Next up, we made it to the Canary Islands – I learned the named is derived from the Latin Insula Canaria, meaning “Island of the Dogs.” Silly me, I had assumed they were named after the bird. Lanzarote is a volcanic island, which becomes quite obvious, fairly quickly. The last eruptions were back in 1824, but because it gets so little rain it feels like the eruptions must have ended yesterday. It’s quite stark and dark – a bit like I imagine how the moon would look. We spent most of our visit in Timanfaya National Park, home to the Montañas del Fuego. We started at the visitors center where we shown some fairly basic demonstrations that proved the beneath the surface, the island is still quite hot. Next we took a bus tour through the park during which we saw craters, cooled lava flows, lava caves, lava tunnels and what appeared to be acres upon acres of flat, dead, lava coated earth. Next we left the national park and visited the Salinas (or salt flats) of Janubio. These flats are still farmed today and produce about 2,000 tons of salt a year. Finally, we visited the vineyards of La Gería, the greenest place we saw all day. The grape vines are planted in these little pits (to help collect the minimal rain and overnight dew) and each pit gets a horseshoe shaped wall to protect the plants from the island’s winds. Looking at thousands of these plants across miles of land is a pretty cool site. Click on the shot above to see the album of photos from Lanzarote.

Sorry for the delay in posting – summer has been busy.

After we sailed out of Barcelona, Málaga was our first port. It’s a fairly large city on the southern coast of Spain. We actually didn’t spend any time in Málaga itself; we instead spent the day exploring small villages in the area and the mountains that surround the city in a jeep. Our first stop was the washed village of Frigiliana – it was a maze of little alleys and roads built into the hillside. Next we drove deeper into the mountains to the small village of Acebuchal, which actually feels more like a collection of houses, rather than a village. It’s situated in a valley, in the National Park Sierra de Tejeda. We stopped for a drink and then climbed back into the jeep and rode up the mountains. We took a tiny, windy dirt road, literally driving though streams and on the edge of cliffs, up into the Sierra de Almijara mountains. At the top, the views were unbelievable. Our last stop was Cómpeta (pictured in the photo above), a larger white washed village, also built into the hillside. In Cómpeta we had an opportunity to have some local meats and cheese, Becki tried the local sweet wine and we also did a little shopping before heading back to the ship. Click on the photo above to see all my pictures from this day.