Playa Blanca is Lanzarote’s tourist resort in the south. It enjoys a wonderfully mild, stable microclimate and boasts a wide range of accommodation, a lovely seafront promenade, restaurants, small coves, the original village, the Marina Rubicón marina and shopping centres.
The resort was formed around a small fishing village and its beach called Playa Blanca, on the south coast of the municipal region of Yaiza. With the advent of tourism at the beginning of the 1970s, it became a popular destination for visitors who loved its good sea conditions, fishing and proximity to Fuerteventura. As hotels and residential areas began to be built, the number of restaurants, shops and leisure facilities also began to grow.
Although it’s further away from the capital and the airport, it is closer to stunning Timanfaya, El Golfo and Los Hervideros. At one end of the resort stands the Pechiguera lighthouse, whilst at the other, an ancient defensive fortification (1769) called Castillo de las Coloradas or Torre del Águila. Today, these structures blend in with the urban landscape.
Playa Blanca has two ports. Puerto Limones, the fishing and commercial port where the ferries that link Lanzarote with Fuerteventura dock, where you’ll find other tourist, commercial and leisure boats. The second, the Marina Rubicón, is right at the other end of the resort on what used to be Berrugo beach. It was built in the early years of the new millennium and is a hub of tourist activity that promotes Playa Blanca itself, Yaiza municipality and Lanzarote.
Hotels continued to be built along the coast, so Playa Blanca now boasts two five-star luxury hotels: the Princesa Yaiza and the Meliá Volcán, as well as numerous four-star hotels and many apartment complexes further inland. There are residential areas, villas, luxury bungalows, and townhouses all with their own swimming pool, a commercial park at the entrance to the resort, shopping centres and a bus station. Recently, the Aqualava water park opened, promising fun for all the family.
A seafront promenade stretches eleven kilometres along the coast, taking you past the small beach at the heart of the village as well as several small white sandy coves that were once dominated by ancient lava flows. Just beyond Playa Blanca, but very close by, lie the spectacular series of sandy coves at Papagayo.
