Tales of the Urban Explorer: Hotel Atlante del Sol

Before embarking on our winter break to Lanzarote in January 2020, I checked to see if there were any Urban Explores worthy of a visit.

'Hotel Atlante del Sol' or 'Hotel en Ruinas' as it's now marked on Google maps was the most interesting and pronounced of anything I could find.

Next is a little history. Just why is there a huge abandoned hotel next to a remote beauty spot with little or no roads to get there?

The last point is not strictly correct as I would find out on arriving.

The hotel was abandoned in the early seventies and there are several different stories as to what went wrong with the project. The most popular is that a wealthy German wanted to create a golf resort.

After building had begun on the centrepiece hotel, it became apparent that landscaping and growing grass on the barren area was totally unfeasible.

Another version is that the hotel was built without planning permission and the developer would have had to pay a fine of many millions of pesetas to continue with the building.

Yet another says that there were two partners involved, one of whom disappeared with most of the capital leaving the other in the lurch.

South of the location is now a development of new roads that we may not have been allowed to drive on (but did anyway). This brought 'Hotel Atlante del Sol' into visibility range though it was still a decent walk to get there.

…'technically you can drive your rental car down through this sea of potholes, but I thought better of it'…

Initially, I was concerned about the 'other building' to the left of our target. Was this a guardhouse to deter the unwary; did they have guns and were going to shoot at us?

Looking at the bleak landscape that resembles something like the moon I would say we would have little chance of getting away if this was the case.

Another couple of people were heading for the hotel which gave me a little comfort. Safety in numbers, maybe the guards would fire at them first?

It took seemingly forever to reach ‘Hotel Atlante del Sol’, with each step bringing this mass of a hulking wreck closer to us.

I could see a fence surrounding the outside, but with many holes and breaks in it. No problem with access then.

The other people avoided the hotel and went straight for ‘Los Charcones’, the picturesque cliffs, rocks, and waves on the coastline next to the hotel.

I headed through the fencing to take a closer look at what had taken 30 minutes to get here on foot.

You can’t expect many relics from something that’s been left for getting on 50 years and that’s how it presented itself.

Huge, empty, dusty and I suppose these were bedrooms once?

Is this the emergency water for arriving summer visitors? It looked OK but I didn't take a swig.

Just about everywhere we looked there was graffiti, some of it better than others.

@bingbabe was brave enough to come with me on this one and didn't feel any bad vibes or feel threatened. It's so far out of the way you can guarantee there's nobody here but you.

My initial image of this hotel was some crazy bastards inside chasing me out, and @bingbabe driving away with me clutching the back bumper, feet dragging and kicking up dust.

This is as far from the truth as anything, and I would recommend this one to anyone with any interest. After arriving we noticed a road just north of the hotel with plenty of people looking over with curiosity.

..'are they looking at us, or the spectacle?'...

I'm sure that road was not accessible previously, and we had walked all this way for nothing, total bummer!

This owl was a bit special. Someone had taken some time to draw him.

I had read in another report that squatters had moved in but I never had the feeling they were still here.

It wasn’t too hard to find, the small ladders giving things away all too easily.

…’This is the boss’s private room, fully furnished and the best in the hotel’…

There’s even a door that closes and bedding, though I found nobody wanting to lie on them.

A beautiful view is there for you in the mornings, just open the door or better still peer through the broken glass.

Bringing kids here is a little much, not just kids but babies?

Some of the remains I would say are the original ones. There's little left from the '70s.

We spent around 45 minutes rummaging around ‘Hotel Atlante del Sol’ and it was a most enjoyable explore.

Another huge walk was in front of us after we were finished. The car was so far away we couldn't see it. I wouldn't like to do this in the summer.

Don’t do what we did. Find the road north of the hotel and drive down to the coast. It’s a shit potholed road, but usable if you're careful.

• Earn Passive Manna by simply signing up for it here. Mannabase is a Universal Basic Income Cryptocurrency
• Earn STEEM and digital cards while playing STEEM Monsters, the best game on the STEEM Blockchain here.
• Earn JSECoin buy simply creating an account and Mine while you browse here
  

If you found this article so invigorating that you are now a positively googly-eyed, drooling lunatic with dripping saliva or even if you liked it just a bit, then please upvote, comment, resteem, engage me or all of these things.