Lanzarote

• 🌍 Arrecife is the island's capital. It has the airport and seaport so everyone arrives here, but gets bussed straight to their resorts. Arrecife itself has a beach, an island fortress housing a history museum, and an art museum in the Castillo de San José.

• 🌍 Costa Teguise was purpose-built as a resort in the 1970s.

• 🌍 Teguise is best known for its Sunday market. It's the former capital and has pleasant cobbled streets with traditional architecture.

• 🌍 Famara is a small beach and surfing town on the north coast.

• 🌍 Haría is the main settlement in the north, strikingly green in early summer. Sights include the house of César Manrique and several viewpoints, notably Mirador del Río near the north tip of the island.

• 🌍 Arrieta is a beach village with surf suitable for novices and intermediates.

• 🌍 Puerto del Carmen is mostly a purpose-built resort, dwarfing the original harbour village.

• 🌍 Tías is just residential and light industry.

• 🌍 San Bartolomé in the centre of the island has Manrique's gigantic Monument to the peasant at its crossroads, and a museum of local culture.

• 🌍 Tinajo is at the north edge of Timanfaya National Park: access this via Mancha Blanca.

• 🌍 Yaiza however is the main access point for the Park.

• 🌍 Playa Blanca is a resort on the south coast of the island.

• 🌍 Timanfaya National Park is the area that bore the full fury of the 1730s eruptions. Much of it is a lava plain; here and there are small volcanoes, with short hikes to the rim of their calderas. The only part that remains hot (very hot below the surface) is Islote de Hilario, where you transfer to a coach to be taken around.

The Canary Islands are all volcanic. From 28 million years ago, submerged volcanoes grew, but as the seabed is 2,500 m (8,200 ft) deep it took another 12 million years before the first island of Fuerteventura broke the surface. A string of islands then emerged further north and 4 million years ago these coalesced to form Lanzarote, while sea erosion broke their link to Fuerteventura and La Graciosa. Volcanic activity continued but its focus shifted ever westward, throwing up the other Canary Islands, with Gomera and Hierro active to this day. Lanzarote became quiet, life slowly colonised it, and its surface weathered to a fine gravel suitable for small-scale agriculture. There was no reason to expect future eruptions, ever.

This island lies only 130 km (81 mi) from North Africa, and genetics, culture and carbon dating indicate settlement by Berbers around 1000 BC. The Phoenicians and Romans traded here, but Europe took no interest until 1312, when the Genoese navigator Lanceloto Malocello arrived. Mapmakers recorded "Insula de Lançarotus Marocelus" – hence Lanzarote – and it was his thereafter not the aboriginal inhabitants, as they were systematically carted off into slavery. In 1402 mercenaries acting for Castille captured the island, in 1404 it acquired a cathedral, and eventually, it was governed by mainland Portugal then Spain. Pirates of other nations repeatedly attacked and several defensive castillos were built, and still stand.

Because Lanzarote's volcanic peaks are low – seldom much above 500 m (1,600 ft) – they don't draw the rain as on the lusher islands, and agriculture struggles with an arid climate. Nevertheless, the south of the island was sufficiently fertile to grow grain, exported as a cash crop to Tenerife and Gran Canaria until 1730. Then the volcanoes' second disadvantage was made clear when a line of them erupted, and kept on erupting for six years. Their lava destroyed the most fertile farmland and a score of villages and farmsteads. Why, after so long? The Canaries are part of the Africa tectonic plate and it's believed that a hot plume bunsen-burns upon it, appearing to move west as Africa shifts east, but the re-activation is a puzzle. The people of 1730 knew about Trade Winds, the Gulf Stream and so on, but it took another 200 years to map the global weather systems and ocean gyres powering these phenomena. Similarly today we observe the surface effects of vulcanism and plate tectonics, but await a 21st century Humboldt to map the "deep earth weather" below the planet's crust.

The eruptions followed by drought prompted mass migration to the Americas, but the transatlantic trade was a lifeline, and tomatoes, potatoes, maize and prickly pears made their way east. (This last has a parasite, the cochineal insect source of carmine red dye, so there was briefly a lucrative trade in this until synthetic dyes replaced it.) Not much happened for another two centuries, and in 1936 the Canaries were so remote that a troublesome army officer was "promoted" here to keep him out of the way. But not remote enough, as his name was Franco and he teamed up with a like-minded colleague in Morocco to launch the Spanish Civil War. It was only towards the end of his regime in the 1970s that Spain modernised and promoted tourism on its mainland and islands, and wide-bodied jets put the Canaries within reach of chilly northern countries.

This was a mixed blessing and Lanzarote risked submerging beneath ticky-tacky concrete developments as so much of the Mediterranean coast has done. One who campaigned for sustainable low-rise development was local artist César Manrique (1919–1992). He also played a key role in having the island declared to be part of the UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves in 1993.

