TravelMarx: Lanzarote - In the Layers

Giardino dei Cactus di Lanzarote Jardín de Cactus CACT Lanzarote

Four days in Lanzarote - points we touched

Left: Pit vineyards in La Geria, Lanzarote.
Center left: Mirador Near Ermita de Las Nieves.
Center right: Jardín de Cactus | CACT Lanzarote.
Right: Four days in Lanzarote - points we touched.

What struck us first and most forcefully about Lanzarote was its volcanic landscape. The colors, the textures, the way the island seems built from both violence and patience. But once the initial awe settled, we began asking questions. Why is this like this? What are we looking at? How does anything grow here? We began sensing that understanding Lanzarote would require peeling back layers.

Our visit was about layers. Layers of literal volcanic material, lapilli and lava tubes underfoot. Layers of subsistence practices visible in walls, terraces, and pits. Layers of desalination breakthroughs that made life on an arid island not just possible but desirable. Layers of César Manrique’s guiding hand, still visible in curves, colors, and the notable absence of visual clutter. And layers of our own misplaced expectations as first-time visitors trying to read a place that doesn’t reveal itself quickly.

For several days we wandered, read, asked questions, misinterpreted, corrected our misinterpretations, and came away realizing that Lanzarote doesn’t reward the myth of the “unspoiled.” What it offers instead is something more interesting: a palimpsest. A landscape layered with interventions: volcanic, agricultural, architectural, and touristic. Layers that only makes sense once you stop trying to strip away the layers and instead learn to read them.

In the following section-layers, we call out things we wondered about and worked to reveal to ourselves and might interest others thinking about visiting Lanzarote. The layers don’t need to be read sequentially.

For more on Lanzarote plants, see the post Lanzarote: Notes from a Brief Botanical Infatuation.

First Peoples

Before desalination, before tourism, before Manrique, the island’s earliest human story belonged to the Majos (often grouped under the broader Canary Islands term Guanche, though each island had distinct cultures). They lived with the island’s aridity long before outsiders imagined it as scenery. Their world was one of adaptation: seasonal settlements, grazing, foraging, and making do with what little the land and sea offered.

Then came the long centuries of interruption from Berber arrivals, European incursions, and repeated pirate raids. Teguise, the island’s former capital, still seems to carry that memory: narrow lanes angled defensively, churches fortified almost as much as adorned, and lookout points positioned less for views than for warning. Castillo de Santa Bárbara, perched above Teguise, was a great place for watching for pirates.

By the time the Spanish asserted full control in the 15th century, Lanzarote had already been shaped by centuries of contact, conflict, and negotiation. That’s the true first layer of Lanzarote: a place continually adapting to forces larger than itself, natural and human.

Water Changed Everything

Lanzarote’s modern story pivots on a quiet technological revolution. In 1964, the island installed what is often cited as the first seawater‑desalination plant in Europe (Lanzarote’s water history, La Voz de Lanzarote 60‑year report). By 1965, potable water flowed through the municipal network, a moment locals still describe as the beginning of “the modern island.”

Before that, life here was a choreography of drought, ingenuity, and scarcity. Rainfall was unreliable, wells brackish, cisterns precious. Villages planned their entire rhythms around water; families emigrated when the rain failed. When we read about this period and saw the faint lines of old gavias still trying to catch water. the island’s aridity began to feel less like scenery and more like a protagonist.

Desalination didn’t make Lanzarote green. The volcanic landscape remains as stark and beautiful as ever. What changed was the possibility of stable agriculture, of reliable water, of electricity linked to the plant, of tourism that wouldn’t collapse in the next drought. The island didn’t soften, but daily life became less precarious.

Photos from Jameos del Aqua: inside the lava tube and out, as well as in the museum.

Manrique Everywhere

Manrique’s name showed up long before we stepped foot on Lanzarote in guidebooks and web sites mentioning his name with the integration of art, ecology, and architecture. So, we had high expectations, and, in many ways, his work did not disappoint. But the lived version of this idea is subtler.

