Playa de San Marcos is a small bay below Icod de los Vinos, on Tenerife’s north coast: about 160 metres of black volcanic sand, cliffs on both sides, and a seafront of white buildings facing the Atlantic. It is where our apartment is, and it is a genuinely small place.
The bay
The shape of it is the point. Most of this coast is exposed rock taking the full weight of the Atlantic. San Marcos sits in a gap between two headlands, which shelters it — this is the calmest and safest swimming for a considerable distance, and it is lifeguarded in season.
The sand is black because the island is volcanic and the sand is pulverised basalt. It gets hot underfoot by mid-afternoon, and the sand gives way to pebble and rock at the edges, which is why water shoes matter here and why there are pairs in the box on our balcony.
What is actually in the village
Not much, and that is the appeal:
- Amarca and Casa Chicha on the seafront, both fish restaurants, both a few minutes’ walk downhill
- Bar Brisamar across from the beach for a drink after dinner
- Club Náutico — members-only pool, but the bar and cafeteria are open to anyone and cheaper than the seafront
- A small supermarket and a pharmacy, side by side, for the things you forgot
That is the whole commercial life of the place. Everything else — the supermarkets, the good restaurants in Garachico, the walks — is a short drive.
Getting around from here
The village sits below Icod de los Vinos, and the relationship between the two shapes most days. Icod, eight minutes up the hill, has the supermarkets, the pharmacy chain, the dragon tree and two traditional restaurants. You go up for the practical things and come back down.
The genuinely good news is what you can do on foot. The coastal path to Garachico takes about an hour through banana terraces and needs no car at all, and the walk down from Icod turns a shopping trip into an outing.
What it is like in the evening
Quiet. The restaurants fill and then empty, the bar stays open a while, and after that it is the sound of the sea. There is no nightlife here in any sense a resort visitor would recognise.
Most of our guests book precisely because of that, and the ones who want more drive twenty-five minutes to Puerto de la Cruz.