Saturday, April 8, 2006
OK, I Can't Resist
Alex was playing in the garden too.
Another View of El Golfo
This one isn't going to make it to the photo site, I think, so I figured I'd post it here. It's a view of El Golfo on
Lanzarote from the other side. The photos I showed in the blog were from the side visible across the crater from where I'm
standing here. You can see the road wrap around the side of the cone and the tiny people walking around. That's how big this
thing is.
Monday, April 3, 2006
Inside Jameos del Aguos
Our best days happened when we went out in the morning to see a local attraction then returned to the pool
or beach for swimming. On this day, we went first to Jameos del Aguos. A jameos, as you recall, is an underground
laval bubble with a hole in the top. This particular one is very, very large. It is part of one of the longest lava tubes
known. But more on this later. Here's a look entering the first jameos. I apologise for the photos in advance - this is a
textbook brutal lighting situation coming up ahead.
The pool of water is part of the attraction. It is home to a unique species of miniature albino crab. The kind that can
only survive in water-filled underground lava tubes, I guess. Anyway, I saw the crabs. They were, in fact, albino, although
the coloring was more to a bone colour than white.
But, more importantly, this whole section of the tube is not just some natural phenomena, atlhough it is. It is also
a signature César Manrique joint complete with a bar, open-air stage and seating and enclosed stage and seating. All venues
are built around the features of the various jameos' they are in. As you go down in on one side, you can see the seating pop
into view on the other side. There is a bar and seating behind me at this point. The sea, by the way, is probably less than
100 metres away behind me as well.
Here's Alex goofing around up top.
There is a long exhibit about volcanos and the tube and so forth, but basically the tube starts at the volcano in the
distance in the photo below and continues all the way into the sea - over two kilometres. I'll explain what's in the photo
below.
OK, in this photo you are standing at one side of the opening of the jameos with your back to the sea looking
inland towards the mountain in the top centre of the photograph. The band of white below the mountaintops is the roof of the
facility. The land from here to the mountain is basically marpaís. However, it is much different in appearance than the photos
of marpaís that I've previously shown. This field is approximately 5,000 years old and lichens, moss and eventually small
plants have taken hold. The holes are starting to get filled in. It's like a slice of evolution from one side of the island
to the other.
In the middle of the photo is the opening in the jameos. There is a pool with a white bottom and a sitting
area in there in addition to all the other stuff I've mentioned. The contour of the channel that is this opening is a slice
into the lava tube itself.
Sunday, April 2, 2006
A Visit to El Golfo
There are volcanos and then
there are volcanos. El Golfo is a volcano that, when it erupted, blew its side out into the sea. So you can walk along the
ocean around the entrance to half the original cone. It’s a beautiful black sand beach, but you wouldn’t want to swim here.
The ocean is really strong. In fact, it appears there was an Olympic venue near here, maybe for wind-surfing.
Because all the rocks and
sand are black, you can actually see them get picked up in the waves when they break and get thrown ashore. It's pretty neat
- as the wave crests and crashes, little black specs start zinging around. Erosion in action.
The unusual feature of El
Golfo, however, is not that it’s a half-formed volcano sitting on the edge of the sea. It’s that there is this weird, half-moon
sized, green pool of something sitting well back from the water shimmering away. I think the water is supposed to get in via
some underground lava tunnels, but from my perspective a good storm would overtop the banks of the beach and you’d get a fresh
exchange. At any rate, it’s not full of algae or anything – at least not visibly. It makes for great contrasts in photographs,
though, and this is a very popular tourist spot.
The Strange Beach at El Golfo
I’ll get to El
Golfo itself in another post, but I call your attention now to this – the most black and white beach I have ever taken a picture
of. As we were walking down to El Golfo I noticed these rocks in the beach and since it’s hard to get across that every single
rock on the island is volcanic, I figured I’d show what a beach rock looks like. The funny thing is that when I got the photo
back on my computer I realized it was almost completely black and white. So just for fun I took all the colour out by desaturating
it. It’s unbelievable. It’s almost completely black and white. They’re both posted here, colour first.
On Top of Isolte de Hilario (Fire Mountain)
When
we last left our story we had just driven through a vast field of malpías (badlands) and come up to the entrance to
the park. At the top is the restaurant, El Diablo (The Devil) where the food is cooked on volcanic heat.
Outside
the restaurant there is a coach lot for arriving and departing tours (you can’t just walk around the park – it’s a really
dangerous place) and some demonstrations of the volcanoes heat. In this one, the ranger pours a bucket of water into a pipe
that leads down into the volcano. Within a second there is a loud bang and a gyser of superheated steam comes shooting
out.
I should explain a bit of
what’s going on here whilst you check out the view out across the malpías towards the sea. The whole island is basically a
series of volcanos. They are erupting pretty regularly. There were something like 26 eruptions over six years starting in
the 1730s and then a smaller eruption in the 1800s. On the north side of the island there was an eruption about 5,000 years
ago. That will become important at some point in the story.
The 1730s series of eruptions
was notable, according to the tour bus, due to the quantity and quality of hot lava that was discharged. It was apparently
a very pure flowing stream of lava and not one that was hot and cool and carrying chunks of rock around. It all seems quite
similar to the big island of Hawaii except on a much smaller scale.
So
to wind it all back, the temperature below the surface of Isolte de Hilerio is very, very hot. At 6 metres (20 feet) it’s
400°C (752°F).
So
they take you around on a bus tour. It’s pretty terrifying. These enormous busses go driving up and down the tiniest twisty
roads on the sides of these volcanos, occasionally stopping right on top to let you look down into the cone. The scenery looks
like this a lot of the time, but not all. I have tons of dramatic photos of this ride that I’ll work on.
And now we get to the money
shot – the Valley of Tranquility
in Parque Nacional de Timanfaya. This picture starts to give you some sense of the scale of this particular volcanic area.
There are tens of volcanos in a roughly 51km^2 area.
I have a bunch of other
interesting pictures to post of this, but I’ll leave you with this one. This is the view you get when you crest the road exiting
the park. It basically takes you straight down off the side of Isolte de Hilario – this panorama is the view.
