Lanzarote and Timanfaya

UNESCO Biosphere Reserve (Lanzarote, 1993) Containing Timanfaya National Park, Declared 1974 Over The Lava Field Of The 1730 To 1736 Eruption, With The Island'S Built Environment Shaped By Cesar Manrique · Tinajo, Canary Islands

An island that looks like somewhere else entirely, because between 1730 and 1736 a quarter of it was buried by one of the longest eruptions in recorded history. The result is Timanfaya, a national park of bare lava and cinder cones in blacks, ochres and reds with almost no vegetation, and ground still hot enough a metre down that the park restaurant grills food over a natural vent. The catch is that you cannot walk it: access to the lava field is by COACH along a fixed route, which protects the surface and disappoints visitors who arrived with boots. The other half of Lanzarote is Cesar Manrique, an artist who spent decades persuading the island to ban high-rise and billboards and to build into the volcanic rock instead; his house in a lava bubble and his conversions of a lava tube and a cactus quarry are why the island looks nothing like the rest of the Canaries, and why an island a quarter buried in lava is the most carefully designed place in the archipelago rather than the bleakest.

Parque Nacional de Timanfaya, Tinajo, Canary Islands, 35560, Spain

NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The structure: TIMANFAYA opens daytime hours only with LAST ADMISSION WELL BEFORE CLOSING, and the binding constraint is the COACH QUEUE rather than the gate - the car park fills by mid-morning in season and entry is throttled. El Diablo serves lunch only. The Manrique sites and the lava tubes keep their own shorter hours, with Jameos del Agua running separate evening events. Confirm the Timanfaya arrival time rather than its closing time.

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