César Manrique (1919–1992) was a Lanzarote‑born artist, architect, and environmental visionary whose work reshaped the island’s identity. Trained as a painter, he returned to Lanzarote in the 1960s with the conviction that development and ecology could coexist, and he spent the next decades creating spaces that fused art, volcanic geology, and traditional architecture. Many of the island’s most iconic sites — Jameos del Agua, Mirador del Río, the Jardín de Cactus — exist because he championed a low‑impact, landscape‑first approach to tourism.

In Manrique’s Taro de Tahíche home (today the César Manrique Foundation), you realize he wasn’t trying to impose beauty on the island but coax it out of the lava. He insisted that tourism didn’t have to be overwriting; it could be revealing.

Manrique’s impact: whitewashed cubes, curves instead of corners, space left unfilled, and a ban on billboards (imagine that!). At the César Manrique Foundation, the “museum” begins not with a reception desk but by descending into a volcanic bubble.

And then the ironic layer of his story: even Manrique eventually fled the coastal tourism he helped shape, retreating from Tahíche to Haría, in the hills. Perhaps not out of resignation, but because he understood something essential about living with visitors: even sustainable tourism gets old.

His Haría house, where he lived for his last four years, feels like he left yesterday. He just left for a quick errand. If the Tahíche house shows Manrique the sculptor‑architect, volcanic and outward‑facing, Haría shows Manrique the painter‑gardener, the inward‑facing silent crater. We could imagine living in his Haría house.

We didn’t see everything Manrique created, but we did visit Jameos del Agua, Mirador del Río, the Haría house, and the Jardín de Cactus. These are managed by CACT (Centros de Arte, Cultura y Turismo de Lanzarote — the Art, Culture and Tourism Centres of Lanzarote), which is managed by the island’s government (Cabildo de Lanzarote).

Jameos means a large opening in a lava tube, and Jameos del Agua takes advantage of that to create a place that is part meditative and part groovy sixties romper room, and very much worth a visit. The Casa de los Volcanoes is a museum about volcanoes at Jameos del Agua and is very much worth a visit (additional cost on entrance ticket).

The Jardín de Cactus stood out most: a former quarry in a cochineal production area that was transformed into a place of sculpted forms and beautiful plantings. We have always been interested in plants (including cacti) but there, in this setting, we wanted to spend hours reading every label and marveling at the shapes and colors.

On a less optimistic note: Lagomar felt rundown and less maintained. It echoes Manrique — the curves, the grotto-like forms — but it isn’t his creation, nor is it managed by CACT. Lagomar felt more like a tribute than a vision.

Photos from the Jardín de Cactus | CACT Lanzarote.

Jardín de Cactus | CACT Lanzarote - staircase and cacti.

Landscapes That Require Homework

One Lanzarote wow moment for us came as we left Teguise heading south and entered the La Geria region. We had never seen anything like it. A black landscape studded with repeated sculpted hollows, a landscape that was hypnotic, patterned, and almost alien. Why these shapes? What is the purpose? What exactly are we looking at?

Lanzarote’s agricultural landscapes are easy to admire and hard to decode.

What we had stumbled upon were the pit vineyards of La Geria where each vine planted deep in a hollow and protected from the wind, which on first glance look almost ritualistic.

Before arriving, friends told us to “visit Geria,” and we thought they meant Bodega La Geria, a winery. Only once there did we realize they meant the entire La Geria growing region — silly us.

We took a wine tour at the bodega and learned about the forces shaping this place: the alisios trade winds, the drifting jable sand (biogenic, blown from the coasts), and most importantly the deep layer of rofe (volcanic ash or lapilli) produced by the island’s most recent dramatic natural event in the 18th century.

View from Bodega La Geria over landscape

Left and center: View from Bodega La Geria over landscape.
Right: Inside a pit with a vine at La Geria.

Fire and Ash — The Volcanic Layer

Between 1730 and 1736, Lanzarote experienced one of the longest volcanic eruptions in recorded history. Six years of fire buried villages, reshaped the island’s interior, and created the dark expanses of today’s Timanfaya National Park. Where families once farmed, lava fields now stretch in waves. Much of the rofe in La Geria originates from these eruptions.

