I waited a while before writing this short travel story to Lanzarote.
I wanted to let it settle down, try to see everything through a not immediate echo, to find out what would be alive.
The first thing that came to my mind as soon as I put my hands on the keyboard is a quotes of Malick‘s Thin Red Line: “… our ruin helps the grass grow, the sun shines. There is no another world, there is only this great rock.”
Just a big rock. It seemed to me the perfect description. Thin and memorable, fragile and grand. Capable of enclosing the same sharp contrasts of the Spanish island.
Lanzarote is like a beautiful ocean scar. Its landscapes are deserted with stone scorched by the wind. Quiet deserts, like post-apocalyptic, ethereal, exterminated adventure novels. Deserted roads, black rock plains and ocher stones mountains. The vineyards, dug up to protect the plants from the wind, leave leaves of a green that in contrast to the dark earth looks even brighter.
Everything in Lanzarote is a violent contrast. The lava and the sea, the hard and sharp stone and fine sandy beaches, the colors: black landscapes on which stand out small white houses and green windows. The warm sun, dampened by a wind that drags the clouds at an impressive speed, which seems to spend time differently.
Lanzarote seemed to promise me a relaxing beach break. It was not like this. It is an island that pushes you to travel on the road, as in a beat story through Arizona.
Left with books and swimwear, me and Giorgia spent our vacation by car, moving from north to south, to the discovery of a violent and sublime nature. A nature sometimes transformed into a mystical place by artist Cesar Manrique through interventions close to organic architecture: Jameos de Agua, Mirador del Rio, Cactus Garden. As shrines, always in contrast to the harsh nature of the island but at the same time perfectly blended.
Lanzarote is one of those places where you want to leave something for you to have a reason to come back again.
After just 4 days between the beaches of Papagayo, the lava expanse of Timanfaya National Park, La Geria valley and our little house in Haria, greeted by Ines hospitality, it becomes clear why Saramago set foot on the island , to don’t leave anymore.
