Fire mountain

Thursday – or C-minus-2 Day (two days before Caitlin arrives) – was another breezy, sunny one. We killed a good part of it lazing around the ranch and Skyping with the girl.

It wasn’t until after two that we bestirred ourselves and made the short drive down the coast to Jameos del Agua. This is another part of the volcanic tunnel from Monte Corona to the sea. We had visited the Cueva de los Verdes, a completely underground section, a few days ago. This part is almost at the sea. The word jameos refers to places where the cave roof has collapsed. In this case, it led to the formation of a small underground lake. Entry to the site was included in the combined ticket we purchased at the cactus garden the week before.

Jameos del Agua is a hugely popular attraction. Why, we’re not exactly sure. When we pulled into the parking lot, we found about 10 buses parked, with two of them disgorging passengers. We had to wait in queue to enter. The entry fee, without the discount our combined ticket gave us, seemed steep: 9€. Especially given what the site turned out to be, and the time you could reasonably spend here – little more than an hour.

              

And what was it? A very intriguing night club restaurant with a natural attraction at its centre. During the day, when it’s a tourist attraction, visitors troop down stairs carved into volcanic rock, past the restaurant, to the “lake,” with its impressive vault of jagged laval rock. It’s a pool about 80 meters long and 30 across with clear water and natural skylights at each end. There is apparently a type of crab in the lake that only lives here – hence the sculpted crab icon, created by Manrique, that we see on the highway as we’re approaching the place.

Tourists walk down to the lake, take pictures, stream around either side on their way to the other end, where they stop and take photographs back the other way. This area has a grotto atmosphere, with nightclub seating and a little bar. Then they climb the stairs to the pool area, built below the largest of the jameos. The pool is artificial, with palms around it. Apparently you can’t swim in it anymore – or at least, paying visitors can’t swim in it.

At one end of the pool is the entrance to an auditoreum built in an enclosed part of the tunnel where it narrows. The acoustics are supposed to be very good. They hold concerts here, although it’s not clear when.  

Back at ground level, above the pool, there’s a suite of rooms with interactive displays about volcanism. (Calm down Trekkies. That’s volcanism – volcanic activity - not Vulcanism.) The presentation is dated and not terribly engaging, for which reason, presumably, it’s currently undergoing renovations.

And that’s it. Think Wonderland Gardens in the late 1960s, with one of the artificial pools replaced by an underground lake, and you have something of the atmosphere of the place. Okay, maybe that’s a little ungenerous. It’s more impressive than that, and a very pretty spot. But if I had paid full price, I’d be a little pissed about the value for money.

We drove from there towards Órzola for more badlands photography. We pulled off at a beach just this side of the town, where I hoped to get some shots of water crashing against rocks. Earlier in the day, with the tide higher, we could see great plumes of water in the distance just south of us. Where we were now was a wilder, less developed stretch of coast, but it had quieted down quite a bit from earlier, and the tide was out, so there were no great water effects. There were terrific light effects over Monte Corona with the sun streaming through cloud. I wasn’t very successful capturing it.

Friday we were a little more active. We got away from the hacienda about 12:30 and drove to the Monumento de Campesino, a museum complex and huge semi-abstract sculpture of Manriquean design dedicated to the peasant farmers of the island’s past. It’s located in the geographic centre of the island and is on the way to Timanfaya National Park, our other destination for the day.

The Monumento de Campesino impressed in the way that all the Manrique-developed tourist sites here do – brilliantly design, with incredible attention to detail, and very well maintained. The roadside sculpture, about 50 meters high, is supposed to represent a peasant farmer riding a camel – camels were imported to the Canaries as work animals. It’s interesting in the way that mid-20th century abstract sculpture often is – i.e. mildly. But impressive in scale and weirdness.

The museum complex is very pretty, with cactus gardens in carefully groomed, Zen-like beds of picon, the tiny black pebbles spewn all over the island in volcanic eruptions. Farmers here discovered they make a perfect mulch that attracts and absorbs water – of which there is a desperate scarcity on Lanzarote – and traps it in the soil underneath. It’s used extensively in island viniculture. The grounds here include examples of grape vines planted in the traditional way with picon mulch and rough hewn semi-circular drystone wind blocks built with volcanic rock to protect a single vine in the middle.

