Lanzarote looks like Mars

All my friends went to Tenerife. Nobody told me about Lanzarote, and I cannot decide if I am grateful or offended, because Lanzarote is the closest Europe gets to another planet.

Start with the literal part. In Timanfaya National Park the ground still smokes: a guide pours water into a tube in the earth and it erupts back as a geyser seconds later. The park bus winds through lava fields that have not decided to become soil yet. It is not 'volcanic scenery', it is a volcano that has not finished.

Then the part no other island has: a designer. Cesar Manrique built into the lava rather than over it. Jameos del Agua hides a turquoise pool inside a collapsed lava tube; the Cactus Garden packs more cactuses than I have seen in one place into an old quarry; Lagomar folds pools and palms into the rock so beautifully I did not trust my eyes. White walls, black lava, green plants: the whole island runs on three colors at full contrast.

Even the wine is alien. In La Geria, every vine grows in its own dug-out crater behind a small stone wall, thousands of green dots across black ash fields. It should not work, and it makes wine.

Add the green lagoon at El Golfo, the sea exploding through the Los Hervideros rocks, the salt flats at Janubio, sunsets at Papagayo that beat anything else in the archipelago, and natural pools at Punta Mujeres for the end-of-day dip.

Mars, with a designer and a beach. The tested Lanzarote route is in the guide.