Some say these are the risen remains of Atlantis - the mythical sixth continent where people enjoyed a supreme civilisation until the sea swallowed them into the depths.
But even if Atlantis had never existed, even of it were not possible to sunbathe in the middle of December, even if we couldn’t spend Christmas on the beach...

Even if it were impossible to celebrate New Year with a warm swim off the coasts of Punta Papaguyo where it is always spring with temperatures of 26º C making life sweet and comfortable...
Even if Lanzarote weren’t a world so delicious and so different from everything we had seen in Spain, different even from the rest of these Fortunate Islands, as the Canaries are known...
Even if none of this were so, we would still feel as though we were not in another planet, rather in a different universe: the universe of Lanzarote.
This is the universe where we can walk over the volcanic cinders of the Mar de la Tranquilidad (Sea of Tranquillity) where time and space have paused beneath the volcano.
It is a universe ruled by the Timanfaya, not the biggest but certainly the most beautiful volcano I have ever seen.
We can breakfast by the sea in a pretty hotel on the Playa Blanca beach and walk out of the known world towards the National Park of the Volcanos where a camel can pass through the eye of a needle and take us into a sea of colours.
We can say goodbye to the old year with a roasted dinner in the kitchens of Pedro Botero, the Devil himself, a meal roasted on the heat of the Earth in the skirts of the mountain god.
On the summit of the Timanfaya the young lads dressed in typical costume throw buckets of water as an offering to the furious god of the Earth who immediately shows his anger by vomiting columns of water - the famous geysers of Timanfaya that delight the children.
We have ridden here on bicycles in order to savour the incredible beauty of these lands, impossible to find anywhere else, lands in which the colours of ceramics and those of the cinders come together to create new shades, a world as warm as the fire hidden in the heart of Lanzarote.
In the 17th century a great eruption changed forever the green fields we can still see in the north of the island. The earth opened at Yaiza to build a new universe.
The larva and the cinders drew a landscape that could have been the Moon or could have been Mars, but which is in fact the unique universe of Lanzarote.
Then Man created the Geria, the semi-circular walls so like an ancient forgotten city that protect the plants from the wind and make it possible to produce the wine of Malvasía, a gift of the earth that we can pause to enjoy in any of the inns that offer us their white and green welcome along the way.
For these are the colours of the island, white houses with green-painted window frames, spreading over this black earth like a Scottish kilt that will always remain in our heart.
Whoever comes here, comes back. Travellers from all over the world have come here and stayed for ever. Tías is the home of Nobel Literature Prize winner José Saramago, and the famous writer of Vázquez Figueroa who from his base here is developing a plan to bring orchards back to the Sahara desert.
Sometimes the winds carry in sands from the desert, which the camels that lollop across the dunes of the National Park of the Volcanos breathe in greedily.
It is a unique eco-system. Indeed, since 1994 Lanzarote has been recognised by UNESCO as a Reserve of the Biosphere and it continues to offer a unique opportunity to combine ecological tourism with marvellous beaches.
Under the shadow of the Tropic of Cancer and washed by the Gulf Stream, these beaches await us all year round with their sand open to the Atlantic.
Lanzarote is also an underwater paradise with some of the best diving areas in the Atlantic, undoubtedly one of the best spots in Europe to discover the treasures Neptune hides in the water.
Yet Lanzarote is not only the daughter of fire and water, also of Man... from the uneducated but defiant landworkers who built the Geria to the refined and cosmopolitan people who have made this island one of the most attractive places in the world.
The great architect César Manrique saw Lanzarote as a giant open-air museum and he enriched it with unique monuments that blend into the landscape and make it into something we have never seen before.
In the far north, the Mirador del Río looks out at the islands of the Archipiélago Chinijo: La Graciosa, Alegranza, Montaña Clara and the eastern and western Roques, converted into stars in the lunar sky of Lanzarote.
Los Jameos del Agua, near the Cueva de los Verdes, is an original cocktail of caves, water, sky and the talent of Manrique.
The skill of the brilliant architect can be seen all over the island. Even the home of the artist, now the Fundación César Manrique, is an exponent of life in another world, in the paradise world he created in Lanzarote.

But nature also helped. In the Gulf we can eat the best shellfish in the world on the lava terrace of a strange sea, like the sea at the end of the world, and look up at the enigma of the Laguna Verde. This was a volcanic cone and is now a mysterious landscape of lava and foam.
Near by, Los Hervidores show us the fury and the beauty of the sea, as though the mermaids in Neptune’s cauldrons were jealous of the beauty of the universe under the volcano.
We could lose ourselves for ever in the Acantilados de Fámara cliffs, lose ourselves and discover that Atlantis exists or that we ourselves truly exist.
Because in the white foam of the water that boils around the black lava there is written the secret of the whitest and most extraordinary Christmas.