we walked to one of the pretty places in the city. There is a pier there extending a little way into the sea. This is what it all looked like:

That was it, time to go home. We needed to get ready for tomorrow's move to another island.