Updated to: 8/4/2022. Two volcanic islands in the middle of the Atlantic, two photographic reports presented at the same time and two texts by journalists each in love with an island.
Here the cross story of Porto Santo and Lanzarote, two islands that have never felt so close.
The wild waters of the Atlantic.
HOLY PORT
A medical center, a supermarket, a pharmacy, a handful of shops and restaurants, are enough to (poorly) care for and supply neighbors and tourists.
Traffic is so calm in Porto Santo that there is no need for a traffic light to regulate it. A gas station reaches for local vehicles. Outsiders rent electric cars to get around.
Quiet roads cross the island . Some are asphalt, others are dirt tracks that mold to the ground like a sheet over a body.
Viewpoint of the Flowers, Porto Santo.
Entering the interior of the island should be done in a Land Rover Defender, an off-road vehicle introduced to the island by the family of Sofía Santos, our cicerone around these parts.
Before the 4x4, donkeys, horses, cows and oxen They were, in addition to suppliers of milk and meat, the means of transportation and cargo of Porto Santo.
Fossilized snails in the paleo dune, in the north of the island of Porto Santo.
A territory in which 70% of its area is a natural park and where do you reside the largest community of snails per square meter of the world. They are everywhere. Like a great variety of plants turn the island green when it rains. Plants that decorate, feed and heal. Natural medicine that patch up the deficient health resources of the island.
Traditional farm equipment and implements at the Cardina Museum, in Camacha
Other plants grow because of the tenacity of a visionary neighbor. Carlos Alfonso has built a mini botanical zoo, Quinta das Palmeiras, from nothing. Soon, under its palm trees, the inhabitants of Porto Santo will protect themselves from the sun's rays, the same ones who thirty years ago called the man who planted them crazy when he wasn't windsurfing.
Porto Santo is an apothecary that works without prescriptions and in which its medicines have denomination of origin. The carbonated sand that is stepped on, fine and silky, is the dust left over from a reef exposed to the air, in Fonte da Areia, on the north face, when the sea level dropped during the last glaciation.
A beach where the sea water, rich in iodine, calcium and magnesium, fluctuates between 22 and 24 degrees Celsius. The mineral and refreshing bath is guaranteed all year round.
Family atmosphere in Praia das Pedras Preta, on the south coast of Porto Santo.
Delicious meals with views too. That is what tourists come for, to rest, to deal with modern urban ills and to enjoy gastronomy. Swordfish, limpets, a type of shellfish called caramujo, octopus, espetada and minced beef , accompanied by bolos do caco (sweet potato rolls), garlic butter and a salty local wine.
Pan with limpets cooked with butter.
Outsiders for a walk and young locals mingle on the Vila Baleira pier jumping from the top of the structure into the water. They do it to the rhythm of the music that seems to want to escape from a portable speaker.
Porto Santo is a new island made up by time. An island whose landscape works better as a movie set than as a speculative real estate project. an island with a nine kilometer golden beach where there is always room for one more towel.
House-museum of Christopher Columbus, who married a daughter of the president of Porto Santo.
LANZAROTE
Someone once said that Famara was like a Far West setting. And the audience was left with a poker face . A priori, it doesn't make much sense to imagine cowboys in plaid shirts and wide-brimmed hats blurting out “There's only room for one of us” as they roll a pistol and slap their spurs on the back of a thoroughbred.
In a second thought, one regrets that it was not him who came up with it such a masterful comparison, as anachronistic and out of context as it is brilliant and appropriate.
Famara Beach.
The point of union between both scenarios are the dusty streets, the towering horizons and the very blue sky, the stopped time and the rhythm of the parishioners sitting at the little wooden tables drinking their whiskey (there) and their honey rum (here), impassive in the presence of any stranger, and without disheveled unless the matter is (or seems) of life or death.
Rofera of Teseguite.
Normally, foreigners do not arrive in Famara on horseback, but barefoot with their surfboards under their arms, on which they ride that icy and jumping Atlantic that wets La Caleta, the epic beach that welcomes them with open arms in the form of waves and wind and, with the same weapons, launches onlooker bathers.
The grace of Famara, which is great, was not discovered by the surfers the day before yesterday, nor by the well-informed who go to eat the best rice dishes on the island at El Risco. She had already hypnotized César when he came to play as a child. He repeated it ad nauseam and repainted it ad nauseam.
A man sitting on the rocks at Arrecife.
Because, if there is a look, an eye or a nose that leads us to the highest things, not only in Lanzarote, but in life in general, that is César Manrique, a guy in a mechanic's overalls who traveled to New York and rubbed shoulders with Rockefeller and Janis Joplin and returned to Lanzarote to make his land great and get ahead of all those who today consider themselves visionaries, taking three or four bodies out of them.
Cesar Manrique Foundation.
Lanzarote is as it is. You just have to understand it. But not everyone can . Because Lanzarote is not that friendly island suitable for all audiences. It is an island without fresh water or tree to shelter under, and in which they only exist, basically three colors: red, black and white.
If this is clear, we have a good starting point. That's when you enjoy this inexplicable place, its small towns, white as sugar cubes and almost always silent; of drive along some black and rocky roads that seem to lead to the very mouth of Hell.
Chairs in the sun in front of a house in Arrieta, a picturesque coastal town with less than a thousand inhabitants.
Also to observe Martian phenomena such as alvin crabs, fluorescent puddles, futuristic houses built on lava flows from a volcano, holes in the earth that gargle with the sea or horseshoes made of volcanic stone that function as a shield for some delicate grapes that give the wine from the land.
No, Lanzarote is not for everyone. Nor does he need.
Porto Santo.
This report was published in number 138 of the Condé Nast Traveler Magazine (April 2020). Subscribe to the printed edition (11 printed issues and a digital version for €24.75, by calling 902 53 55 57 or from our website). The April issue of Condé Nast Traveler is available for all of us to enjoy from any device. Download it and enjoy.
Point Women.