I had this trip planned and booked about 6 months before, if not more. It was all part of my 60th birthday celebration. It was a short trip and not one really to focus (pardon the pun) on Landscape photography. I did take with me my Sony A6600 with the 16 to 55 f2.8 lens, which packs neatly into my hand luggage…..just in case. As it turned out I did take some images but not strictly landscapes as such.
Lanzarote is a great place to visit as it’s very different from the usual holiday places I go. There are active volcanos and the wider landscape has been shaped by these over many hundreds if not thousands of years. It is only 100 or so miles from the North African coastline, but it doesn’t feel like that. The rip was only a long weekend so I didn’t really have a chance to venture up onto the “fire mountain” or Timanfaya. There will be a longer trip at some point and the wider landscape will get photographed. So what follows are a few randomly selected images that I took on a couple of walks (mainly to help the sobering up process!!).
There is a terrific promenade at Playa Blanca, stretching the full length of the whole place. The lighthouse at one end, the marina at the other. In the middle is the village of Playa Blanca. The image above shows a wonderful statue that sits on the promenade at the start of the village section of the walk. It was commissioned to commemorate those who lost their lives at sea. You will notice that there is no actual face, this is because it’s unclear how many lost their lives at sea, but commemorates them all. This is a cracking statue.
The beaches on Lanzarote are mainly either very rocky and ash coated, or they are man made shady type. The man made sandy type, are where the tourists gather with their children, no surprise there I hear you say.As you can see from the image this was taken at the opposite end of Playa Blanca heading towards the Lighthouse. You get the sense of the rocky beach and vegetation from the image above. This was taken on a walk mainly get stretch the legs and sober up.
The walkaway along the promenade reaches almost to the lighthouse, but not quite. There is a patch of rough ground that you have to walk over to get to the lighthouse. This image gives a sense of how tall this lighthouse is. It’s hard to know if it is still functioning and each evening I was too busy ordering redline and cocktails to remember to check if it was working or not. It attracts quite a lot of folk to it and as we sat and took in the view there were lots of folk coming to have a look. I guess they were doing what we were, minus the sobering up bit!!
The road you see in this image is the road that leads into the car park of the lighthouse, but I’m looking the other way. This place is a real mixed bag of styles and I really like it because it’s quirky and different and nothing like other resorts we’ve been to. You can also see the mountains in the background, you are never very far away from a mountain here. I suspect some of you may say thats more of a hill than a mountain but its a bloody long walk in the heat either way.
one of you might say that this isn’t an image about anything in particular, and you’d be right. This is walking back from the lighthouse back towards the hotels and Playa Blanca itself. As we walked I was struck by this view, this vista and this image will stick in my mind for a long time. It was February 2023, it was freezing in England and here we were in the sun in shorts and t shirts taking photographs and having drinks. What could possibly be better.