Lanzarote, Canary Islands, Spain

Day 1

• Jameos del Agua

  César Manrique's first project, inside a collapsed lava tube: a natural lake with endemic blind albino crabs, a white pool among the rocks and an auditorium carved out of the cave. €17, open 10am-6pm.

• César Manrique Foundation, Taro de Tahíche

  The house Manrique built for himself on top of the 1730 lava flow, with five rooms hollowed out inside five lava bubbles linked by tunnels: white and glass above, black rock and palms below. It's the key to understanding everything else on the island.

• Timanfaya National Park (Montañas del Fuego)

  The landscape left by the eruptions of 1730-1736: red and black cones to the horizon, without a blade of grass. You visit only on the Ruta de los Volcanes coach tour, 90 minutes, €30 with a date and time booked online; open 9.30am-3.45pm. You cannot walk freely in the park.

Day 2

• Cueva de los Verdes

  A visitable kilometre of the island's longest lava tube, used for centuries as a refuge from pirate raids: theatrical lighting, silence and an optical surprise at the far end that shouldn't be spoiled. €17, 9.30am-4.45pm, timed online booking required.

• Mirador del Río

  The viewpoint Manrique carved into the Famara cliff, 475 metres above the sea: behind a stone wall, two huge windows open onto the Chinijo archipelago and La Graciosa. €9, 10am-5pm; on a clear day it's the best view on the island.

• Cactus Garden

  Manrique's last work, set in an old terraced lapilli quarry: more than a thousand cactus species arranged like an amphitheatre, with a restored windmill at the top. €9, 10am-5pm, a good hour.

Day 1

• Casa Museo del Campesino✦ hidden gem

  Manrique's monument to fertility at the geographic centre of the island, with a museum of country life around it: free entry, and the only one of the island's art and tourism centres that costs nothing. White courtyards, old tools, a cellar dug into the rock.

• Castillo de San José and the contemporary art museum✦ hidden gem

  An 18th-century fortress above the port of Arrecife, gutted by Manrique to make a contemporary art museum with a black staircase descending to a restaurant hanging over the sea. €5.40, open 11am-6pm: the least visited of the centres, and one of the finest.

• Caleta de Famara✦ hidden gem

  Six kilometres of sand under a 600-metre cliff, a surfers' village of low houses and almost constant wind. It's the island's most spectacular beach and the least suited to a quiet swim: strong currents and waves, but surf schools everywhere.

Day 2

• El Golfo and the Charco de los Clicos✦ hidden gem

  Half a crater eaten away by the sea on the west coast, with an emerald-green lagoon separated from the ocean by a strip of black gravel. You look at it from the path, you don't go in; in the village of El Golfo you eat fish watching the sunset.

• Haría and the valley of a thousand palms✦ hidden gem

  The green north of the island: a white village at the bottom of a palm-filled valley, a Saturday craft market, and the house-museum where Manrique spent his last years, left exactly as it was, paintbrushes included. A different Lanzarote from the resort coast.

Day 1

• Papas arrugadas with mojo

  Small potatoes boiled in heavily salted water until the skin wrinkles, served with spicy mojo rojo and coriander mojo verde: the side dish that goes with everything, from fish to goat meat.

• Fresh fish and sancocho

  Grilled parrotfish, wreckfish and dentex in the little harbour restaurants (El Golfo, Órzola, Playa Quemada), and Canarian sancocho: salted fish with potatoes, sweet potato and mojo, the Sunday dish. Always ask the price per kilo before ordering a whole fish.

• Volcanic malvasía and goat's cheese✦ hidden gem

  The dry whites of DO Lanzarote, grown on ungrafted vines that phylloxera never reached, and majorera goat's cheeses, fresh or rubbed with paprika. In the bodegas of La Geria a tasting costs a few euros and you buy straight from the producer.