This Arrecife shore trip visits the top sites on the island, including Timanfaya National Park and the Jameos del Agua Cave, with time to sample local wine from the unusual vineyards of La Geria.
Lanzarote's volcanic story stretches back roughly 15 million years to the island's original formation, but the landscape you see across most of this tour comes from a much more recent chapter: the eruptions of 1730 to 1736, one of the longest sustained volcanic events ever recorded, which reshaped nearly a quarter of the island and gave Timanfaya its lunar appearance. The whole area is now protected as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, designated in 1993.
After meeting your guide you depart for the National Park, which is divided into two ecosystems, land and marine. On land you see volcanic cones, seas of hardened lava, older patches where vegetation has returned, and dramatic cliffs. The marine ecosystem includes geysers, hot springs, and black sand beaches, all shaped by the same volcanic history. Numerous species have adapted to this environment and continue to be studied by scientists.
From Timanfaya you continue to La Geria, where farmers turned the volcanic ash left by those same 1730s eruptions into a working vineyard system found nowhere else in this form. Each vine is planted in a hollow, called a zoco, dug two to four meters into the layer of volcanic ash known as picon, reaching the fertile soil beneath. A low, semicircular stone wall, called a soco, curves around each vine to block the island's persistent trade winds. The porous volcanic ash also absorbs overnight dew and the island's sparse rainfall, slowly releasing moisture to the roots below. At a family-run wine cellar in this region, you learn how the system works and taste wine grown this way.
This afternoon you visit the Jameos del Agua Cave, Cesar Manrique's first major project on the island, built inside a volcanic tube formed by the eruption of the Corona volcano. Manrique built a natural auditorium into the cave with notably good acoustics, and the site's saltwater lake is home to Munidopsis polymorpha, a blind, albino, freshwater crab species that lives nowhere else on Earth. The cave captures what Manrique pursued throughout his career: spaces where human design and the volcanic landscape work together rather than against each other.
At the end of your tour you return to Arrecife.
Mobility: a folding wheelchair can be accommodated, though some sites may be inaccessible. Please give advance notice if this applies to your group.
Review Location- Arrecife Lanzarote 
