In this article we will help you to find the best travel guides for Lanzarote in the Canary Islands to suite your needs. Not all travel guides are equal, and what you might be looking for in a travel guide is not always the same for everyone. Hopefully our guide will help you to make up your mind as to which one(s) best match your needs.
Do I actually need to buy a Lanzarote travel guide?
Are you are visiting Lanzarote and plan to stay in a resort, just taking organised tours to locations on the island? In that case, you probably don’t need to buy a travel guide. You would be better off looking at some web sites that give details about places to visit on the island, and where the organised tours take you to. There are a number of websites that have useful and interesting information about the island, and we have listed some later in this article.
If you are like me, I at least like a map of where I am visiting, so when I do go places I can visualise them on the map and get an idea of what the area is like. I guess you are, since you are here, and wouldn’t be searching for information about travel guides for Lanzarote if you weren’t interested!
What are your travel interests?
The main question when determining what type of travel guide you want is “what are your travel interests“?
Are you looking to spend most of your holiday in Lanzarote lying on the beach and take the occasional sightseeing trip? Are you looking to rent a car and explore the island on your own? Maybe you are looking to do a cycle tour of the island, and during our last visit we saw a lot of cyclists, we weren’t envious of some of the hills that they had to conquer though! Are you interested in snorkelling or scuba diving, or surfing? Or maybe you are just interested in delving into local culture and sampling local food and drink, and cultural events.
Lanzarote Tour & Trail Map
Most guidebooks only have small maps with little detail, however this one is not only large and aimed at those people who want to go on walking or cycling tours on the island, it’s also durable and waterproof, with concertina folds, and it’s double sided as well.
Lanzarote is becoming increasingly popular with cyclists, and the government have been working on making popular cycling routes on the island safer for cyclists. The island also has a number of walking trails which provide great scenic views that you just can’t get from being in a car or on a tour bus.
So whether you are planning to walk, cycle or just tour the island by car, this is probably the best detailed map that you will find.
You can order this map on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.
Lanzarote Car Tours & Walks
The drives and walks in the book are accompanied by detailed maps of the routes as well as photographs taken along the routes.
If you are going to drive around the island or to go on walks, we highly recommend this guide, which you can order on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.
To help you make up your mind if this is going to be useful to you or not, here are a few pages from the book so you can see some of the maps, photographs and the detailed descriptions of the drives and walks.
Berlitz Lanzarote & Fuerteventura Pocket Guide
The book gives a brief history of the islands, as well as the main places to visit and the sights to see in each area of the island.
While this is a useful guide if you just want to learn a bit more about Lanzarote, to help you to know more the location where you are staying or the places that you are going to visit on tours, we personally found that it didn’t provide enough detail for us, as we knew that we would be driving around the island on our own and taking walks off the beaten track.
This guide, however, being small, is perfect for slipping into your pocket so that you can read up on places that you visit without having to carry it in your hand.
You can order this guide on Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.
Other Travel Guides For Lanzarote
You can find a number of other travel guides and maps for Lanzarote as well as the other Canary Islands on both Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.
Free maps of the island
Most hotels and resorts anywhere you go also have free maps that you can pick up.
The Lanzarote Guide Map below is one that we picked up somewhere in Lanzarote, probably at a McDonalds in Arrecife, given the large advert for them on the map and the pointers to their locations on the island.
Despite having purchased a couple of guidebooks before our trip, we used this free map of the island quite a lot during our stay, as it was detailed enough for driving around, although we did still manage to get lost a couple of times.
The free guide map also has a list of events on the island and is updated every month. I do wish however that we could have been there in Arrecife on Valentines Day for some reason…
Finding your way around Lanzarote
Lanzarote is a fairly small island, and fortunately there are not a lot of main roads. All are well signposted, have a good road surface, and due to the government restricting new building development on the island, pretty much all the roads that will be required in the next decade and beyond have already been built. As a result, maps are unlikely to change dramatically in the next few years, so if you find a guidebook that is a year or two old, it should still be reasonably current.
We found the traffic on the island to be fairly light, the only traffic jams that we did experience were in Arrecife in the old town. Now I know how to navigate places like this, with lots of back alleys and one way streets, but we got horribly lost in the old town, and eventually gave up. Unless you wish to visit the old forts that guard the harbour, do what one travel guide recommended to us, and give Arrecife a wide berth!
Renting a car in Lanzarote
Car rental in Lanzarote isn’t as cheap as some locations in Europe, but it’s not horrendously expensive either. Renting a car from your hotel or resort however can be expensive. If you are looking to rent a car for all or the majority of your stay, it’s a lot cheaper to rent from the airport.
Where to find more information about Lanzarote
Below are some of the best websites and articles that we have found that give some useful information about Lanzarote. The include details about the island and it’s history, as well as the most popular tourist destinations and attractions on the island:
- Arrival Guides – Lanzarote
- Responsible Travel – Lanzarote Travel Guide
- The Wandering Lens – Lanzarote Photography Locations
- Oliver’s Travels – The Locals Guide To Authentic Lanzarote
- Trip Advisor – Things To Do In Lanzarote
- Conde Naste Traveller – Lanzarote
We also invite you to take a look at the rest of our articles in the Lanzarote series, where you can visit various locations with us and get some personalised views of what this beautiful island has to offer.
