There are some roads that have about them an air of potential adventure. Drive along the Glenshiel Valley in Scotland and you feel the presence of the Five Sisters, the Four Brothers , the Forkan Ridge and a dozen other opportunities.
So it is with the road going south from Mancha Blanca in Lanzarote, the LZ56. It's not the only road of high drama in the area. The SW road from that town goes through more spectacular country including the entrance to the fire mountains, but that more park regulated road has no casual stopping points making an experience of pristine volcanism certainly but one hermetically sealed with a no-step policy and an approved bus ride.
Now, the LZ 56 is different because it allows casual access. Its length has at least eight extinct volcanos within 1km of the road all accessible on foot.
On a previous occasion we visited the intact caldera Monte Cuervo with its razor sharp rim and violently transformed rocks. On this occasion we selected Montana Los Rodeos. Start from near Montana Cortigo where a dirt track goes SW over the lava field to Montana Los Rodeos. At first your view of the lava ("Aa" type with a rough broken crust and with little growing on its black surfaces) is limited to forty or fifty metres. But then you reach the road circling the hill and you ascend and realise why this place is often talked up. The view expands to several km in every direction. To the SE is the 408m Caldera Santa Catalina named after the village it swallowed after 1730 and from which lava poured for hundreds of days.
To the west is what looks like an enormous frozen wave of lava descending between Caldera de la Rita and it northern outlier. Parts of the lava surface are much smoother and were formed from the less viscous “Pahoehoe” rock. For some reason this is more readily colonized by a greenish lichen growth so that the mostly black landscape appears to have broad rivers of green going through it.
Walking around the circumferential dirt track can be described as a balcony track with constantly changing views. This part of the track is on land relatively untouched by modern lava, though clearly it was smothered in “picon” the 3 to 6mm particles of foamed rock that appear in many parts of the island. Perhaps the track was present before 1730?
The ascent up the summit is on a track apparently gouged by 4X4s or scramblers and appears as a red gash where the black picon has been removed. On the cooler, windy day we visited clouds were drifting over the top. Apart from the track there was absolutely no sign of life or human habitation in any direction.