It all made sense the next morning when I discovered that the bar was designed by Manrique as part of a bachelor pad for Omar Sharif. Legend has it the actor lost it in a card game.
For all the revisionism about the newly chic Canaries, however, you wouldn't come to Lanzarote for the nightlife. The unprepossessing capital, Arrecife, has a reasonable number of bars and clubs but it's all chart-toppers and teenagers. A better way to spend an evening is tasting fresh fish at the small, sweet strip of restaurants at El Golfo, where there is a lagoon of emerald water - another exotic natural feature courtesy of those overactive volcanoes.
My favorite meal out was at El Charcon, a simple waterside restaurant in the fishing village of Arrieta that served up excellent papas arrugadas y mojo, local salted potatoes with the fantastic, ubiquitous green and red pepper and garlic dips. While tapas isn't a specialty here, there are lots of restaurants serving simple and fresh food in Lanzarote's small towns; instead of the imported steak, I enjoyed a huge thick cut of the local goat, tender and slightly smoky in taste.
The best surprise of all in Lanzarote, however, is the cat litter. Dark charcoal and gray, it also comes in ochre, pink and yellow. Close up, the earth of the island is sprinkled with subtle desert plants, or scrunched into spectacular rock formations. From a distance, it gives the striking volcanoes of Lanzarote's Timanfaya national park a stark, unfinished beauty. The package holiday industry could not possibly spoil it.
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