Lanzarote, Canary Islands

Ahhh….. The Canary Islands !

                   Just off the coast of North Africa, they sit beckoning tourists mainly from Europe to come and see all of the cute little birds flying around. Thousands of yellow Canaries can be seen wherever you go!

                             What?

                             What do you mean there’s no birds???!!!

                             No little yellow Canaries flying around?

                             What a rip-off!

                             I want my money back!

                   So, Don and Paula discovered that the Canary Islands are not the avian haven that they thought!

                             Now you may ask, “Why are they called the Canary Islands if there are NO CANARIES!

                             For the answer to that question we will defer to Mr. Bruchalski, my Freshman Year Latin Teacher…

                   “Well Don, if you were a better Latin student, you would not need my help here. If you can recall the root word that you are looking for is “Canes” which is “dogs” (think canine) and Insulae which is “islands” or if we combine them, it reads the Isles of Dogs. We get this from someone who actually spoke Latin back in the day, Pliny the Elder, who in his travels reported a lot of large dogs roaming about.”

                   Thanks a lot Mr. Bruchalski, you just outed me in front of my entire readership!

                   So we now know that the little tweeties got their name from the islands and not vice-versa and if you do look around you will find these little flyers on most of the islands in varying densities, having mostly to do with habitat. That is why on Lanzarote, where we are today, you find very few.

                             Why again?

                             Because there are no freakin’ trees here!

                             This place makes the moon look like the Amazon!

                   Volcanos galore!

          In reality, this island is rather sparse in vegetation that isn’t cultivated. The landscapes are somewhat newer (because of volcanic activity) and therefore not quite ready to support vegetation with any kind of regularity. We did witness farming going on, particularly grapes that inhabit some neat little semi-circles of piled lava stones for protection from the wind and retention of waters. More on that later.

          The Canary Islands belong to Spain. They are really not near Spain; they are only 80 miles off of the Moroccan coast and kind of off to themselves. There are seven major islands, lots of islets, and a bunch of named “rocks” so archipelago is a great description for them! The total population is just a tad over two million, but those Venturing  Vacationers from Europe add to that by an annual migration total of about twelve million!

                   We had another private tour here. We were a party of eight, Darla and Sandra asked two of their on-board friends to join us to help defray the costs a bit. It turns out we could have invited about twenty more and made some money because the vehicle that ferried us around was a small bus that held probably 20+ tourons!

                   Our first stop of the day was to the Timanfaya National Park  covering almost 13,000 acres, which is about 15% of the island. The landscapes are the result of its volcanic origin, namely The Canarian Hotspot. Age-wise it’s pretty old, maybe 70 million years or so, and owes its origin to our old friend Mr. Plate Tectonics. We haven’t heard much from him since back in Australia, but here he is tearing the African Plate and the North American Plate apart, leaving plenty of room for magma to works it way up and out, forming the Canaries and other archipelagos in this region. It can take thousands of years for a lava bed to garner enough wind-driven sand, dirt, and other botanical basics to eventually let enough plants grow and turn the lunarscape into a landscape.

                   So, with the last eruption in the 1700’s you can see that this infinitesimally small time-period is not yet long enough to really show any progress in the reforestation process.

                   But it does give us an incredible place to visit and experience! We were lucky that we were in a Tour Bus because they received preference when it came to entry into this very popular Park. Judging from the long lines that we saw when were departing, it looked as if every man, woman, and child on the island decided to take the day off and visit the Park!

                   Due to their relatively close proximity to the surface, the geothermal features of this area were made even more apparent by the Rangers here. We witnessed a few exhibitions at the Visitor’s Center. First there was a pit that had hot enough temperatures to ignite some brush that was cast down into it.

Then a Ranger took a gallon of water and poured it down one of several tubes that led to a chamber below. A few seconds later we had our own significant Geyser, complete with the bang and roar that accompanies these events.

And last, but not least, upon entering the facility we could see today’s chicken lunch being roasted above a large pit that was definitely hot enough to do the job!

After all of that we went out on the road that wound its way through and around the various vents, calderas, and tubes of the lava fields. The sights were otherworldly!

                             We next went to the shoreline where the promontories were prominent, and technicolor was the shade du jour.

A short stop here was followed by our agrotourism stop at a vineyard. It was an interesting site this vineyard, because there were no rows upon rows of grapevines clinging to their arbors. Instead, we saw those individual plants sheltered from various weather conditions and apparently doing well enough to keep this island industry alive.

                   The wine tasting went well enough for two bottles to be consumed along with two bags of interesting potato chips because one of them was “chicken” flavored.

 Hey! We were hungry, and they filled us up nicely….. at least until we got back to the ship!