Cueva de los Verdes: a journey to the heart of the volcanoes

Entering a cave is always an adventure. Doing so in a volcanic one is a privilege.

Cueva de los Verdes, located in Haría, in the north of Lanzarote, attracts thousands of tourists every year. A few curious visitors like us are currently at the entrance. We’re eager to enter the depths of this unique geological formation. Sitting on a volcanic stone wall, we wait for the guide to open the doors to this secret.

Entrance to Cueva de los Verdes

We descend the stairs, one after another, like little ants, into the volcanic cave. I already feel like part of an adventure as the space becomes narrower. I crouch down several times, although anyone with standard mobility can easily pass through.

My skin begins to feel the coolness inside the cave. A pleasant temperature of between 17º and 19º remains stable throughout the year, regardless of the outside weather. Suddenly, the tunnel opens up, vast: we’ve reached the first stop. And the guide takes the opportunity to share some anecdotes about the cave.

Colours and textures of the cave

It’s surprising that the black lava walls contain traces of white, red, and yellow. What causes these shades? “The minerals they are made of,” the guide tells us. The concentrations of calcium carbonate result in a whitish tone, while the red colour reveals the presence of iron, and the ochre colour is produced by phosphates.

We continue this one-hour walk. I lower my head and notice the beautiful drips hanging from the ceiling, those drips that look like stalactites but are made of solidified lava. The background music sets the rhythm of our steps. Soft percussion notes echo through the cavities, like something very primitive, drawing us deeper into the Earth’s core.

The origin of Cueva de los Verdes

More than 3,000 years ago, according to geologists, this land was nothing more than a crack in the mountain. When the Volcán de La Corona erupted, the lava concentrated in this valley and flowed like a river towards the sea. The huge temperature contrast caused a rocky crust to solidify on the outside, while the internal magma continued to flow, still very hot, towards the sea.

Once the Volcán de La Corona erupted and poured all its magma into the cold of the ocean, this 7.6 km-long volcanic tube, known as the Tunnel of Atlantis, was left hollow. So, what happened next?

Well, the guide reveals to us that during the 16th and 17th centuries, many people from Lanzarote would hide in the cave to escape pirate attacks from North Africa. We also learn that a family named Los Verdes used to keep their livestock in the area. That’s why we still call it Cueva de los Verdes today… Later, in the 19th century, European travellers and scientists closely examined this volcanic formation, and it wasn’t until the next century that it transformed into the Cueva de los Verdes we know today…

Jesús Soto, Master of Light

Cueva de los Verdes opened its doors in 1964 as part of the current Centres for Art, Culture, and Tourism. A year later, the Cabildo of Lanzarote commissioned Jesús Soto, a native of Fuerteventura, to install light bulbs and minimally prepare the cave so that speleologists and archaeologists could enter to investigate. But the artist went further. He used his lighting expertise to highlight the winding path of the lava with lights and shadows, extracting luminosity and drama from the volcanic rock.

Soto created a spectacular and unique geological visit, worthy of thousands of annual tourist visits, but also respectful of the environment. It was for this reason, among many others, that UNESCO granted Lanzarote and its Chinijo Archipelago the prestigious designation of Geopark.

An auditorium inside a cave?

We arrive at the Auditorium of Cueva de los Verdes, a room crowned by a piano surrounded by chairs, where live concerts are often held. While it’s already rare to access the inside of a volcanic tube, the idea that there is an auditorium inside it seems almost unbelievable… In this natural setting, the audience is just a few metres away from the performers. The volcanic walls form the backdrop, and the incredible acoustics of the cavity are simply unbeatable.

Last section of Cueva de los Verdes

We leave the Auditorium behind and climb to the upper gallery. This is where they tell us The Secret of the Cave, but I won’t spoil it for you. Those of us who already know it cherish and protect it so that future visitors can experience it just as we did.

On the way out, the guide shows us the Head of the Monster, a grotesque morphological structure that will surely scare the little ones on the tour. It’s at that moment that a blinding light begins to flood our eyes, as if the reality of the surface is waking us from a sweet dream: the fantasy world that Cueva de los Verdes holds in its heart.

Author: Alberto Santana

The ticket purchase to Cueva de los Verdes is exclusively online.