Lanzarote islanders speak Castilian, the majority form of Peninsular Spanish, with a distinct Canary Island accent and some vocabulary not found on the mainland.

Since Lanzarote's principal industry is tourism, there's a large service sector proficient in the languages of its visitors, who are mostly from the UK, Ireland and Germany. Menus for example are usually in Spanish, English and German. So you'll get by fine in English but, as elsewhere, your attempts to use the local language will be appreciated however badly mangled the result.

• Lava tunnels and caves are created by the fluid lava characteristic of "hot spot" volcanoes. The flow acquires a hard sheath, which insulates it and keeps it liquid; after the eruption, the lava empties out but the tunnels persist. (Plate subduction volcanoes such as Vesuvius have viscous lava, so their plumbing repeatedly blocks, to be torn apart by explosions.) Notable examples in Timanfaya National Park are Cueva de Las Palomas / Los Naturistas a 500 m long tube, two near Pico Partido and one near Montaña Cardona. Cueva de los Verdes is a show-cave north of Arrieta. At Tahiche Cesar Manrique converted a tunnel into his house and studio.
• Camels wait to be photographed and ridden near the Yaiza park entrance.
• Castillo de San José is a fortress in Arrecife housing a Museum of Contemporary Art.

• Money: See Canary Islands#Money for info on cash, ATMs and credit cards. All the towns have ATMs, and most merchants take card payments.
• Supermarkets: Lidl and HiperDino are the largest and usually offer the best value. Many of them sell bars of turrón which is Spanish honey nougat.
• Fruits and vegetables are inexpensive if they are grown locally in the Canary Islands, such as papaya, bananas and avocado. But much has to be shipped from the mainland, and the prices reflect that.
• Aloe Vera. A plant that is 30–50 cm tall, native to Yemen and cultivated in many dry climates. It can't tolerate freezing but is popular as a decorative house plant. (Many countries forbid its import, but it's on sale in your local garden centre.) It's been seized upon by the wellness industry, and Aloe Vera products are touted all over Lanzarote. Its juice contains acemannan, used as an ingredient of cosmetics and as a rub-on remedy whose medicinal value has yet to be demonstrated. No such uncertainty mars its skin and other parts, which are downright poisonous and carcinogenic. Fortunately, most commercial products contain such miniscule amounts of Aloe Vera that no harm can result. The island is strewn with Agaves with leaves hacked off by tourists mistaking them for Aloe Vera, a wonderful example of nature using camouflage to promote safety. (updated Dec 2023)
• Markets are held in most towns, often on Sunday mornings, see individual pages for details. Best known is Teguise market – extra buses run on Sunday from Arrecife, Puerto del Carmen and Costa Teguise.

Hotels and self-catering accommodation are concentrated in the three resorts of Puerto del Carmen, Playa Blanca and Costa Teguise. Prices quoted on these pages are those advertised for individual travellers, but many of the clientele are on package deals, in effect paying the same room rate while getting their return flight from Europe for free. The package holiday companies quality-assure their accommodation far more rigorously than any state-backed tourist agency could do, and these packages are an attractive deal even to the most independent-minded travellers, since from a clean comfortable base every attraction on the island is within a short journey.

Because these resorts were purpose-built, they lack guesthouses and hostels – look for these in the inland towns, especially Arrecife. Surf shacks often have basic accommodation for their visitors.

Papagayo Beach near Playa Blanca has a campsite but these are otherwise rare. Wild camping is not allowed at beaches or national park, but you are permitted to park overnight in camper vans or cars.

For mobile devices, Lanzarote has:

• 5G from MasMovil, Movistar and Orange
• 4G from Vodafone and Telefónica (known in the United Kingdom as O2).

Most carriers will charge roaming rates in line with the rest of Spain.

Standard advice applies to road safety, water safety, and care of valuables. Theft from cars in the National Park has been a recurrent problem.

112 is the emergency number for all services, as in the rest of Europe.

Always use sun protection, even on the rare cloudy days. By the time you feel frazzled, the damage is done. Most supermarkets and convenience stores should sell sunscreen and aftersun (if you need it).

When in hot weather, staying hydrated is crucial and it is recommended to drink 1–1.5 litres of water a day at a minimum.

• Fuerteventura is a larger island reached by ferry from Playa Blanca, taking 30 min.
• 🌍 La Graciosa is the only inhabited island of the Chinijo Archipelago north of Lanzarote, with a 30 min ferry ride from Órzola to its town Caleta del Sebo. You have to come back the same way. It's considered a "canary island" in its own right, not a subsidiary of Lanzarote. The other island in this group is Alegranza, and there are four islets.
• The other Canary Islands are much longer ferry crossings, 6 hours or more, but there are daily flights from Arrecife.