In the forward of the book “The island of volcanoes: A guide to Lanzarote Geology and Landscape” (Amazon) by Roger Trend the following is used to describe the 6 year event: “Lanzarote is more like an old and dilapidated building that got a new coat of volcanic paint during the 1730-36 eruption, making it look as good as new.”

Most visitors experience Timanfaya from the Islote de Hilario, the popular visitor center, but we signed up for the Tremesana Route, a 3 km guided walk led by a park ranger (sign‑ups here). Our group of eight explored the lunar landscape of lava tubes, ropey pahoehoe, jagged aa, and ash slopes.

Most curious were the fig trees growing this lunar landscape, tucked inside circular stone enclosures deep within the protected zone of the park. These trees are still tended today by families with ancestral rights, a reminder of a past covered and rewritten yet enduring.

During the wine tour at La Gera we descended into a hoyo, a conical pit dug through rofe so the vines can reach pre‑eruption soil. The system of hoyos, plus the semi‑circular socos walls for wind protection, is the feature we first were wowed by. The rofe isn’t just mulch; it insulates, captures moisture, moderates heat, and prevents erosion. The devastation of the eruptions turned out to have a positive side.

Lanzarote’s dryness is tied to its low altitude and smooth profile. The island sits below the trade‑wind inversion layer that traps moisture on higher islands like Tenerife or La Palma. Clouds pass over Lanzarote without releasing rain. Add the island’s orientation and its proximity to Africa, and aridity becomes the baseline condition.

Those same winds sometimes carry the calima — dust‑filled air from the Sahara. We experienced a mild version one afternoon: the sky yellowed, the horizon blurred, and everything looked desaturated. Locals told us that stronger calimas can reduce visibility dramatically.

View from Mirador del Rio towards La Graciosa

Left: View from Mirador del Rio towards La Graciosa.

Center: View over Famara, northwest coast of Lanzarote.
Right: Ciudad Estratificada Los Roferos near Teseguite, Lanzarote.

Anthropologist Illusion

While visiting the island we were in the middle of reading "The Dawn of Everything", a book by David Graeber and David Wengrow that challenges traditional narratives about human history. The authors argue that societies have never followed a simple evolutionary ladder from egalitarian bands to tribes to chiefdoms to states. Instead, they experimented with different forms of organization — hierarchical, egalitarian, seasonal — often more fluid and surprising than expected.

The book primed us, perhaps too well, to look for deeper cultural structures everywhere. So we arrived with a bit of anthropological hubris — the idea that we might “discover” the real Lanzarote if we looked hard enough. Lanzarote quickly exposed our fantasy. Playa Blanca, Costa Teguise, and the shopping‑mall developments on the southeast coast make it clear we were not in some untouched world.

One day of our visit brought light rain, a rarity. The land seemed to green within hours, or maybe that was our imagination. We took the opportunity to be lazy and wandered around Teguise exploring alleys and watching locals go about their business.

At the devil sculpture in the center of Teguise we read about the Elegua, the diablillo, and the annual rituals. Historically tied to Corpus Christi, and now tied to Carnival, these figures once frightened local children and still hold cultural weight. We wished we could experience the festival rather than read about it.

Nearby, the Besapié sculpture — created by local artist Rigoberto Camacho (who also created Elegua) — commemorates the Rancho de Pascua, a centuries‑old winter musical tradition in which residents play folk music and collect alms for the salvation of souls. Again we felt we were reading footnotes without the book.

The statues reminded us that even visiting is not the same as understanding — no matter how many interpretive panels you read.

Statues/sculpture in Teguise, Lanzarote from left to right: Besapié, Teguise - Elegua, el diablillo de Teguise, Lion in the Plaza de La Constitución.

Tourism

Lanzarote has about 160,000 residents but welcomed 3.4 million visitors in 2024, roughly a 20:1 ratio. Other islands’ ratios are Tenerife (6:1), Gran Canaria (5:1), and Fuerteventura (10:1).

Lanzarote’s 20:1 stands out not just for scale but for how tourism concentrates on a small landmass. Yet numbers obscure nuance. Towns like Yaiza, Haría, and Tinajo absorb visitors gently; the resort zones feel like parallel islands.

