The Most Beautiful Water Wonders in the Canary Islands
5 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful water wonders in the Canary Islands are Lanzarote, La Gomera and La Palma. The list covers 5 lakes, waterfalls, islands and beaches. Last updated 14 October 2026.
The Canary Islands are volcanoes rising from the Atlantic off the coast of Africa, and every one of their water landscapes reflects that origin. Black and golden sands, lagoons in eroded craters, laurel forests fed by trade-wind clouds and cliffs dropping straight into the ocean all come from the meeting of young volcanic rock with a restless sea. Each island has a character of its own, which is why the islands themselves stand among the sights here.
Lanzarote was reshaped by the Timanfaya eruptions of the 1730s, which covered a large part of the island in lava fields; the artist César Manrique later worked to keep its architecture low and white against the dark ground. La Gomera, rounder and greener, is crowned by the laurel forest of Garajonay and is known for Silbo Gomero, a whistled language used to talk across its deep ravines. La Palma, steep and high, holds the vast Caldera de Taburiente and the observatories of the Roque de los Muchachos.
On the shore of Lanzarote at El Golfo, Charco Verde is a lagoon of vivid green water inside a volcanic crater half eaten away by the sea, set against black sand. In the far south of Fuerteventura, the Playa de Cofete runs for kilometres along the foot of the Jandía mountains, one of the wildest beaches in the islands.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lanzarote | Island | |
| 2 | La Gomera | Island | |
| 3 | La Palma | Island | |
| 4 | Charco Verde | Lagoon | |
| 5 | Playa de Cofete | Beach |
01 Lanzarote
Spain · 12 km from Arrecife29.035° N 13.635° W
Bybbisch94, Christian Gebhardt · CC BY-SA 4.0 What makes Lanzarote unusual among volcanic islands is that one artist got to decide, almost single-handedly, how the island would present that landscape to the world.
Did you know? A lava tube from Monte Corona, formed about 3,000 years ago, runs some 6 km inland and continues roughly 1.5 km under the sea as the so-called Tunnel of Atlantis.
02 La Gomera
Spain28.115° N 17.225° W
Image by guayota from Pixabay The summit plateau catches moisture from the trade-wind clouds and is often wrapped in mist. Here survives laurisilva, a dense laurel rainforest, protected as Garajonay National Park, a World Heritage Site since 1986 and the first in the Canaries. The whole island became a biosphere reserve in 2012. Among its rarities is the La Gomera giant lizard, thought extinct until a small population was found on the cliffs in 1999.
03 La Palma
Spain28.660° N 17.860° W
Image by b_gofron from Pixabay At the heart of the north lies the Caldera de Taburiente, a vast amphitheatre some nine kilometres across and up to 1,500 metres deep, ringed by cliffs and drained by a single gorge, the Barranco de las Angustias. Protected as a national park since 1954, it is where the German geologist Leopold von Buch, visiting in 1815, helped bring the Spanish word caldera into the language of science.
Did you know? The whole island was declared a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 2002.
04 Charco Verde
Spain · 28.3 km from Arrecife28.977° N 13.828° W
Chrumps · CC BY-SA 4.0 The lagoon is roughly 100 metres long and covers about 7,100 square metres, running parallel to the shoreline. It formed in an old volcanic crater that subsided under its own weight and was invaded by the sea; the crater rim, whose last eruption dates to the eighteenth century, still rises as a curved wall of layered rock on the eastern side. The pool is fed by seawater seeping through the beach rather than by an open channel.
Did you know? The black beach that separates the lagoon from the ocean is about 320 metres long and around 30 metres wide.
05 Playa de Cofete
Spain28.112° N 14.390° W
dronepicr · CC BY 2.0 The whole landscape lies within the Jandía Natural Park, and it feels empty in the best sense. The light changes constantly as clouds catch on the ridge; the wind is a near-permanent presence, combing the sand into ripples and streaming spray off the breakers. Along the shore the eye is drawn to El Islote, a small rocky cape that breaks the long line of the beach, while in the other direction the sand continues as the beach of Barlovento.
Did you know? Gustav Winter, born in 1893 in Germany's Black Forest, had worked in Spain since 1915; the land is reputed to have been granted to him by Franco.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful water wonders in the Canary Islands?
- On our list, Lanzarote ranks first, followed by La Gomera and La Palma.
- Why are the Canary Islands volcanic?
- The islands were built by volcanic activity on the Atlantic seafloor, usually explained by a hotspot beneath the African plate. The western islands are generally younger and still active, as eruptions on La Palma and El Hierro have shown.
- Why is Charco Verde in Lanzarote green?
- The colour comes from microscopic algae living in the lagoon, which is fed by seawater filtering through the volcanic sand. The green contrasts sharply with the black beach and red crater walls.
- What is Silbo Gomero?
- It is a whistled form of Spanish used on La Gomera to communicate across deep valleys. UNESCO recognised it as Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2009, and it is taught in the island's schools.
- How many lakes, waterfalls, islands and beaches are on this list in the Canary Islands?
- The list covers 5 lakes, waterfalls, islands and beaches.