Powers of hell ...

And grow hotter
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

A reminder of the power lurking just below the earth on Lanzarote hit us powerfully at Islote de Hilario,Timanfaya, where a residual chamber of magma remains close to the surface - what vulcanologists call a geothermic anomaly. Every ten minutes or so, a National Park employee in a strange, dust-coloured uniform entertains tourists with a demonstration of this power when he thrusts a scrub bush into a hole in the ground (see photo). Within seconds there was a strong smell of toast burning, and shortly afterwards it burst into flame - very hot flame. We also saw geysers produced by pouring water down a pipe in the ground, chicken being roasted over what looked like a well outside the restaurant but was in fact a pit of intense heat, and picked up small stones that were too hot to hold for any time.

All very entertaining - well, no, actually: more terrifying. There was nothing man could do to affect this energy - it just was. The smell of the volcanic dust was so prevalent that I can smell it still when I write of it, and the texture of the vocanic debris like nothing else I have walked on.

The Lanzarotenos (this should have a ~ above the second 'n', but I can't work out how to do it - Lanzaroteños - hurrah!) have an ambivalent attitude to this whole aspect of their island, protecting what was in effect a dreadful curse; everywhere we see evidence of the work of César Manrique who supervised the building of the Ruta de los Volcanes over which we were driven and designed the symbol of the park - and who decreed that no buildings should rise more than two storeys about ground level. This extraordinary level of control means that everywhere on the island you see little white boxes, with green window-frames (unless at the seaside, when they are blue). It makes our own National Park restrictions seem liberal indeed.

When I look back at the experience - we were on a walking holiday, and covered considerable ground on foot, along with an agreeable bunch of HF types - I feel that apart from the experience of summer weather in February there isn't much I'd go back to Lanzarote for. I feel it's a faintly melancholy island, with little going for it and a great deal to struggle with to make a living. I may be wrong - but that eruption in the 18th century dealt a blow that the island still has to work hard to recover from.

By the way - their roundabouts (on the roads) are magnificent. I kid you not.

Volcanic holiday

Volcanic landscape
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Lanzarote is a strange place. In fact I'd had no idea how strange - when I told people we were having a winter break in Playa Blanca they said "Oh, it's lovely" and left it at that, so when we arrived and I saw the black land everywhere and the low-rise white cubes of the houses and the pointed black and red hills I was aware that had I been there only to sunbathe and walk up and down the pleasant promenade of the town I'd have been depressed long before my week was up.

However, once I'd grasped some of the history of the landscape, I began to see things differently. Between 1730 and 1736, and again in 1824, huge volcanic eruptions, in one of the most spectacular eruptive processes in the Earth's volcanic history, drastically changed the shape of the island and left a quarter of it almost completely buried under a thick layer of lava and ash - 174 sq. kilometers of it. If you're interested in such things, the lava is of two types - the jagged "aa" lava, and corded "pahoe-hoe" lava, is completely impassable, and has been marked by very little human impact.

I was moved by a contemporary account of the first eruption - for this was happening when people in mainland Europe were listening to Bach, dressing in silk hose and full-bottomed wigs, even more recognisable as our forefathers than was Pliny when he wrote about Vesuvius, and somehow that made it all the more vivid. Don Andrés Lorenzo Curbelo, the priest in Yaiza, wrote this:

On the first of September 1730, between 9 and 10 o'clock at night, the earth suddenly opened at close to Timanfaya, two leagues from Yaiza. On that first night, and enormous mountain rose up from the heart of the earth, and from its summit there escaped flames that continued to burn for nineteen days ... They were accompanied by a great quantity of lapilli, dust and ash that spread over the surrounding areas and from all sides drops of water fell as rain. The thunderclaps and explosions that accompanied those phenomena, the darkness caused by the mass of ash and smoke that covered the island, forced the inhabitants to flee more than once...

Today the volcanoes are silent, but their power is still apparent. I shall return to Timanfaya in another post.