Before we headed to Timanfaya, though, there was the matter of waking up in the port of Arrecife, on the eastern side of Lanzarote, and about fifteen kilometres from where we needed to be. The weather was warm when it wasn’t windy, but it was rarely anything other than incredibly windy. A day of sunshine and cloud cover to come.

Our bus ride from Ventura to the national park was accompanied by a very similar bit of information about the history of Lanzarote to that we’d had on Tenerife when we visited Teide National Park. Understandable.

Timanfaya is the result of volcanic eruptions in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Over a hundred volcanoes ejected out over two billion cubic metres of lava across the island’s previously fertile landscape, burying it under the sort of landscape you might expect to see on Mars today. No deaths were recorded but nearly half of Lanzarote’s population emigrated as a result.

Geothermal heat emerges in certain places, and the main visitor area at Montañas del Fuego – where our bus initially dropped us – showcases this in a number of ways. Firstly, a restaurant on the site uses the heat from thermal vents to cook food, as you can see below.

Other demonstrations of how hot the ground underneath our feet was came through first being given some buried stones to hold (yeah, very warm), then watching some straw held over a hole until it caught fire, and finally watching one of the guides at Timanfaya pour water into a hole only for the steam to shoot out seconds later.

We had a little bit of time to simply admire the landscape before we’d take our bus on a ride through it. What struck us was the variety of colours of the volcanic vista.

A big surprise about Timanfaya National Park on Lanzarote was comparing it to Teide National Park on Tenerife. We’d imagined that both would be pretty similar, but that truly wasn’t the case, and we’re glad that we decided to take volcanic landscape tours on both islands just to see how very different they were.

Timanfaya only formed the first part of our day’s cruise excursion on this particular Canary Island. Following on from the national park we would be seeing how Aloe Vera is extracted (oddly fascinating), then paying a visit to (and sampling the wares of) a vineyard with a difference, with grapes grown in circular depressions in the volcanic soil, making use of the minerals and heat for a unique style of wine. You’ll be able to see photos and read about all of that in the next post in this travelogue series: Aloe Vera And Wine On Lanzarote.

First up was the Aloe Vera Museum, located in the small town of Yaiza on the southern edge of Timanfaya National Park. I won’t lie; we weren’t expecting much other than a sales pitch here, but the museum – which is free to enter – put on a demonstration of cutting the plants and showing off the natural aloe vera goo (I think that’s the technical term) as well as rubbing it into arms of anyone who showed an interest in having goo on their arms. As I mentioned, fairly interesting, and surprisingly so, and enough that we did take a look to see what sort of aloe vera products they might have for sale. The answer was a lot, but nothing caught our eyes enough to part with money. That’s not true for others on our tour who ended up wandering back to the bus with bags of stuff. It’s always nice to see cruise groups contributing to the economy of places they visit.

Of more interest to us was the vineyard, or the Lanzarote equivalent of a vineyard, of Bodega La Geria. Circular depression in the volcanic ash and soil, or areas surrounded by low, circular walls protect the vines of a number of varieties of local grapes, the most prevalent of which is the Malvasía Volcánica. The elevation, underground heat, protection from the worst of the wind, and the cool Atlantic breeze make for a versatile and unique grape, and for some sweet wines. A little too sweet for our tastes, if I’m being honest, and we’re red fans rather than white anyway, but it was lovely to see how the wine was made here.

These two short visits concluded our half-day excursion on Lanzarote so that all that remained would be to head back to Arrecife where Ventura was docked and to head off to the next island, due to be Madeira. That was the plan, but the plan was about to get torn up and scattered, and you can read about that in the next post in this series.

Ventura wasn’t the only ship visiting the island of Lanzarote on this day. The German cruise ship Mein Schiff 4 (let’s not talk about the unimaginative naming system) was on Ventura’s port side. Not a cruise line we’ve cruised with, and probably unlikely to given the additional hurdles of the language barrier and potential embarrassment and spontaneous combustion from wandering into the nudist section of the vessels that have one.

Ahead of Ventura was Sea Cloud Spirit, a luxury, three-mast, full-rigged ship that we’re also unlikely to sail with unless the lottery fairy pays us a visit. She looks gorgeous.

Taking those photos from the front of the ship involved leaning into the wind and bracing myself against anything nearby. An older passenger had been up on the top deck with us with his camera in hand and had given up. My wife and I returned to our balcony, enjoying how much the sea around the dock was being churned up by the wind, expecting an imminent departure.

However, the time for sailing away came and went, and we could still see staff down on the dock. Our initial thoughts that either an excursion was late coming back or that we might get to see pier runners (in that wind!) turned out not to be true as the captain made an announcement over the ship’s system. Two passengers had taken ill and, for reasons that weren’t explained but which led to a lot of speculation aboard Ventura, Lanzarote couldn’t (or wouldn’t) take them. As a result, the ship would need to make a detour to the island of Gran Canaria overnight and the planned stop at Madeira had been cancelled. Everyone was disappointed, of course. Us too, naturally, since we’d never been to any of these parts of the world before, including the Portuguese island. Worth remembering when you’re saving a little bit of money by doing things yourself during cruise planning, is that for those with trips booked through independent companies there likely was a flood of frantic communications at this point to get refunds, if possible.

Somewhat later than planned, Ventura backed away from Arrecife on Lanzarote. We passed one more cruise ship as we departed. La Belle Des Oceans is small enough to be classed as a yacht. You won’t be surprised to learn that she’s another cruising vessel we’re highly unlikely to ever experience.

The last thing to watch out for was the disembarking of the pilot onto the pilot boat. We didn’t quite get to see that as it occurred out of view of us, but it must have been a fun experience based on just how much the little vessel was bouncing up and down on the waves and getting drenched with spray in every trough it hit.

There then followed a long sail past Lanzarote’s south-eastern and southern coastline, and a very attractive coastline it was too, with plenty of coastal towns and rugged, barren shore backed by the pretty peaks of the volcanoes and mountains of the island. As the slow cruise progressed so the sun dipped towards the horizon and the colours of the sky and across the land changed from moment to moment. Late evening cruising with mostly clear skies and just enough cloud cover to reflect and refract sunlight is a wonderfully calming experience.

Enjoy the gorgeous landscape of Lanzarote from the sea with these photos from our balcony on Ventura.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series from the Canary Islands I’ll go through the evening meal and activities aboard Ventura along with the unexpected views of Gran Canaria at midnight as we cruised into a very industrial port.