There are few areas in the world that delight me as much as islands.

I’m not sure if it’s the isolation, the miles of beaches, the friendly culture or the fact that I can swim in an ocean no matter which way I turn, but islands draw me to them like a moth to a flame. Couple that with unique animals, bizarre landscapes and vegetation not found anywhere else in the world and any island will probably get on my to see list.

When I look back at all the places we’ve visited over the years, and which places I find myself daydreaming about on a cloudy day, 9 out of 10 times it’s an island setting. I don’t even care where in the world it is, as long as there are beaches close by and the temperature is nice.

Queue Lanzarote Island in the Canary Islands. Lanzarote recently caught my attention as a place I want to check out. We’ve been invited down to the Canary Islands a few times in the past few years, and had we had a little more time during our Morocco visit a few years back we would have crossed over there to see what all the fuss was about.

Short history of Lanzarote

Spanish owned, at 1000 kilometers (621 miles) south of Spain’s southernmost tip,  it’s actually Spain’s farthest territory. First colonized in the 14th century by Spain, the Canary Islands lie about 125 kilometers (78 miles) off the Atlantic coast of Northern Africa with Lanzarote being the farthest north of the volcanic archipelago.

Now don’t let that all fool you. Lanzarote and the Canary Islands are Spanish through and through. Except maybe a little sandier and in the case of Lanzarote, a little more volcanic than the rest of the country.

With the majority of the islands populated by Spanish descendants and with Spanish as the main language, it’s as close to a being in the Caribbean without actually being in the Caribbean you’re going to get on the eastern side of the Atlantic.

Why Lanzarote is special

So, what’s so special about Lanzarote? Well, never mind that there are dozens of amazing beaches found around the 60 by 25 km island, but there are also unique activities to be had there. Ever take a camel ride on a volcano? How about eating in a volcanic cave or diving into the ocean off a still warm lava field?

Got your attention? You can do all that in Lanzarote and still go out to eat some authentic Spanish tapas (or enyesques as they’re known locally) with a group of friends that night.

As you may have guessed, the island got my attention due to its volcanic landscape. When our 10 year old son went through a volcano phase this winter the place landed on our radar. You see, massive volcanic activity in the 1700’s left volcanic soil all over the island. Enough so that UNESCO awarded the island the status of UNESCO World Biosphere. How can you not want to check out a place that some compare to the surface of the moon for its rocky surface?

If you’re more interested in just relaxing on golden sand beaches by clear warm water and having a nice resort style vacation, Lanzarote has that too. With miles of untouched beaches featuring golden, black and even red sand surrounded by clear blue water, there’s also some great surfing, kiteboarding and wind surfing to be had on the island. You can also go kayaking, paddle boarding and there are some great dive sites around the island as well.

Some of the most popular beach towns and resorts are in Puerto del Carmen, Costa Teguise, Playa Blanca and Puerto Calero. Most of these places offer world class resorts that rival anything you’ll find on the mainland and all have gorgeous beaches and tons of restaurants, bars and local things to do around them.

With the island only 60 km from top to bottom, most tours and activities can also be done starting from any location, so it doesn’t really matter where you’re staying if you’re planning on checking out all the island’s sights.

Food on Lanzarote

There are numerous landmarks and wineries across Lanzarote and though the food tends to be Spanish in flavor and design, it definitely has its own island charm.

Fish and potatoes are staples on the island and like all of Spain, cheese, fruit and variations of ham are common everywhere. However, there are some unique foods you’ll only find on the island like black potatoes, Cactus, gofio (a flour comprising toasted grains like wheat or maize),  green or red mojo (a Portuguese style sauce for fish or meats) as well as tons of local fruit such as bananas, mangoes, avocados, yams, and persimmons.

Popular dishes on the island include Papas Arrugadas (wrinkled potatoes) with mojo sauce, Potajes (chunky vegetable soups with potatoes), Caldo de pescado (fish soup), Sancocho canario (dried and cooked wreckfish, potatoes, sweet potatoes, mojo and gofio) and you’ll often find bienmesabe for dessert. Bienmesabe literally means tastes good to me) in Spanish and comprises of a paste made of almonds, honey and sugar often served with ice cream.

