Tenerife: Feeling the glow at a rejuvenating yoga retreat in the sun

“It was wonderful,” she said. “You have to go; you’d love it.”

She gave me the run-down and it sounded good, but being a natural procrastinator I did nothing about it until she booked herself in for another six days the following April, and came back with yet another glow.

At this stage, I thought I should probably investigate, so went online and read all the ins and outs, and decided to give it a whirl. I booked a retreat in November, paid my deposit, and sat back to wait out the six months.

I had discovered yoga many years earlier in San Francisco (surprise, surprise) when I had taken a one-year career break from my teaching job and relocated to the US to see if I could write a book — something that had been prodding at me for a while — and I’d opted for San Francisco because one of my brothers lived there, and he was happy to take me in (happy or coerced into, I forget which).

Within a week I’d joined one of the many, many yoga studios in the city, and pretty much every day after my bout of writing I would stroll the few blocks with my newly acquired mat and take part in a class. 

Over the year I spent there I must have tried pretty much every type of yoga there was, including Bikram (the less said about that, the better).

In the years following my return to Ireland I dipped in and out of yoga, and found some classes I liked and others I didn’t.

I’m not fanatical, and I’m certainly no expert, but I do love a good old stretch every now and again, and I find a spinal twist in particular wonderfully satisfying, even if it sounds like a form of medieval torture. 

Yoga, well taught, certainly irons out the kinks, and now I was looking forward to diving a little deeper into it.

About two weeks before the trip, the retreat director created a WhatsApp group and put us all into it, so we could get somewhat acquainted before meeting up. 

Of the eight who had booked the trip, four were Scottish, one English, two Irish, and one from the Netherlands, and all of us were female.

The villa hosting the retreat was just 15 minutes from Tenerife South airport, so not hugely expensive if you had to travel alone in a taxi, but as luck would have it the traveller from the Netherlands was landing around the same time as me, so we agreed to meet up in the arrivals hall and share a taxi to our destination.

It was early evening by the time we arrived. This was the day before the official start of the retreat — an option offered by the centre to facilitate guests who couldn’t get a morning flight on the day itself. 

I was glad to avail of it, flights from Shannon to Tenerife being pretty thin on the ground. Of course the early arrival cost extra, but I reckoned it was worth it to be in at the start.

The villa had about seven bedrooms, capable of sleeping a dozen or so. We were welcomed by the director, Dominic, and his adorable little dog Carl (team mascot and strategic advisor, according to the website). 

Good smells wafted from the kitchen. We were shown to our rooms and left to settle in before dinner.

I’d booked a room on my own, which was obviously the most expensive option, but being a hopeless sleeper prone to reading in the small hours, I couldn’t inflict myself on anyone else.

My double room was spotless, with a big ensuite and a view of the mountains, so I was happily unpacking when Carl trotted in to make sure I had all I needed, and took the opportunity for a few jumps on my bed while he was there. 

We’d been told on arrival that he was a disgrace for stealing some Werther’s Originals from another room earlier, so I made sure to keep the Bailey’s chocolate bars I’d brought along to share safely zipped in my rucksack.

Dinner was magnificent, a spread of vegetarian delights, one more tasty than the next. We helped ourselves, and went back for more. The icing on the cake? Wine. 

Yes, folks, unlimited wine at a yoga retreat — and it didn’t come out of a carafe that could hold any old plonk at all; this was proper wine in real bottles, a choice of red or white, and within that, a choice of grape. 

Of course, thinking of the first yoga class at 9.30 in the morning for whoever was around kept me on the straight and narrow, but it was still very nice to linger in candlelight with a glass of what tasted like a very fine red.

We met the other staff members, a trio of lovely young kitchen volunteers, all yoga enthusiasts, who kept house in return for their board and the classes, and the two yoga teachers who would guide us through the week — and midway through the meal the Scottish contingent arrived, so we were a merry bunch for the rest of the evening.

The breakfast was just as magnificent as the dinner. All sorts of fresh tropical fruits, cereals, eggs, mountains of yogurt, breads galore, ingenious (and always delicious) hash-brown type thingies fashioned from dinner leftovers, and juices, teas, and coffees to beat the band.

Right through the retreat we were fed royally, and never served the same evening dishes twice. There was always plenty to go around, with the volunteers dashing about making sure we had everything we needed.

One evening we had a Mexican-themed dinner, with sombreros at every place setting and a giant vat of sangria — and yes, Carl sported a mini sombrero as he hunted on the floor for anything dropped.

The daily yoga was great: An energetic orning Vinyasa session with Gosia in the garden before breakfast (even at 9.30am we were pulling our mats into the shade) and a glorious candlelit restorative Yin class with gentle Aroa, just before dinner. We breakfasted al fresco at a long table on the patio, and dined indoors.

I struck it lucky with my fellow participants. They were all wonderful company, with interesting tales to tell and lots of chat that kept us at the dinner table until long into the night, and the Scottish crew in particular often had us in stitches. 

One night they challenged me and the other Irishwoman to a dance-off, and I was very relieved to discover that everyone had the same left feet as I did. We declared a tie after some exuberant (and probably potentially dangerous) twirling and high kicking, none of it remotely Celtic.

Included in the retreat price were daily excursions, all optional, but everyone went everywhere. We packed up lunches from the mountain of offerings — salads, fruit, tortilla — and Dominic piled us into his people carrier, and Carl always came along for the ride. We hiked down into the Masca Valley, and jumped the waves at a secret hippy beach, and marvelled at the majestic volcano in the Teide National Park.

The day before we all went our separate ways, our excursion began later. Dominic brought us in the late afternoon to a different part of the National Park, with volunteers and yoga teachers following in a car, and we hiked to the top of a ridge that overlooked a sprawling valley of pine trees and the nearby island of La Gomera. 

Aroa led us through a brief meditation before we cracked open the usual delicious food and a few bottles of sparkling wine, and Dominic produced a ukulele and led us in a singsong.

And then the singing faded as we sat and watched the sun setting spectacularly right in front of us, and for once nobody cracked a joke, and even this most practical of beings felt quite emotional. It really was a magical experience, being so up close and personal with Mother Nature.

Next day we were all a little quieter, everyone seeming genuinely sorry that our time together was over. When we went back to our rooms after breakfast someone had left us goodie bags to snack on in the airport, and little personalised poems based on what we’d shared of our backgrounds during the retreat.

“What did you think?” my pal asked on my return. “Was it as good as I said?”

“No,” I told her. “It was better."

• Moving On by Roisin Meaney is out now.

Escape Notes

• Bliss Yoga Retreats: Santa Cruz de Tenerife. blissyogaretreats.co.uk
• Aer Lingus flies from Cork and Dublin to Tenerife South Airport. aerlingus.com
• Ryanair flies from Cork, Dublin and Shannon to Tenerife South Airport. ryanair.com