Where are the Warnocks?: Lanzarote, an Island of Surprises

As I write this, Lanzarote and the Canary Islands are in the middle of a calima...a Saharan dust storm. It’s mid-day but the sky is very overcast with a muddy brown hue. The Sahara Desert, 125 km to the east of us, had its sand kicked up in a huge windstorm and the fine particles of reddish brown dust have blown over here to obscure the sun and cover all surfaces with a thorough layer of grit. Canarians tell their children that calimas occur when Africans are cleaning their house and beating their carpets.

David and I have been on this volcanic island since early December. We came here for the heat (haven’t seen it much), the dry weather (same thing) and to spend some time reading on the beaches in the sun (ditto). However, Lanzarote, much like the rest of Europe, is experiencing one its wettest, coolest winters ever. One old-timer said that it has not rained this much in 67 years. Of course, he said this in Spanish and we don’t understand Spanish. Maybe he just said he was 67 years old. Or he has 67 children.

Despite the weather, we are really enjoying our time here. Only 60 km by 25 km with its narrowest point 7 km across, Lanzarote is small but has an enormous diversity in plants, especially so with the recent rains. The North end of the island is very green with valleys of palm trees and fields of wild spring flowers. The south end of the island, more of the touristy side, was arid brown and desert-like when we first arrived, but the rains have teased out hints of greenery from the soil.

Viniculture is unique here. Farming practices must protect plants from the wind and capture precious moisture. The island’s sandy soil itself won’t support too many crops. Instead, the soil is covered in a top layer of black volcanic lapilli. Lapilli, also called picon, ranges in size from a few millimetres to 2 or 3 centimetres across. Very porous, it acts like mulch, keeping weeds at bay and collecting moisture from the dew at night to drip it down to the roots. Individual grape vines are planted in their own crater, about 1.5 m across and about a metre deep. The roots are in the soil but the vine is pruned to stay low to the ground and rest on a thick layer of picon. Surrounding each crater is a zoca, a semi-circular rock wall to protect the plant from wind. Harvesting the grapes has to be done by hand by reaching down into each crater. And the result? Delicious!

I have also enjoyed hiking on the island with Canary Trekking (www.canarytrekking.com). One day, we explored Les Volcanes National Park where we climbed over lava flows and onto lava lakes, wandered along jameos (a volcano tube whose roof has collapsed), peered down into craters and searched for olivinia, the green semi-precious stones found in volcanic rock.