April 19, 2025

Arrecife just does not seem like it belongs where it is. On my second visit to this city, I am even more impressed with its beauty.

The landscape here seems like a legend. Steam arrives from the earth like a warning. You can actually roast a chicken by dropping it into a hole in the ground, and some families do just that. Before the lava came this was gentle farmland. But molten rock erupted and swallowed whole villages.

In 1740, the earth quite literally cracked open. A giant mountain sprung up through the earth. The people must have thought it was some type of divine intervention. This went on for 6 years! Repeatedly for over 2,000 days! Villages were buried. Entire villages disappeared. Smoke and ash flooded out the sun. Even today the soil remains charred. Yet, to the disbelief of my friend Doyle Welch a peanut farmer who lives in Texas they grow grapes in Arrecife. They plant grapes in lava soil which can maintain moisture and build rocks around the plantings to protect again the Sahara Desert winds. The sand has blown in from the Sahara Desert over many years with Arrecife lying only about 80 miles off the coast of Africa. Today Arrecife looks like a wide expanse of flat sea but composed of jagged lava instead of water.

But the landscape of Arrecife was about to change.

Cesar Manrique was Arrecife’s most famous citizen. Born in 1919, he was an architect, painter, environmentalist who fought in the Spanish civil war. He studied art in Madrid, abstract art in New York City and was a personal friend of Andy Warhol. In the 1960’s he gave up that life and returned to Arrecife. He decided that it was time to shape Arrecife’s future before it was too late. He worked tirelessly to change laws banning billboards, successfully petitioning that every structure on the island be painted white with green shudders. He set out to make Arrecife one of the most beautiful places on earth. I think he may have succeeded.

Even the churches are beautiful, and we stopped at an amazing place to have a great cup of special Arrecife coffee.

I’m not sure if it is the contrast between the dark black lava and the pristine white buildings but to me the landscape is stunning.

To paraphrase GK Chesterton if you are a traveler, you see what you see not what you have come to see.

Thanks for traveling with us.