The problem of the beautiful prison
Lanzarote is a wonderful island, and for me, that’s a big problem.
Many years ago, I was here with a friend, and she said something that stuck with me: “You told me this was paradise, and of course I believed you—the photos you showed me were incredible. But now I realize I could never truly grasp just how much until I got here. No matter how many pictures you see or stories you hear, you can’t understand the beauty of this island until you’re standing on it.”
Picture a place with spectacular volcanic landscapes, endless beaches, one of the best climates in the world—averaging around 18°C in the depths of winter and 28°C in the height of summer—about 340 days of sunshine a year, low humidity, and hardly any rain. Tourism is limited and carefully managed to protect the island, safety is top-notch, infrastructure and connectivity are on par with mainland Europe, and there’s stunning beauty in every direction you look. Anyone would want to live in a place like that, right?
In terms of pure quality of life, it’s hard to beat Lanzarote. If all I wanted was a comfortable bubble in a luxurious paradise—if I didn’t have a bigger plan for the final chapter of my life—I could say I’ve got it all. I live in a small, quiet apartment in a beautiful spot surrounded by nature, I have a remote job with no fixed hours or commitments, and I can afford a minimalist, simple lifestyle. It’s the dream for a lot of people.
But none of that appeals to me. Lanzarote doesn’t matter to me—I want to become a ghost. I want to drift among people who don’t know me, who don’t care about me, and who won’t remember me. The kind of solitude I’m after isn’t physical isolation in a place with no one around; it’s the feeling you only get when you’re surrounded by crowds, yet walking among them without really being there. I want to view the world from another dimension, using photography as my only real link to it, and document my journey into nothingness on this blog.
As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, I’m stuck in my home country until I retire in about 15 years, so my bigger goals have to wait for now. The only thing I can do toward this project is gain some partial experience: save what I can, travel when possible, and piece together what a full ghost life might feel like, learning from each trip. I’ll keep sharing what I discover in future posts.
The photos with this post were taken this morning. This winter has been unusually cold (“cold”) and rainy (“rainy”) here—nothing like it has been seen since the 1980s—and since the forecast said this stretch of bad weather was ending today, I headed out with my camera after breakfast. I spent a couple of hours driving around, deliberately avoiding the most famous tourist spots and just stopping to shoot whenever something caught my eye.
I’m no landscape photographer, the sun and blue sky haven’t fully returned yet so the light wasn’t great, and the ground is greener than I like after all the rain instead of the usual desert tones. But I think these shots do give a sense of what Lanzarote looks like away from the visitor hotspots. If you want to see the more famous areas, click here.