Timanfaya - Fire Island - El Diablo

   

The word of the day is El Diablo. The devil is an appropriate logo for fire mountain.

If you’ve imagined visiting the moon, you can picture exactly what we have encountered. A landscape that is so desolate. Dead, but leaving the remnants of violent activity as recently as the 18^th and 19^th centuries.  The moon exists in a solid, cold, dead, state. No hot core, but a blazing hot sun or freezing cold dark. The Earth exists in a continuously evolving, hot, alive, state. They could not be more different.

Here on Earth, at one of its most active and evolving locations, is a jarring reminder of how insignificant we humans are. Heat from the Earth’s rises almost to the surface at 13 meters below us and a temperature of over 230o F at just four feet below the surface. The last significant eruption in 1731 lasted until 1736 and left several hundred square miles of lava field while wiping out everything living or dead in the process. Another eruption followed in 1824 that wasn't as massive. Most of what you will see below came from the 1731 eruption.

Lava rocks. Volcanoes and craters as far as you can see. Looking closer, you see the lichen that is one of the first live things to move back in after everything else has been wiped out. Where the land meets the water, the sea creatures move back in more rapidly, looking for hiding places and then hunting each other.

The Timanfaya National Parque, on the island of Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, is that place. The visitor’s center was one of the most informative places we’ve ever been. It explains the how, when, where, and why of volcanoes, as well as describing the evolving earth’s majesty.  Unfortunately, it didn’t tell us why we are here, what our purpose is, or the meaning of life. We’ll leave that to the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. 42.

El Diablo is the Parque logo and is also a statue created by the premier artist of Lanzarote, César Manrique. Timanfaya literally means “mountain of fire.”

After touring the park, we ate in the restaurant at the top of the volcano. It might as well have been the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. We did not see Joe, but we ate chicken that was cooked over a pit that’s only heat was the earth’s core. No wood, no gas, only the heat of the earth to do the cooking. It is mind-blowing that we are that close. We put our hands over that pit and felt the warmth. This was re-emphasized when a bucket of water was poured down a hole and the earth rejected it as steam. Or a piece of wood was thrown into a pit and burst into flames by the hot earth. We are truly at the place where the core meets the surface.

We’ll let the pictures do the talking, but if you are ever in Spain, the Canaries are easily accessible, and you shouldn’t miss Lanzarote and Timanfaya. Viva la fire mountain.

These last two are photos of aerial photos in the museum. White spots and scratches are from the display and lighting, not in the photo. The bottom one has some houses and towns surrounding the park.

(We were on a bus, so excuse the reflection from the bus window.)

A gas hole created as lava cooled around a giant gaseous bubble. Sometimes there are lava flows leaving huge caverns of open space. One of these was made into another park in the north that we didn't get to see. Another was used by Manrique to create his own personal home. 

Behind Malcolm is the pit where our chicken was grilled.

And it came out beautifully and quite tasty!

If you are still curious, here's a little piece on Lanzarote from National Geographic. Just one webpage that National Geographic put together for the Islands tourism bureau, but you can see some things we missed including, exactly how our chicken was cooked. We missed that but it was tasty and tender.. 

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/slideshow/paid-content-an-island-born-of-fire 

(link doesn't seem to work, just copy this and paste it into a browser)