Otro Mundo. Lanzarote Stories. Introduction

Some people fall in love with Lanzarote at first sight.

The road through northern Lanzarote — where Otro Mundo begins.

Others arrive, look around and see only volcanic rock, wind and a landscape that feels almost lunar.

And no matter how many photographs they see, how many articles they read or how many times others try to explain it, they never quite understand the fascination.

Perhaps that is because Lanzarote is not an island that can be explained.

We first came to Lanzarote because of cycling, drawn by Ironman Lanzarote, often considered one of the toughest triathlons in the world after Kona and something of a Mecca for endurance athletes. At the time, we knew very little about the island itself and certainly never imagined that one day we would end up living here.

Looking back, it is difficult to say exactly when it started.

The island did not reveal itself all at once.

It happened slowly.

The stories collected here are not a guide to Lanzarote. They are moments, encounters, places and memories that, over the years, helped us see the island differently.

Some begin along Lanzarote’s cycling routes. Others in the villages of the north, around a table, by the ocean, on an old path, or in conversations that were never planned. Some belong to us. Others belong to people whose lives crossed ours for only a moment.

Perhaps some of these stories will feel familiar. Perhaps your Lanzarote will be completely different.

And that is precisely the point.

Over the years, we came to realise that there is not one Lanzarote, but many. The island each visitor discovers depends on the roads they choose, the people they meet, the questions they ask and the experiences they allow themselves to have.

Casitas Santa Rita grew out of that same idea: to create a quiet starting point from which curiosity could take over. A place to slow down, look around and allow the island to reveal itself in its own time.

The stories here follow that same instinct.

They are not here to tell you what to see.

Perhaps they will simply make you look twice.

Because maybe that is what Otro Mundo means to us.

Not another world.

But another way of seeing the same one.