Things to see on Lanzarote

If you want to see all that the island can offer you can take one of the many day tours that are available around the island. However, they say that one of the best ways to see Lanzarote is to rent a car for the day and see where it can take you. There are car rental locations in all the bigger centers on the island.

Arrecife

The main capital city of Arrecife is on the east side of the island and makes a great place to begin exploring Lanzarote. There’s a good chance you’ll be arriving here anyway since it includes the main airport on the island. You can check out the harbor, the marina, the small castles, the beach at Playa del Reducto as well as enjoy the many restaurants and bars that call Arrecife home.

La Geria

On the way to Timanfanya National Park, you’ll pass through the wine region of La Geria. Unique to the island, the wines of La Geria are typically made from the Malvasia grape known for its honey-colored sweet rich flavor that produces a wide variety of red, white and rose wines from very dry to very sweet. The wines can be sampled right across the island in most restaurants.

What makes the La Geria region even more special is the work the locals have put into cultivating their wines. Located on the very edge of the volcano fields, they plant each vine in semicircular pits filled with soil then top coat each one with a coarse volcanic ash called picón. The ash helps the ground hold the moisture in and protects the vine from the constant winds in the area.

Seeing a few of these vine pits up close is a cool experience however when you combine over 10,000 of them in one area you find yourself staring at man made art on a grand scale.

Timanfanya National Park and the Fire Mountains

From La Geria you can head Northwest and visit the surreal beauty of Timanfaya National Park.

This is the top tourist attraction on Lanzarote and while there you can enjoy taking a coach tour over the lava fields of Montanas del Fuego or Fire Mountain as well two guided hikes. You can also go on a camel ride that will take you up the volcano and even have a meal that’s been cooked over a live volcano.

El Golfo

Just south of Timanfanya lies El Golfo. El Golfo is famous for its green lagoon named Charco de los Clicos. Formed due to a rare hydro volcano, Charco de los Clicos, Charco Verde or Lago Verde as it’s also sometimes called, is a small half moon shaped lake that’s separated from the ocean by a bunch of black sand. What makes this half lake so special is the hf cone it sits in as well as the crazy color combination of lime green water, red colored rocks, ochre colored hills, black sand beach and blue ocean.

Los Hervideros

Just past La Geria on the western side of the island stands Los Hervideros. Spanish for “boiling water”, Los Hervideros was formed during the islands crazy volcanic activities in the 1700s.

This extreme collection of rocks, caves and lava tubes formed as a result of lava meeting cool ocean waves and the unusual rock formations, archways and water funnels make the coastal cliffs of Los Hervideros a sight that can’t be missed.

Mirador del Río

Located at the northernmost tip of Lanzarote, the Mirador del Río is a bunker style cafe embedded high up on the cliff side overlooking the island of La Graciosa. The panoramic views are breathtaking so make sure you have your camera with you.

Janubio Salt Pans

Salt played an important factor for Lanzarote in the early 1900’s and you can still find them harvesting it at the Janubio Salt Pans. Located on the southwest coast of the island, the Janubio Salt Pans are close to the village of Yaiza and Janubio is the largest still operational salt mine in the Canary Islands.

When to go to Lanzarote

Due to its southern location, you can visit Lanzarote any time of the year however April and May are the wettest months. That said, Lanzarote gets an amazing amount of sunshine year round so anytime is really a good time to visit.

Check out La Paz Waterfall Gardens

The La Paz Waterfall Gardens are a fantastic way to see Costa Rica’s wildlife and lush rainforest up close. There are over ten animal exhibits, where you can see monkeys, snakes, frogs, birds of every color and size imaginable and jungle cats. Don’t miss the lovely butterfly and hummingbird gardens, where you can have hummingbirds eating out of your hand.

