Lanzarote (Part 3) - Lava Tunnels, Cueva de los Verdes + The Volcanic Coast (includes original poetry reading)

The walls undulated with a liquid resonance, a kind of visual echoing of the sea. I had been scuba diving the day before and I kept imagining the walls dissolving into water and drowning us all. It was a bit of a strange musing which faded after a while but this is honestly how much you could tell the walls were once in a liquid state. As we descended deeper into the earth, the heat and humidity increased, the walls stretched downwards like melted wax dripping into the depths.

The stairs wound down on and on in a seemingly endless decent. Passing through small chambers, tight shafts and echoing vaults. I wandered the realms of imagination, this decent reminded me of The Lord of the Rings chapter about entering Moria, the ancient homeland of the dwarfs. These associations lingered in my mind helping to inspire parts of a poem I later wrote. The distant drip-drip of water, the deep silence accentuating every noise, each scuffle of shoes or whisper, all added to this Moria-like impression. I kept listening for the flap-flap of bare feet (non-LOTR fans please just ignore me here 😉) following behind.

We finally reached the bottom of the stairs and the main larger caves of the lava tunnel. It was worth the climb, ceilings stretched away into the distance while the drama of these Stygian scenes were illuminated by golden, green and red lighting.

One chamber was lined with chairs and the guide told us that classical piano concerts are conducted in there as the acoustics were particularly good. This space was quiet and peaceful but as I stood on the stage next to the Grand, I couldn't resist playing 'Silent Night', one of the few things I remember how to play on piano. The sound echoing around the empty spaces was exquisite, and it was worth it despite the tour guide telling me off afterwards.

We passed on through cave after cave, each a dream cast in basalt shapes. I found this place very meditative, each new space was like a chamber in my mind, a reflection of a mental space or thought pattern. I followed this play on perception with the different lighting, each space engendering different thoughts and memories. This allowed me to reach a stillness when we arrived at the cave pictured below. The guide played a trick on the group here where he told everyone that the pool was actually a hole to another level of the tunnel system, and it was so reflective that it was completely believable. He finished by dropping a stone in the pool while everyone stared at it, shocking them all as what they thought would plummet caused the whole scene to ripple in a surreal dance of liquid basalt, dancing outwards in expanding circles. I was out of it by this point, bliss-ed on the experience of the caves and my mental journeys, so I didn't get drawn in to the theatre of it all but it was quite a cool feature of the tour when I think back on it.

While we had been beneath the earth, the weather had turned and the island was blanketed in a thick mist. After the humid stifle of the deeper sections of the caves it was quite refreshing and despite it being late in the afternoon we stuck to our plan and drove to the west side of the island to see the black volcanic cliffs.

The road leading up to the coast was sketchy with massive potholes and humps. As we drove, the road just stopped without warning at a small round area overlooking a short drop into the smashing waves of the Atlantic ocean. A storm had been brewing for a while and the temperature had dropped considerably but the main weather was yet to hit the island. However, the effects of what had been happening offshore could be seen in the mammoth waves pounding the shore and throwing up plumes of misted sea water into the air. I could wax lyrical about this encounter with nature all day long but as I took video footage, I will leave you with a video presentation and poetry reading inspired by that experience (text version of poem below video clip).

The Ravaged Land

                                                    Ravaged cliffs lift
                                                    ebon basalt blades,
                                                    cutting wind from waves
                                                    in blasting spray.

Poseidon’s fingers
play in lava arches.
The land’s breathe
condensed in sea.

                 Booming flumes,
                 mottle air with brine.
                 Hairs of crystal salt
                 shimer in time.

                                                   Aligned in endless
                                                   battle of sea and earth.
                                                   A shaping of states,
                                                   the cycle of death
                                                                                                      and rebirth.

© Rowan Joyce

If you have enjoyed this travel post please check out the other articles in this series (links at the top of the page). All of these trips were done in the car, following maps to find our way to 'off the beaten tracks' places. There wasn't a tour bus in sight. 😛 I will be publishing one final post in this series, which is a poem that was inspired by all of the locations on Lanzarote that I have written about. All images in this post are my own property unless linked below photo (creative commons). Unfortunately, my phone camera is not great and the photos from inside the lava tunnels turned out rubbish which is why I sourced some wikimedia pics. The music used in the video poetry reading is from incompetech.com (royalty free), please follow link to verify. If you have enjoyed this article you can find more like it at my blogs homepage @raj808. Thanks for reading.

---

If you would like to join a fantastic community where we strive to help new steemians grow and develop, why not join me at #promo-mentors discord group which you can find here. I am one of the poetry/fiction mentors over at #promo-mentors, if you have any questions or need any guidance with either of these tags please don't hesitate to ask for me, @raj808.

---

Join us @steemitbloggers
Animation By @zord189