Lanzarote - Canary Islands
Lanzarote and the Canary Islands
The black pearl
The Canary Isle group consists of 7 large islands and 6 smaller ones of reefs, stretching approx. 500 km from east to west and more than 200 km. from north to south , and covering an area of 7499 square kilometres in all.Lanzarote, the north-easternmost island in the archipelago, only 125 km from the African mainland, has a total area of 795 km, making it the 4th largest of the Canary Isles.
Lanzarote a World Biosphere Reserve
Lanzarote, unique among the Canary Isles, has a strange, bizarre, lunar landscape.
No expanses of green, scarcely any trees, but plenty of black lava sculpted by the great volcanic eruptions of the 18th century.From 1730 to 1736, the earth spat fire almost continuously and lava masses buried a third of the entire island.
Whole villages disappeared, and what had once been fertile ground was covered by metre-high lava ash.
This was the birth of the "Montanas del Fuego or Fire Mountains".
Fire mountains
National Park Timanfaya Lanzarote
In the six years of eruptions, more than 100 volcanos rose up, covering more than 50 square kilometres.In 1968, the region of the Fire Mountains was declared a national park, the "Parque Nacional de Timanfaya".
A trip to the park is an absolute must for every visitor to Lanzarote.
Eternal spring
The Atlantic ocean trade winds and Canary stream
Because of their location in the Atlantic, the climate of the Canary Isles (islands of eternal spring) is dominated by the regular north-eastern trade wind and the warm Canary stream.These two factors have a compensatory effect that ensures springlike temperatures the whole year round.
