Lanzarote Lava Caves: Cueva de los Verdes and Jameos del Agua

The Volcán de la Corona sent a river of basalt down towards the sea. Its surface cooled and set while the inside kept moving, and when the supply stopped the still-liquid core drained away and left a hollow. That hollow is the tube, more than seven kilometres of it, and the stretch running out under the water is known as the Túnel de la Atlántida. The Cueva de los Verdes is a length of it inland where the roof held. The Jameos del Agua is a length nearer the coast where the roof fell in, which is what the word jameo means.

Both were opened to visitors under César Manrique in the 1960s, and he treated them in opposite ways. At the Cueva de los Verdes the intervention is almost entirely lighting, plus a concert chamber tucked into one of the wider galleries. At the Jameos he built: a restaurant, a white pool nobody may swim in, an auditorium, a garden. One is a cave with the lights turned on. The other is a building that happens to sit inside a cave.

The Cueva de los Verdes is a guided visit and the guide sets the pace. About fifty minutes, roughly a kilometre on foot, and both figures are honest: this is a walk, not a viewing platform. The floor is bare basalt and uneven, there are stairs, the passage narrows, and the published warning is blunt about the rest. Not accessible to people with reduced mobility. Not recommended for anyone claustrophobic. People over 1.80 metres are told to mind their heads, which is not a figure of speech in at least two places.

Two of the coach operators selling this cave carry the same line in their own conditions: time inside is capped by the tourist centre, so you have to keep up with the guide and not fall behind, because another group is already coming in behind you. Worth knowing before you decide to photograph everything. The lighting is built for the eye rather than the sensor, flash reaches nothing, and the people who enjoy this most are the ones who put the phone away.

There is one thing near the end of the route that the guides deliberately do not announce. It is a trick of the eye rather than a formation, it lasts about four seconds, and it is the single most repeated memory in the reviews. Nobody should tell you what it is, including this page.

The lagoon at the Jameos del Agua is salt water connected to the sea through the rock, so it rises and falls with the tide. Look at the bottom and it seems to have been sprinkled with grains of rice. Those are animals: Munidopsis polymorpha, a squat lobster about a centimetre long, blind and without pigment because nothing down there has needed eyes or colour for a very long time. It lives in this lagoon and a few connected cavities, and nowhere else on the planet.

Which is why the rules at the entrance are stricter than they look, and why coins are the specific problem. A copper or zinc coin sitting in that water leaches metal into a pool with almost no exchange of volume, and the population that pays for the wish is the one that cannot leave.

Two practical notes. The Jameos is the only one of the big Lanzarote centres that does not need a timed slot, which makes it the easy thing to drop into a day. And at spring tides the sea pushes far enough up the tube to cover part of the walkway, at which point the staff ask you to carry your shoes. That is not a fault. It is the clearest demonstration available that the cave and the Atlantic are the same body of water.

Not one of the eight listings here is a cave ticket. Every one is a coach: hotel pickup, a guide, entrances included, usually a second or third site bolted on. That is the shape of the Lanzarote market rather than an accident, because the caves are in the far north and most of the beds are in the far south.

Here is the arithmetic no listing shows you. The two entrances cost thirty-four euros at the door. The cheapest coach containing both is sixty-nine. You are paying about thirty-five euros a head for the drive up from the south, a guide, a slot somebody else booked, and not having to park.

Two tickets, thirty-four euros. The cheapest coach that contains them, sixty-nine. Everything else on this page is a judgement about what that difference is worth to you.

With a hire car and the Cueva de los Verdes slot booked yourself, the caves are a self-drive morning and the coach adds only the guide. Where a coach genuinely earns its money is the full-day combination that also takes in Timanfaya, because the national park sells timed entry and its car park queues for an hour or more in high season. That is a real problem being solved.

Two judgements, for what they are worth. The ninety-nine euro trip runs nine hours and leaves lunch out, and it is the weakest value on the list. And the best-selling product here is also the lowest scored: 4.2 from about 1,500 reviews, against 4.8 and 4.9 for the smaller operators. A large sample dragging a score down usually says something about group size and time pressure rather than about the cave.

Closed shoes with a sole, because the floor at the Cueva de los Verdes is bare lava and damp in patches. Something with sleeves: it is cooler underground than out, and the temperature barely moves across the year. Nothing else is needed and nothing else helps.

Who should not book. Anyone using a wheelchair or a frame will not get round the Cueva de los Verdes, and the Jameos is only marginally better, because the stairs are unavoidable in both directions. Pushchairs are refused at both entrances and the Jameos staff will tell you to bring a carrier. If narrow dark spaces are a problem for you, skip the Cueva de los Verdes; the Jameos is fine.

There is no season here worth planning around. Both sites open every day of the year and the caves do not care about the weather. The only cycle that changes what you see is the moon rather than the month, because at spring tides the water inside the Jameos stands higher. Take the earliest Cueva de los Verdes slot you can: the coaches arrive from the resorts in the middle of the day.