Testimonial from Grand Tour, dated January 23rd 2008 Jackie & Lisa.
We arrived at the Costa Calero hotel excited and eager to be picked up by the coach for our Grand Tour of the Island. The bus arrived on time and we saw that it had a Tamaragua sign at the front to show it was ours. The guide took our tickets and we found 2 seats together, the bus was full as we were the last pick up point.
Our guide was very informative and gave us a general view of how the day was going to go.
We headed straight for the National park and within 10 minutes we were in the lava fields. When we arrived we saw over 150 camels waiting, there were quite a few buses that arrived at the same time as we did, so after just a few minutes we were ushered to our camels and then we were off up the mountain, it takes about 20 minutes and during the ride a man takes a photo of you which you can buy later if you want but there is no pressure to buy it if you don’t like it. There are toilets there and a small museum.
Camels or dromedary as they are called as they only have 1 hump were the first form of transport on Lanzarote.
We then headed further into the national Park and up to the Timanfaya fire mountain. The summit of which is 525 metres high, the park itself is over 200 square kilometres.
At the top of the mountain is a restaurant which was designed by Cesar Manrique,, Timanafaya receives over 3 million visitors a year; it is the number one attraction for the Island.
Here we were given some demonstrations of how hot the volcano is. We then went inside the restaurant for a coffee and cake which was very reasonable at 3 euros per person. After having seen fresh chickens being cooked on top of a very deep hole in the volcano, we had a look at the gift shop, visited the toilets and then got back on the bus.
We then went on a guided tour all around the park where we saw amazing displays of how the volcano had travelled. The eruptions lasted for over 6 years; it must have been spectacular but very frightening. The last eruption was in 1824.
After leaving the Fire mountain range we then passed by the El Janubio salt mines and travelled to El Golfo, where we saw the emerald lake, we stayed for about fifteen minutes, plenty of time to take some great photos.
We then got back on the bus and travelled to a very pretty town called Yaiza, where we stopped for lunch which was included in the price.
At 2pm we left Yaiza and headed to the wine growing region of La Geria, where we were able to visit a local vinery and taste some of the local wine, after 15 minutes to browse around a wonderful gift shop we headed north passing through Tequise which used to be the capital of the Island, to Mirador del Mar which has fantastic views over a neighbouring island called La Graciosa and on the way down you can see Haria, with a view of the valley of a thousand palm trees.
The next stop was Jameos del aqua which is a natural cave formed by the lava flow from the eruption of the volcano, La Corona, which advanced while the surface solidified. Due to the action of the gas trapped beneath the surface, part of the surface collapsed forming a cave. It was adapted by the artist Cesar Manrique and has a Small Lake inside which is the home of some tiny blind albino crabs which are unique to Lanzarote.
On leaving we passed through some plantations of cacti and returned to Puerto Calero at around 6pm. It was a brilliant day and well worth the money, we saw so much of the island and learnt so much of the history of Lanzarote from the guides, both of us have lived in Lanzarote for some years but it was amazing the new things we learnt.
We can thoroughly recommend this trip.