Escorted Lanzarote Holidays and Guided Tours
Lanzarote lies closest to Africa of all the Canary Islands, and it looks it. The eastern third of the island burned for six years in the 1730s, leaving black gravel plains, lines of cinder cones and vines planted in hollows scooped out of the ash. It is a small island, and a comprehensible one: you can see it properly in a week.
We travel here in winter, when daytime temperatures settle around twenty degrees and the light is low and clear. Our holiday works north, south and centre from one hotel, with a guide, so nobody has to hire a car or wrestle with a map.
Frequently Asked Questions About Our Lanzarote Tours
Yes. Daytime temperatures through the winter months usually sit around 20 to 22 degrees, with a great deal of sunshine and very little rain. Evenings drop to the mid-teens, so a jumper earns its place in the case, and the trade wind can make clifftop viewpoints such as Mirador del Río feel a good deal cooler than the coast. The sea stays around 18 or 19 degrees, which some people happily swim in and others admire from a sunbed.
A moderate amount, spread across the day rather than in long stretches. Excursions are made by road with a guide, and time on foot comes in villages, at viewpoints and inside the sites. The Cueva de los Verdes involves steps, uneven lava underfoot and a few low ceilings, and Timanfaya is largely seen from the protected route. If you have concerns about a particular site or about the pace, ask us before you book and we will tell you plainly what is involved.
Yes, and plenty of people do — escorted holidays suit solo travellers well, because the arrangements are all made and there is company at dinner if you want it. The published price is per person sharing a double or twin room, and a single supplement applies for sole occupancy. Ask us for the current figure for the departure you are considering, as it varies with the hotel and the date.
Yes. Alongside our scheduled Open Group departures we arrange Private Group holidays, where a club, church group or set of friends takes the tour to themselves. The itinerary can usually be adjusted to suit the group's interests and its walking pace. Tell us roughly how many of you there are and when you would like to travel, and we will put together a costing and talk through what is possible.
Timanfaya and the 1730s eruptions
The eruptions began on 1 September 1730 and went on, in fits and starts, until 1736. They buried around a quarter of the island, including some of its best farmland and several villages. The parish priest of Yaiza kept a diary of it, which is why we know how the ground opened and how the sea boiled.
What remains is the Fire Mountains, protected as Timanfaya National Park. The heat is still there a few centimetres down at Islote de Hilario, where water poured into a pipe comes back as steam. Access is deliberately restricted to a fixed route to protect the lichens, which grow extremely slowly on the lava.
Elsewhere the volcanic story is older. The Cueva de los Verdes is a section of a lava tube from the Corona volcano, formed a few thousand years ago and used by islanders as a hiding place during Berber pirate raids. At El Golfo, a half-drowned crater holds a startling green lagoon behind a black beach.
César Manrique and the island's look
Lanzarote does not look like other holiday islands, and that is largely down to one man. César Manrique was born in Arrecife in 1919, spent years painting in Madrid and New York, and came home in 1966 with firm views about what tourism should be allowed to do here. He argued successfully for low building heights, no roadside advertising and white walls with green woodwork inland, blue on the coast.
He also built. His own house at Tahíche, now the César Manrique Foundation, sits over five volcanic bubbles, with fig trees growing up through the lava into daylight. Jameos del Agua occupies a collapsed stretch of the same tunnel system as the Cueva de los Verdes and has a salt lake full of tiny blind white crabs found nowhere else. Mirador del Río is cut into the Famara cliff, looking across the strait to La Graciosa.
Manrique died in a car accident in 1992, a few hundred yards from his own front gate.
La Geria wine and island cooking
La Geria is the strangest vineyard country in Europe. Each vine sits in its own funnel dug into the volcanic gravel, sheltered by a low crescent of dry stone wall against the trade wind. There is almost no rain, so the porous black grit does the work, drawing down dew and holding it where the roots can reach.
The grape is mainly Malvasía Volcánica, and because phylloxera never reached the Canaries the vines are ungrafted, some of them very old. Sweet Canary malmsey was famous in Shakespeare's day; most of what is bottled now is dry, mineral and drunk young. A winery visit with a tasting is included on our holiday.
At the table, expect papas arrugadas — small potatoes boiled in heavily salted water until the skins wrinkle — with mojo rojo or the green coriander version, goat's cheese, and plenty of fresh fish.
