Sarah Lee discovers how fearsome volcanoes created a bewildering landscape on a journey to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands…

Standing on the precipitous edge of the crater I could only imagine the intense forces which came together to thrust rock and magma over a kilometre into the air in a nuclear-style mushroom.

I was on a hike of Lanzarote’s volcanic interior taking me up, around and through the very heart of three of the island’s 300 volcanoes. The island’s most famous volcanoes lie in the Montañas del Fuego – Fire Mountains otherwise known as Timanfaya National Park. But even here, in the neighbouring Park of the Volcanoes, their might was obvious.

Looking at the deep crater of Caldera Blanca as it fell away beneath me before rising around one kilometre away on the opposite side, I felt amoeba-like in significance as I contemplated its wild power.

“We are in the area of new volcanic eruptions which are 300 years old,” said our guide Carmen of Lanzarote Active Club. Yes, in volcanic terms this landscape was very young – Timanfaya itself last erupted in the 1730s, spewing gas and lava for six long years.

But volcanoes are interesting phenomena – their destructive force somehow creating great beauty and I was struck by the landscape. Due to these recent eruptions, Lanzarote isn’t a classic beauty, certainly not in her interior, but she is striking.

The land ranges from rock-strewn plains to chunks of black topped with pale green lichen and hardy plants, unafraid to fancy a growing cycle where others daren’t take root. Then mountains, craters, ridges and volcanic cones puncture the sky while stamping their authority on the earth.

Leaving Caldera Blanca behind, our group headed to Montaña Colorada, a cinder cone that blushed red against the blue sky. It’s one of the 186 volcanoes that erupted on the island in the 18th century and in front of it sat a boulder, taller than the tallest of our group. This lava bomb was thought to have been thrust into its new found home from the depths of the volcano, while small green peridots from the mantle of the earth, shone from clumps of black lava. A walk inside the final volcano – ripped open to the sky by its last eruption – revealed how this unforgiving landscape is home to a great array of wildlife. Floating on trade winds a Barbary falcon hunted his prey and Carmen informed us there was plenty for him to choose from with mammals like the Canary shrew and reptiles like Atlantic lizards and Fuerteventura salamanders calling the island home.

Hard-earned drink
Changing hiking boots for slightly more formal footwear, we made for nearby La Geria where the jutting volcanoes gave way to blackened plains.
La Geria is home to the malvasia grape, producing a popular wine, and as we arrived at the Stratvs Bodegas, I discovered it wasn’t the only delicious variety that grew in Lanzarote’s nutrient-rich soil.

Stratvs, at just four years old is Lanzarote’s newest viticulture star, and hosts daily tours of its vines and production plant with wine tastings. For me, La Geria’s great fascination is its wine cultivation, for it is grown here like nowhere else on earth. La Geria’s other highlight are its circular pits bordered by rocks and filled with small clusters of solidified black ash (or picon) which ripple across the countryside.

The nutrient-rich picon’s porous nature create more rounded flavours, but growing wine in this region is a labour of love, as the unforgiving landscape means each vine must be harvested by hand. And it tastes all the better for it.

Back in the bodega’s bar I sampled the fruit of Stratvs’ hard work – a perky rosé, a Diego softly sweetened by a hint of moscatel and of course the malvasia, a mix of exotic fruit tones and floral greens.

There was something inspiring about Stratvs’ wines as if the new kid on the block was bringing some youthful ideas to a traditional industry, but with a region full of vineyards and grand masters to visit, I journeyed the short distance to Bodegas El Grifo.

El Grifo has been producing wines since the 19th century and has some of the oldest vines. Walking through the vineyard I saw one heavily-laden vine of over 100-years-old before retreating to the bodega’s museum to discover the history of their production and sample their wines.

Here among the rich violet tones of their Red Barrel red and delectable dry malvasia, I fell in love with Canari – another sweet wine. But Canari, a mix of vintages from 1956, 1970 and 1997, has an old world charm unequalled by moscatels, with notes of nuts, liquorice, orange peel and orange blossom.

UNESCO site
The next day, still fascinated by the drama of Lanzarote’s interior, I headed to Timanfaya National Park, and hopped on a bus for a tour around the mountains and crevices carved through the land by scorching lava. The park, the centrepiece of Lanzarote’s island-wide biosphere reserve – the only island to be awarded such status by UNESCO – has to be viewed from the park’s own tour buses to avoid contamination of its delicate environment.

Other than for birds swooping above and shadowy puffs of cloud dancing over the peaks, the area was still, serene even. But back at the park’s visitor centre, a ranger took a giant fork of long grass and thrust it into a hole in the ground. Within seconds it ignited, the heat of the volcano just a few metres under our feet reaching up to 600C. Next, at another hole, he poured in a bucket of water and stood back expectantly.

Whoosh! A jet of steam gushed 30 feet into the air from Timanfaya’s very core. I was tempted to stay for lunch at the neighbouring restaurant, have it cooked over the fiery pit of the volcano, but after two days exploring the interior I was keen to get to the coast.

Heading south, I drove through the deserted countryside towards Playa Blanca, but gave the touristy town the slip for Papagayo Beach, just the other side of three miles of rough terrain.

Here on Papagayo’s golden sands caressed by a cooling Atlantic breeze I reflected on Lanzarote’s beauty – all derived from a heart of fire.

Sarah stayed in a beachfront villa at the four-star Sands Beach Resort, in Costa Teguise: www.sandsbeach.eu Lanzarote Active Club: lanzaroteactiveclub.es