Ratios don’t capture seasonality, distribution, or who benefits and who endures. Nor do they reflect that tourism supports well over 50% of jobs, and some estimates put it as high as 70% (Promotur, Exceltur).

Over half of Lanzarote’s visitors come from the United Kingdom — typically 50–51% of all arrivals — with Ireland contributing another 5–6% in recent years (according to Cabildo/Promotur tourism reports). At the airport, this was immediately visible: departures boards dominated by destinations like Manchester, Dublin, London‑Gatwick, Birmingham, Bristol.

While checking our luggage, we met an Irish couple on their annual “fly‑and‑flop.” They love Lanzarote precisely because it asks so little of them — a reminder that people come to Lanzarote for different reasons, different layers.

Left: Los Ajaches - Playa Caleta del Congrio.
Center: Los Ajaches - Playa Memos.

Right: Mirador del Charco de Los Clicos.

Searching for the Unspoiled

Before coming to Lanzarote, we searched for secluded beaches on Google Maps knowing that we weren’t exactly the only ones doing this. The whole process seems futile. Is a place secluded if it has hundreds of reviews written about it? Or is it a numbers game, where a hundred reviews is better than a thousand and therefore, relatively speaking, more secluded?

One afternoon we entered the Monumento Natural de Los Ajaches in the south of the island. After paying three euros, we drove the long dusty track toward the coast. Ahead: volcanic openness. Behind: the startling line of uniform white developments near Playa Blanca.

Lanzarote is designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve (link), acknowledging the island’s work to balance tourism with landscape protection. The boundary we saw — harsh but intentional — reflects this. And yes there are shopping malls and some English enclaves, but relatively speaking the island is well maintained.

At Playa Memos and later Playa Caleta del Congrio (in Los Ajaches), we found only a handful of people, even a few naturists. But when we crested the headland to Playa de Papagayo, the view was wall‑to‑wall towels with the scent of suntan lotion in the air. This was the thousand reviews beach we realized.

Left: Mirador del Rio seating area.

Center left: Mirador del Rio staircase.

Center right: View from Lagomar.
Right: Cueva de los Verdes | CACT. The same lava tube as Jameos del Aqua.

Nostalgia as a Travel Companion

In Teguise, we watched old footage of people talking about windmills and gofio (a type of Canarian flour made from roasted grains) in a windmill-turned mini-museum. In Manrique’s house in Haría, we watched videos of him, fit and tan, explaining his inspiration from the island’s volcanic forms.

We realized how often were looking backward on this trip. Every question about the present pulled us toward earlier layers: Majos, pirates, eruptions, agriculture, desalination, Manrique.

It’s an academic instinct: contextualizing everything and studying history, but it helps us. And Rebecca Solnit’s line from No Straight Road Takes You There stayed with us: “The misremembering of the past (or not remembering the past at all) ill equips us to face the future.”

Okay then. Lanzarote’s layers aren’t relics; they’re clues for how the island keeps adapting.

Reading the Layers

In Lanzarote & Wine – Landscape and Culture (Amazon), we learned the island once produced vast cereal crops, earning Lanzarote and Fuerteventura the nickname “the granary of the Canary Islands” from the 16th to 18th centuries. When cereals failed, orchilla dyes and later cochineal sustained the economy.

Today, orchilla is no longer harvested; cochineal survives only in niche production. In fact, the Jardín de Cactus sits on a former cochineal field — one reason Manrique chose it.

Add to this, how the eruption of 1730 – 1736 ushered in a new era of wine growing and the landscape and culture changed, acquired layers.

Layers ask you to slow down, squint a little, wonder why the landscape looks as it does. In another post Why do we travel?, we wrote that exploration is less about finding things than finding awe. Travel gives us a chance to look for it, in the layers.

Lanzarote also reminded us how easily the top layer — our own expectations — obscures everything beneath. Preparation helps. Curiosity helps more.

We suppose this is our travel manifesto: prepare well, then explore widely. Many travelers may prefer to fly and flop. But for us, Lanzarote is a place best understood not by flattening its layers into a single story or dimension, but by returning slowly and attentively, and letting each visit add another thin layer of understanding.