The buildings, one of which is a restoration of a traditonal Lanzarotean farm house, are all brilliantly white-washed. There are few buildings on the island that aren’t whitewashed, but here, the exterior walls, and the floors of some of the patios too, are whitewashed in glossy paint. One of the online guides we read cautioned visitors to wear sunglasses to protect against the glare.

There is a lovely looking restaurant that we’re thinking of taking Caitlin to. Some of the buildings house studios where crafts people demonstrate traditional weaving, pottery, macrame, soap making. Tourists can mix their own unique blend of soap ingredients to make a personalized souvenir, or macrame (crochet?) their own miniature island-style sampler.

There are rooms devoted to pottery figurines inspired by the styles and techniques used by the guanchas, the island’s natives who were exterminated generations ago. None of these attractions was open, however, as it was lunchtime in the off-season and the staff were all off having their midday meal.

There are also rooms with displays about the local wine industry – they unfortunately mainly make sweet and semi-sweet wines here – and historic churches on the island. We discovered from this latter exhibit that the Ermita de las Nieves, which we had visited early in our travels around the island, was originally built in 1580 (and restored in 1960).

We drove from the Monumento to the Interpretive Centre for the Timanfaya Naitonal Park, the Fire Mountain park, in the still-active volcanic area in the island’s southwest. There was a slight detour down a wrong road that took us through some beautifully barren volcanic landscapes. We have finally figured out that the volcanic landscapes in the north end of the island, near us, are the result of eruptions thousands of years ago, not the eruptions in historic times that we have read about. That has given the land around here long enough to regenerate and grow the relatively lush vegetation we see, even in the so-called badlands. But in the southwest, the land is still very barren and stark.

The museum is quite good. We learned about the picon, the black gravel spewed from the volcanoes and spread across the land by the wind, and the bombas, the large laval rocks that result from molten lava spinning through the air when erupted, which rounds them out. The displays explained the different forms of laval rock remaining. Slower moving lava results in the jagged forms we see in most of the badlands in the north. The fastest moving lava produces smooth rock with ripples and swirls in it. We see some of that in the north, but more in the south.

From the interpretive centre, we drove to the park gates and on up to the visitor centre, where we caught the bus for a tour around the volcanic epicentre. Entry to the park, and this bus tour, were included in the combined ticket that gave us entry to three of the island’s other big attractions. The visitor centre is fairly high up and the wind was whistling. It was positively cool. We were glad when they finally let us on the bus.

The bus ride was great. It goes in a twisty-turny circuit along the very good, but narrow, single-track roadway built especially for the buses. A recorded, tri-lingual commentary gives some good information about volcanism, some of it a repeat of what we learned at the interpretive centre. The bus stopped briefly at a few places to give us a good look at some of the craters and other forms.

For a photographer, it was frustrating. You’re driving through these fabulous vistas, but you can’t stop and get out and photograph them. You cannot drive here yourself, or walk most places. There is a guided walk you can take with park staff, but you have to book way in advance as they limit the sizes of the groups. By the time we tried to reserve online, everything was solidly booked for the entire month.

Back at the visitor centre, a guide demonstrated some of the so-called anomalies created by the still active volcano. At one pit, he explained that the temperature not far below the surface was about 250C – or I’m pretty sure that’s what he said. He pitched a forkful o brambles down the hole and in a few seconds, a huge flame shot up. Then he poured water down a couple of small holes in the paved patio and a 20-foot geyser shot out with a startling whoosh. We also saw the “natural” barbecue, where they apparently do some of the cooking for the restaurant here. You could feel the intense heat coming out of the pit. The surrounding metal floor was hot to the touch in places.

We did briefly wander around the edges of the parking lot taking pictures, but it was quite chilly by now, and the rain was staring again. So we got in the car and drove home.