The waterfall walkway leads through lush dense rainforest, and delivers amazing views of waterfalls. You can even stand underneath one of the waterfalls, close enough to get soaked from the spray landing on your face. Make sure you bring a rain jacket.

Soak up the sun on the beaches of Guanacaste Province

Costa Rica’s amazing Pacific coast offers some of the longest stretches of beach imaginable. While best known for surfing, many of the beaches are great for little ones during low tide or days when the swells are mild. Playa Longasta, just south of the famous Playa Tamarindo, is a great family alternative, as is Playa Samara.

Visit the rainforest canopy

Costa Rica is one of the few places in the world that makes it easy to get a unique view of the rainforest canopy. If you have older kids, or your risk tolerance is high, many zip lining companies in Costa Rica are kid friendly. If zip-lining’s not your thing,  the treetop canopy sky walk through the Monteverde Cloud Forest lets you walk on bridges suspended in the treetops. For those with little kids, the rainforest aerial tram lets you have the same great views from the relative safety of an enclosed gondola.

Peer into a volcano

Kids love volcanos. We checked out the Poás volcano (an easy afternoon trip from San Jose) and the famous Arenal volcano. While we were there, Arenal was quiet, but visitors often hear deep rumbles and the lucky ones see trickles of lava coming from the cone at night.

Soak in the hot springs

The Tabacon Hot Springs Resort has over nine pools and three cascading thermal waterfalls. Daily admission for adults is fairly steep at $60, but admission is included with a night’s stay at the luxurious Tabacon Grand Spa, where we splurged for a three night stay. It was expensive, but well worth it. For the budget minded, check out the private Eco Termales Hot Springs or the more developed Baldi Hot Springs.

Spend a weekend in the city square

Almost every city and small town in Costa Rica has a parque central, or city square, flanked by a prominent Catholic church. You’ll see some great architecture, and on weekends most city squares are transformed into a family friendly playground. Our little ones alternated between playing on the bouncy castle, watching the clowns, and chasing pigeons around the square in Parque Central in Heredia.

Watch an endangered leatherback turtle lay her eggs

From Junuary to April, endanged leatherback turtles come back to Costa Rica to lay their eggs on the beach where they were hatched. The Las Baulos National Park (Parque Marino las Baulas) offers an opportunity to tag along with their wildlife officers to watch the leatherbacks. The Las Baulos National Park is located in Playa Grande, on Costa Rica’s Pacific Coast. The cost is $25 per person, and kids are free.

Check out the wildlife

Costa Rica’s abundance of wildlife is well known. A troupe of howler monkeys visited the trees just outside our balcony in Tamarindo every morning. Every day, we found fabulous (well, the kids thought they were fabulous, anyway) insects in the walkway by our condo. We were even lucky enough to see a sloth hanging from a tree on the road to La Paz Waterfall Gardens.

Just don’t lick the blue frogs.

While we were in San José last week we decided that we were going to go take a tour or two. Most people that come to Costa Rica fly in to San José, stay a few days, go on a bunch of tours then get their arses to the coast and the beaches. Though San José doesn’t offer much to do in the big city proper, there are some of the best sights in the country within an hour or two of the city limits. To be more exact, San José is in the center of the country and because of Costa Rica’s smaller size, almost anything in the country can be reached and experienced in one day. Of course, some of those days will be excruciatingly long but they can be done nonetheless.

Since we have a two and five year old with us, a lot of the more common day trips weren’t going to cut it. As much as I would have enjoyed rafting class 4 and 5 rapids, rappelling down a majestic waterfall, galloping horses through a jungle or even ziplining down a 1/2 inch wide cable a mile long while precariously hanging a hundred feet in the air those just aren’t in the books for us this go around. Cole could probably do a few of them but Jordan is just too young. Micki and I toyed around with splitting our small group up but we decided against it for this trip.

