The Route of the Volcanoes
A coach tour through craters and lava fields.
Gernot Keller, London (www.gernot-keller.com) — CC BY-SA 2.5 · Bybbisch94, Christian Gebhardt — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Bybbisch94, Christian Gebhardt — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Bybbisch94, Christian Gebhardt — CC BY-SA 4.0
**An entire lava field with almost no vegetation — and ground heat beneath your feet enough to grill meat** — in western Lanzarote. ⚠ **The event that made it**: **a continuous eruption lasting **six years, from 1730 to 1736**** — ✅ **among the longest recorded in history**; **it swallowed more than twenty villages and a quarter of the island**. ⚠ **And the ground is still hot**: **at two metres' depth the temperature is around **400 degrees**** — ✅ **which is demonstrated daily**: **water poured into a pipe erupts as steam**, **brushwood bursts into flame in a pit**, **and a grill works on ground heat alone**. ⚠ **The visit is restricted**: **no free walking** — **a coach tour on the Route of the Volcanoes**. ✅ **And César Manrique designed the restaurant and centre.**
A coach tour through craters and lava fields.
Water erupting as steam and brush igniting from ground heat.
A grill worked by ground heat, designed by Manrique.
Carretera LZ-67, 35560 Tinajo, Las Palmas, Spain
**Because what heats it is not the 1730 lava, which is long cold, but **a magma body still at depth**.** ⚠ **The common wrong explanation**: **«the old lava has not cooled yet»** — ✅ **which is untrue**: **the surface lava cooled within years to decades**; **and it is entirely cold today**. ✅ **The correct explanation**: ⚠ **a **body of molten or partly molten rock** remains at an estimated few kilometres beneath the area** — **the remnant of the magma chamber that fed the 1730 eruption**; ✅ **and that body cools **extremely slowly** because rock is an excellent thermal insulator**. ✅ **How the heat reaches the surface**: ⚠ **not by conduction through rock — that is far too slow** — ✅ **but by **groundwater circulation**: **rainwater percolates down through fractured rock**, **is heated near the hot body**, ✅ **and rises as steam and hot air through the fissures** — **convection, which is fast**. ⚠ **The measurements**: **about **100–120 degrees at 10 cm depth**, **and 400 degrees at 10–13 metres****. ✅ **And this is exploited**: ⚠ **experiments in **geothermal electricity generation** have been run on the site** — **and Lanzarote is a candidate for it**. ⚠ **And the volcano is not extinct** — **but dormant-active and monitored**.
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