Canary Islands, cooking in the volcano…
It’s for real!
Timanfaya National Park and El Diablo restaurant: LANZAROTE
In the midst of the Canary Islands, shines Lanzarote.
Discovered by the Genoese Lanzerotto Maloncello, the island is the centre of interest of thousands of tourists. They are dazzled by its wonders and with pleasure they dedicate their time to various sports in contact with nature: surf, ideal from November to March; sailing, immersion in the crystalline Atlantic waters and trekking through the hills.
Walking on the wild and natural ground of this splendid island, early you will meet the indigenous people living there. They are called “Guanci” .
Lanzarote is small but seductive. It’s rich of place you would not like to miss.
The first of all there is the Timanfaya National Park.
Its goes on for 5000 hectares to the west of the island. We can visit it only by guided tour. The park is part of one of the Unesco biosphere reserves since 1993.
At the heart of the park, we can find the Mountains of fire, main attraction of this area characterized by astonishing landscapes, layers of volcanoes and lava flows from last eruptions on the island.
This colourful scenario gave an explosion to the inspiration of Cesar Manrique. In fact, the statue El Diablo is due to him, it’s a splendid living soul which represents fertility and manhood.
On the volcano crater of the mountain chain part of the “Mountains of fire”, Manrique built a restaurant like NOWHERE ON EARTH.
Although the architectural challenge for its building on nine layers of basaltic rock, since 1970 stands the homonym Restaurant “EL DIABLO”. It’s considered like the more dangerous but also the healthier in the world.
Don’t worry, the volcano from which it rises does not erupt since 1824 and it’s known extinct even if it produces a lot of heat.
Sitting in front of your dish, you will enjoy a magnificent landscape. It has no price.
The internal decor is eccentric. Let me tell you that there is a real tree inside there!
The biggest peculiarity of this restaurant stays behind the cooking food. It’s done through an original “natural barbecue”!
There is no gas, neither electrical energy! The volcano heat is the source of heat for the oven-grill which uses a huge amount of grills. The chef use them from years now to cook. It allows a strongly healthy food!
The chef would explain you how much is simple to use a geothermic heat source.
Guess the home speciality? Grilled meat, naturally cooked at 450° C!
Near to the restaurant, to the Islote de Hilario, you can be witness of the heat escaped from the ground.
The tourist guide throw cold water inside the holes present on the ground and in contact with the heat entrapped there, they are ejected out like mini Geyser.
That’s it…
An UNIQUE location!
I’ll come back to you in order to say more about this heavenly oasis called Lanzarote.
Curiosity:
Did you know that Stanley Kubrick for the film “2001: Odysse in the space” considered a cinema masterpiece, chose the Timanfaya National Park for some of the stages?