That being said, before we even got into Costa Rica we were perusing the guides and online travel sites finding things to do while in the capital. Seeing that I was just getting over a nice Christmas cold the first few days we decided to spend acclimatizing ourselves to this country. It was a shame that not only was everything closed for New Year’s (which was a bit of a surprise since everything in Mexico was still running full steam ahead Christmas day) but everything was also closed the second as well. Here we had budgeted 2 days to check out the sites, sounds and smells of San Jose and besides for long walks down quiet streets and 3 ice cream breaks in two days we barely got a feel for life in this Central American town. It just goes to show that we should have listened to one of our own credo’s, never travel on or near a holiday in a foreign land.

Ask us about the time a few years back when we had gotten into a lot of trouble leaving a country in Asia a few days too late because we never realized that the country almost literally shut down for 3 days during one of their many festivals. As a result we overextended our passport visas and had a hell of a time getting through immigration. Let’s just say we had to grease a few palms to continue on our journey. And then there was the time we were travelling through the Philippines and stumbled upon a local festival that was barely a footnote in any of the travel books we carried. It turned out that every town in that area was completely booked up months in advance and people were literally renting out half their bed to make a few extra bucks. We were lucky that we generally always have a backup plan when we travel but those extra 4 hours on a bus and then a ferry weren’t exactly expected when we had gotten up that morning. Since then we always check to see what’s going on ahead of time and always plan our travel dates around the holidays.

In some ways the few days of quiet were good because it gave me a chance to fully recover and left us time to plan our next steps. Those steps would take us on a lengthy day trip to some quintessential Costa Rican areas. There are literally three things that pop into my head when I say the name Costa Rica: jungles, volcano’s and coffee. We were lucky enough to stumble on a day trip that encompassed all three. We booked our trip late the night before and packed our day bag as well. Though Costa Rica is on the Equator and is considered hotter than hell on the coasts, the reality is that San José and it’s environs are mountainous areas. Though you’re closer to the sun, the temperatures don’t usually get over the mid 20’s. I wore shorts and a t-shirt the first few days in town but almost everyone else was wearing jeans and a shirt. At night when things cooled off it wasn’t uncommon to see people bundling up with jackets and thick sweaters.

We knew that the volcano and other areas we were planning to see might be a little cooler than in downtown so Micki and I decided to wear our jeans and bring our jackets. We did throw some shorts in the day bag  just in case we needed them but it turns out we chose wisely. The bus that was picking us up in the morning showed up a 6:15. Yes, that’s AM for anybody that knows me. There’s usually a better chance that I go to sleep at that time than wake up but since the kids are usually up around 7 it wasn’t too bad. We were all excited for the trip and it clearly showed that morning. Since we were in Heredia which is a little north of San José we met up with a bigger bus coming from that direction. The areas we were going to were all North of San José proper.

Once we were all settled into our new bus and starting to head towards the coffee plantation, the kids took a short nap while Micki and I chatted with some of the other tourists that day. We got to know a Winnipeg couple very well over the course of the day. Nothing like travelling  5000 km’s to get to talk to people you might have once called your neighbor! Our first stop was the Duzu Coffee Plantation. We all got off the bus and had a very nice breakfast overlooking the fields of coffee beans.

After eating, our tour guide for the day Paula gave us a tour of the plantation. We learned all about the beans (almost like a berry with two beans per pod and very sweet straight off the tree), the harvesting (every bean is hand picked only when they are ripe and red), the de-shelling (done by large machine), the drying (rows and rows of the beans are left in the sun for days almost constantly being raked, moved around or shoveled back in at night or when there’s the smallest threat of rain and all done by hand) and finally the roasting process which I found out is usually done in whatever country has bought the beans. I also found out the differences between all the roasts and then we all got to sample the coffees to our hearts content. Micki enjoyed it tremendously but since I’m not a coffee drinker, the kids and I went to town on the chocolate covered coffee beans. Jordan only had the chocolate but Cole had a few of the beans and we found out he shakes just as much as I do when he eats them. Micki and the rest of the group bought a bunch of beans in the gift shop and we all got back on the tour bus.

