Lanzarote - land of fire (and surf)

heloisebuckland
Sep 9
3 min read

“To have been born in this burnt-out geology of ashes, in the middle of the Atlantic, conditions any moderately sensitive being,” Cesar Manrique.

Lanzarote, Saecwen’s first Canary Island landfall is a dramatic volcanic island. Cesar Manrique was an artist who dedicated his life to the protection of the natural landscapes of dark ashy earth contrasted by white-washed houses. The traditional houses are made with materials from the volcanic stone, held to together with earth, white-washed with limestone and built into the dark volcanic rock. Simple, unobtrusive and unpretentious.

We spent two weeks in harbour in Lanzarote and in between catching up with the many jobs aboard needed to get Saecwen ready for the next stage of her adventures, we were able to spend lots of time exploring this extraordinary volcanic island.

Manrique’s house was one of our favourite discoveries. He had been given an apparently impossible piece of land to create his dwelling, which consisted of stacks of jagged, volcanic rock with seven large ‘larva bubbles’, creating giant holes in the ground. He transformed these irregular, spaces into cosy circular living spaces which each had access to the sky with palm trees growing up through the middle. Clearly housing some great parties in the 60s.

Cesar Manrique's Larva Bubble House

It was around this time that this unspoilt land of lava fields, swathes of desert and rocky dark coastlines speckled with low, white-washed houses started to be invaded by mass tourism. Manrique was outraged by this rapid influx of high-rise hotels, highways and cranes that threatened to destroy the beautiful, natural simplicity of the island that he so loved. He fought a successful campaign against the mass tourism and modern architecture and created a movement to keep the island as close to it’s traditional landscape as possible. He succeeded in defining a new planning regime, declaring large areas of the island a national park and banning any new developments out of line with the traditional architecture. Whilst Manrique was not able to stop Lanzarote’s huge tourism development, he unquestionably saved the island from the horrific high-rise architecture that has so blighted many of the other islands of the Canaries archipelago.

He was also inspired by the ‘cotos’ a semi-circular dry stone wall construction that is used across the island to protect any kind of agriculture, particularly vines from the fierce northerly winds. In the 18^th Century a unique type of farming was discovered for this barren land, which comprises of covering the crop with a kind of volcanic mulch – tiny pieces of crushed volcanic rock are spread over and around the plant enabling the limited moisture in the air to be captured by the highly absorbent rock and transported down to the roots. The middle of the island is covered with vineyards that use this method and several have been going steady for more than 300 years.

A large part of the island is free from mass development with dramatic open landscapes, such as the national park of Timanfaya, which is effectively a giant lava field from where you can walk up the volcano craters or ‘calderas’, for stunning views of the rugged coastline and open plains. Here we climbed the famous Caldera Blanco and hiked around the rim of this huge extinct volcano.

The aquatic life of Lanzarote is also stunning, and we were greeted by hundreds of striped bream when we jumped off Saecwen on our first anchorage in the island of Graciosa at the north tip of Lanzarote and for the first few days on the island the water was crystal clear. Clear enough to see small volcanic bubbles rising from the seabed and a large sting ray gently cruising along the sand, 10 metres below us. However, this soon changed when the desert wind known as the Calima, started to blow brining dust in from the Sahara and covering everything in it's way. For several days this hot southerly wind blew through and the neighbouring island of Los Lobos and Fuerteventura were just hazy shadows in the distance.

Lanzarote has 150,000 inhabitants and one of them is Heloise’s dear friend Elisenda, which was a key reason to spend time in this unique place and go surfing! We sailed together down the wild west coast of the island to the south and caught 3 bonito along the way, prompting a huge sushi feast when we reached harbour. We loved our time in this unique land of fire and surf and hope to be back some day.

Short film of Saecwen's time on Lanzarote