Playa Blanca's position at the southern end of Lanzarote makes it a reasonable base for exploring the island, though everything requires a car or organised tour.
Timanfaya National Park, about 40 kilometres north, is the island's signature sight — a vast landscape of volcanic craters and lava fields from the 1730–36 eruptions, still thermally active. The park buses take visitors along a looping route through the most dramatic terrain and rangers demonstrate the heat by pouring water into the ground and igniting brushwood. Allow most of a day.
El Golfo, on the west coast, is worth the drive for its extraordinary crater lake — the Charco de los Clicos — which turns bright green from the algae it contains and sits beside a black volcanic beach. Combine it with a stop at the Jameos del Agua, an underground cave system carved by lava, where a brackish lagoon hosts a population of blind albino crabs found nowhere else on earth. The Jameos complex was designed by local artist César Manrique and is one of the most impressive things in Lanzarote.
From the ferry terminal in town, Corralejo on Fuerteventura is 35 minutes away and gives access to the Corralejo dunes, a large protected dune system on the north coast of that island.