Queueing for a Volcano

To Timanfaya today. But that was after a scan of the hotel bookshelves that made us both want to reorganise - though no agreement on whether by language, genre, or author …. Its a very random selection everything from practically academic to fluffy holiday romances across a broad spectrum of languages.
Then a 30 minute drive out to timanfaya national park. The road in was amazing: a ribbon of tarmac across a field of lava lumps, very reminiscent of Iceland. Somewhat warmer though. Last erruption here was 19th c and the bulk of the lava fields and tubes date to the 1730-36 erruption that took out over 100 square km of land. We drove past the tourist camel place - poor camels and past a barely marked turn for something volcano related but we headed on through the lumpy landscape to the visitor centre. When we arrived we asked about the coach tours and were told oh yes drive back 4 km ( the barely marked turn!).
Anyhow the visitor centre had retail and a walkway out over the lumpy lava and lots of general info but not quite as much specific info as I would have expected. We tootled round that and then headed back to the barely marked turn. After paying our 30e each we were sent off down a narrow tarmac road and after awhile we found a queue of cars waiting to proceed . We waited about 10-15 mins before we were finally allowed to proceed up a very steep hill to another visitor centre, where we had to wait for a little while before being directed to a parking space on what felt like a 30 degree slope - made it hard to open the door!
As soon as we were out we were directed straight to bus5 which tootled us through the park. No mooching at this next visitor centre. Not allowed off the bus so hard to take photos, through windows, mostly while moving, avoiding reflections and other passengers heads. I consoled myself with the thought that there would be photos and/or a booklet at the visitor centre. The views were amazing although the prerecorded audio tour talked alot about the impact of the erruptions and gave extracts from contemporaneous diaries but I wanted to know what i was looking at and why is looked like it did. There were dark grey broken plates, boulders, ripples, little cones and some areas were ochre, orange, yellow purple etc. Took some photos though. Sadly the visitor centre here was a cafe and a souvenir shop that was no better than the last one no books/ booklets/ photos - pah.
Outside the centre there were a couple of rangers handing out hot gravel and demonstrating that just below the ground the temperatures were +400 celcius! They put plant material in a hole which combusted very quickly and then created geysers by pouring water into holes and waiting a couple of seconds before it was ejected as a column of steam.

After that we headed back home - well to the marina area where i got a glasses string so i can use my transitions in the sea and a new waterproof case - i don’t trust mine so much. After a little mooch and an ice cream we drove back to close to the hotel. As we planned to swim later we dumped the car on the carpark closer to the beach walkway, though we assumed we would go to playa flamingo i suggested we check to see of poo beach was open and yay the green flag was flying.
So we went and got water and crisps from the snack area. After a bit of down time then to the beach. Sandier than Flamingo and no rocks. Slightly less enclosed so a bit more bounce but still a nice safe swimming area. Again we stayed in till chilled, then back to the hotel to eat - a chewy lamb chop, aubergine parmigiana and a bit of duck.
Food is generally as good as I could have hoped for.
Quiet evening and a bit of trainsRead more