Arrecife

Arrecife is the way into Lanzarote, an island born of fire and still black. Timanfaya National Park is its core: red and ochre craters, and ground so hot just under the surface that meat is still grilled on it. The lava left long tunnels behind, among them Cueva de los Verdes, and one of them was turned into an underground garden around a salt lake, the Jameos del Agua. Vines grow here in scooped hollows of black ash, each one ringed by a low crescent of stones, and Bodega La Geria makes a dry white from them. In the north, Mirador del Río opens more than four hundred metres above the sea. Below it the long beach of Famara runs under the Risco de Famara, a shore given over to surfers. In the south, Playa de Papagayo has pale sand and clear water. The look of the whole island is the work of one man, the artist César Manrique, who imposed white houses and a ban on building high.