The best hour of the day: where to drink while the sun drops into the Atlantic

There is one thing worth knowing on your first day on Lanzarote, and almost nobody says it: the sun drops into the Atlantic to the west and south-west. Which means Puerto del Carmen, Costa Teguise and Arrecife — where most of the bars are — face the wrong way. There you sense the sunset; you do not see it.

The places that face the right way are few, and always the same ones. They are worth the twenty-minute drive.

Famara, if you want sand under your feet

This is the finest sunset on the island, and it is not even close. The sun goes down behind the ocean while the Famara massif — six hundred metres of cliff at your back — turns gold and then red. You walk barefoot along the shoreline with a glass in your hand and you understand why people move here.

Bring a jumper. Famara is the windiest place on the island, and the moment the sun goes the temperature drops.

El Golfo, if you want the strangest landscape

Here the lava flow from Timanfaya runs almost into the sea, and at sunset something happens that has to be seen: the black stone turns copper. For a quarter of an hour the whole coast changes colour.

El Golfo has the practical advantage that matters: it is a small fishing village with a row of restaurants along the seafront. You do not have to sit on a rock — you sit at a table, with the fish in front of you and the show straight ahead.

Marina Rubicón, if you want it easy

In Playa Blanca, the marina and its terraces are the no-complications version: parking, a walk among the boats, somewhere to sit, and the sun going down over the water. It is the right call when you do not fancy driving to Famara, and with children it works better than anything else.

Janubio and the Pechiguera lighthouse, if you want to be alone

The Janubio salt pans at sunset are one of the least photographed and most striking sights on Lanzarote: the rectangles of water take the colour of the sky, and for a few minutes the whole saltworks becomes a pink mirror. A little further on, the Pechiguera lighthouse has an entirely clear horizon.

There is no table service out there: this is the bottle-in-the-rucksack sunset, with two glasses brought from home. Which, on certain evenings, is exactly what you want.

And if you stay in town

In Puerto del Carmen, on the Avenida de las Playas, Café la Ola has a pool and a lounge area built for precisely that hour. You will not have the sun falling into the sea in front of you, but you will have the right light, a decent cocktail and nobody asking when you are giving up the table.

Two rules

Arrive an hour early. The good part of a sunset is not the instant the sun touches the water: it is the forty minutes before, when the light drops and everything turns warmer. Turn up at the last moment and you miss the best of it and find the tables taken.

In October the sun goes early. We are already below eight in the evening, losing a few minutes a week: check the day's time before you set out, because reaching Famara twenty minutes late means you made the drive for nothing.