'Don't stand still,' warns Manolo, our guide, 'your shoes might melt.'
Nervous smiles, shifting feet, I can feel the heat on my big toe.
'Here,' says Manolo, as he scrapes lava grit from the surface. 'If you can hold it for a minute, you can keep it.'
I hold out both hands but give up on the count of 10.
Timanfaya is awesome; temperatures can reach 140 degrees Celsius just 10cm below ground and, above, there are hectares of 'bad lands' created by eruptions. The last one was in 1824, though I would not trust a dormant volcano, let alone a full range of them on a Canary island. Timanfaya National Park is no place to wander around on your own. Dig a hole, pour in a few drops of water and up comes a mini-geyser, sprinkle a little brushwood on it and it catches alight instantly.
Manolo shows us his tricks but if we want to see more, we must board a luxury coach and crawl along a single-lane road, which meanders between dark lava walls before ascending to the top of the world, looking down on a sea of craters. Amid the crumbling slopes and teetering rocks, I hold my breath and am lulled by the sound of new-age music. I daydream about Journey to the Centre of the Earth. We hear about the local priest who braved six years of eruptions to keep a daily record and Nasa, which studied the terrain when it was designing the lunar buggy.