Icod de los Vinos Tenerife: First Impressions of a Properly Tired Traveller

There comes a point on every holiday journey when you start to question your life choices, and mine arrived somewhere over the Bay of Biscay at two in the morning, wedged between a snoring salesman and a broken air vent, wondering why I had packed three jumpers for Tenerife in March. Twelve hours, two delayed flights, and one spectacularly ill-advised airport sandwich later, I touched down at Tenerife South with the pallor of a supermarket mushroom and the energy levels of a sloth on sedatives.

The hire car pickup went smoothly enough, though I did spend a solid ten minutes trying to unlock someone else's Volkswagen Golf in the car park, much to the amusement of a family of German tourists who watched the whole performance without offering assistance. I like to think I provided them with some free entertainment after their own long journey. My actual vehicle, it turned out, was three rows further down and a completely different colour, which I discovered only when the rightful owner of the Golf appeared with a look of understandable concern.

The drive north to Icod de los Vinos took about an hour and wound through landscapes that slowly shook me out of my travel stupor. The south's dry, volcanic scrub gradually gave way to greener, more dramatic terrain as I climbed. Pine forests clung to hillsides, and every so often the Atlantic would flash into view between the valleys, that particular deep blue that makes you remember why you bothered with the airport sandwich after all. I rolled down the window and the air smelled of eucalyptus and something sweeter I could not quite place.

Icod itself announced itself with a charming jumble of traditional Canarian houses tumbling down hillsides, their wooden balconies painted in faded greens and terracottas. The town clearly predates the tourism boom by several centuries, which is precisely what drew me to it. No high-rise hotels here, just narrow cobbled streets and the occasional elderly gentleman walking his dog with the unhurried pace of someone who has absolutely nowhere else to be.

Finding the property proved another small adventure. My phone's mapping application and Icod's medieval street plan were not on speaking terms, and I executed three increasingly tight turns around the same plaza before spotting the discreet entrance between two flowering hibiscus bushes. I later learned this plaza hosts a small market on Sunday mornings, but at that moment it was gloriously empty except for a cat who watched my reversing manoeuvres with obvious professional criticism.

The key was exactly where promised, and I fumbled with the lock in that particular state of exhaustion where simple tasks become genuine challenges. The door swung open to reveal a traditional Canarian interior that immediately made the fumbling worthwhile. Thick stone walls, wooden beamed ceilings, and a small courtyard with potted plants that someone had clearly been tending with care. The air inside carried that faint, pleasant scent of clean linen and old wood. I dumped my bags in what I later discovered was actually the second bedroom, having missed the main one entirely in my depleted state.

The kitchen, when I found it, had everything arranged with the practical logic of a property that actually expects people to cook proper meals rather than just make toast. Fresh local coffee sat waiting in a tin, which I interpreted as either thoughtful hosting or evidence of a previous guest's forgetfulness. Either way, I was grateful.

I stepped out onto the small terrace as the afternoon light was beginning to soften, and there it was: a view straight down to the coastline, with banana plantations terraced below and the Drago Milenario, that famous thousand-year-old dragon tree, visible as a distinctive silhouette in the distance. The thing about Icod is that you are not just visiting a town; you are staying in a working agricultural community where wine and bananas have been cultivated since before anyone thought to build an airport.

That evening, I walked the five minutes to a small local restaurant recommended in the property's information folder, ate grilled fish that had presumably been swimming that morning, and drank a glass of white wine made from grapes grown on slopes I could see from my terrace. The waiter, sensing my exhaustion, did not attempt conversation beyond the essentials, for which I was profoundly grateful.

Back at the property, I fell asleep to the sound of distant church bells and something rustling in the courtyard plants, probably that judgmental cat from the plaza. Twelve hours earlier I had been trying to break into a stranger's car. Now I was horizontal in a four-hundred-year-old town with wine in my veins and absolutely nothing demanding my attention until morning. Some journeys, however undignified, are worth every single moment.