Our next stop was Poás Volcano National Park. The bus driver spotted a large 3 toed sloth in a tree as we drove to our destination (we all stopped to take some pictures) and a few great views across the valley. When we climbed out of the bus, we were glad we wore our long pants and brought our jackets. It was cold! Though the area never froze, it could easily drop to 3 or 4 at night. Our group slowly made our way up to the crater rim. It was a bit of a hike (especially carrying Jordan) but the group wasn’t in a hurry. When we got to the rim, the wind was blowing something fierce. In a way it was good because it afforded us a nice view into the active volcano. Because of the heat, sulfur, gases, height, etc. some days you can’t see anything. We got to see the green sulphuric water, the fumaroles (steam and gas vents) and the entire rim. We quickly snapped a few pictures and then barreled back down the hill to get out of the stinging wind. We got quite a few laughs watching other people complain of the cold as they made their way up with nothing but a t-shirt and shorts and not knowing that the temperature was about to drop another 10 degrees by the time they reached the rim.

As we left the park we got to stop off and buy some fresh strawberries. It seems that the area isn’t only good for growing coffee! We quickly wolfed a bag down and continued onto our final destination of the day, the La Paz Waterfalls. More than any of the other things we had seen that day we were looking forward to La Paz. Though the main attraction there is it’s series of 5 jungle waterfalls, it also contains a zoo like section with some of the best examples of Costa Rican wildlife in the country. We knew the kids would really enjoy that part of it.

The rain was threatening to come down as we walked into the place but our excitement was high. We knew that the area was known for it’s daily rains but we were hoping for the best. We managed to visit the majority of the park before the clouds let forth their over abundant bounty. In simple terms, we got wet. Before that though we got to see the bird exhibit including a bunch of very tame toucans. We got to see the monkey exhibit that included capuchins, spider monkeys and even a few marmosets. We explored the butterfly garden with thousands of them everywhere and we even got to see a few leaving their chrysalis. We saw frogs and snakes and then the hummingbirds. These were amazing because there were hundreds of them zooming everywhere around you. I think they were Jordans favorite. Cole really enjoyed the jungle cats. They had an impressive display with the small Ocelots and Margays and the Jaguarundi. This last is also known as the otter cat because it looks more like an otter than a cat. The last two groups were the Pumas (cougar, panther or mountain lion) and the king of the tropics, the Jaguar. The Jaguar was actually frightening in it’s size and speed. Not to mention that I swear it looked at you like you were breakfast.

After checking out most of the animals we all stopped for a really tasty late afternoon lunch. Once we were done eating the buffet the rain finally set in. We were partially ready for it but only had 2 plastic ponchos with us. Luckily for us another one of our group had a spare to lend us. With our ponchos on we headed out on a long march. The majority of the walk was down steps as there was only a short distance between each waterfall and most of that distance was height. We were already a little tired once we reached the first waterfall but they were gorgeous and we really wished that it was nicer out so we could fully appreciate them. As we continued our downward journey we got to walk under one of them and got even more wet. When we finally emerged we were hot, tired, soaking wet and glad to see our bus waiting for us. As tiring as the walk down those steps was, it would have been murder to have to go back up again.

There was a large group of wild white nose Coati (like raccoons but with long noses) hanging around the bus hoping for handouts and the kids enjoyed watching them as we climbed aboard the bus back to our place. All in all it was a great day and both us and the kids enjoyed it tremendously. They both fell asleep on the ride home and we finally got to the hotel around 7. Considering we were under 150 km’s at the most from our hotel at any time, it was definitely a long day.

To that end, we finally got to see the wild side of Costa Rica and started to understand the spell that this country holds over all who visit it. It is a nature lover’s paradise with mountains, volcanos, jungles, rainforests, raging rivers and lakes surrounded by warm tropical oceans on both sides. If you love the outdoors, this place if for you. Just don’t forget to bring your rain jacket…

Tamarindo Vacations