One Week in Lanzarote in February: Winter Sun, a Fiat Panda and an Honest Itinerary
We went to Lanzarote because we were tired.
Not the kind of tired that can be fixed with one quiet Sunday and an early night.
It had been a difficult period for both of us. There had been too much work, too many responsibilities and rather too much Polish winter.
By February, we were no longer asking for summer.
Spring would do.
A little sun. A little warmth. A few days when getting dressed did not require strategic layering.
So we booked a week in Lanzarote.
We chose a package holiday with a travel agency and all-inclusive at the hotel. We did not want to compare flights, organise transfers or create a spreadsheet.
We wanted somebody else to deal with the practical details while we concentrated on the demanding business of breathing normally again.
That was the plan.
Table of Contents
We booked an Active Resort to avoid activity
We stayed at Barceló Lanzarote Active Resort.
In hindsight, the clue was right there in the name.
Active Resort.
Somehow, we simply chose not to notice it.
We are both active in everyday life. Monika and I are not frightened of exercise. But this particular week was supposed to involve walking, sightseeing, lying in the sun and absolutely no organised effort.
Then morning came.
By around 6:30, people were already running, swimming and training. The hotel had a large pool, a gym, stationary bikes, a Pilates studio and Les Mills classes.
Everyone else seemed to have arrived with a training programme.
We had arrived with a firm commitment to breakfast.
Fortunately, the food was excellent.
Because we had booked all-inclusive, most of our meals were at the hotel. There will be no imaginary story here about discovering a charming local restaurant every evening.
We ate very well at the hotel.
We were perfectly happy about it.
Then we tried to rent a car
We had not planned every day before leaving Poland.
We knew about Timanfaya. We knew we wanted to visit Rancho Texas, because a zoo combined with a water park sounded like a very efficient use of a day.
And we knew we wanted a car so we could see the island properly.
What we had not done was reserve one.
It was February. Surely there would be cars available.
There were not.
On our second day, we went to a rental office and asked for a car.
Nothing.
Anything at all?
Eventually, one possibility appeared.
A Fiat Panda.
We took her immediately.
From that moment, there were three of us on the trip: two tired women and one very determined little car.
We called her Panda.
She stayed with us for the entire week, and we drove her around Lanzarote as if we had known one another for years.
Lanzarote is small enough to explore without spending half the holiday in the car. One moment we were passing white houses and palm trees. A little later, dark volcanic ground stretched towards the sea.
Panda pootled through all of it.
For three days, we did exactly what we came to do
The first three days were sunny and warm enough for proper lounging.
We lay in the sun. We swam in the hotel pool. We enjoyed the slightly ridiculous pleasure of doing this in February while Poland was still freezing.
This was more like it.
Then the calima arrived.
The air became hazier with Saharan dust, the sun became less reliable and our light spring jackets suddenly became useful.
The lying-around part of the holiday was interrupted.
Fortunately, we had Panda.
Instagram sent us to Omar Sharif’s house
LagOmar was not in our plan.
We did not even know it existed before we arrived.
We discovered it in the most modern way possible.
We were lying in the sun after a beautiful day, scrolling through Instagram, when Monika suddenly showed me her phone.
“Look at this place.”
It was beautiful.
More importantly, it was only a short drive from where we were staying.
Panda was summoned.
LagOmar — often associated with actor Omar Sharif — is built into volcanic rock. There are white walls, curved passages, hidden corners, terraces, caves and water appearing between them.
Within minutes, we were climbing its little staircases and exploring every passage with the energy of two gazelles who had apparently forgotten they had come to Lanzarote to rest.
We loved it.
It was the sort of place where you could keep looking around, then stop for coffee, eat something and sit quietly for a while.
We had not planned any of it.
Maybe that was part of the reason it felt so special.
We did not expect to love the Cactus Garden this much
Jardín de Cactus sounded pleasant.
A garden.
With cacti.
We expected to like it.
We did not expect to be quite so delighted by a large collection of very prickly plants.
The shapes, colours and scale of the place were wonderful. Against the dark volcanic ground and blue sky, everything looked almost designed for photographs.
Which, naturally, we took.
The caves required more organisation than we had
We also visited Cueva de los Verdes and Jameos del Agua.
Cueva de los Verdes took us underground through narrow volcanic passages. Jameos del Agua felt completely different — volcanic rock, water and architecture combined in a place that did not seem quite real.
But this part of the trip taught us something useful.
February does not automatically mean empty attractions.
Timed entry matters. In our experience, cars were only allowed into the parking area when the correct ticket time arrived. You could not simply drive in, park and wait for later.
This was inconvenient information to discover while already sitting in a small Fiat Panda.
Book first.
Then drive.
The view that made us stop talking
Mirador del Río gave us one of the quietest moments of the week.
From high above the coast, we could see La Graciosa across the water.
There are views that make you reach for your phone.
And there are views that eventually make you put it down.
This was one of those.
We also wandered through Teguise and Arrecife, enjoying the streets, the white buildings and the fact that we did not need a complicated plan for every hour.
We saw Playa de Papagayo from above while walking past.
We did not spend the day on the beach, so this is not going to become an enthusiastic review of facilities we never used.
But the view was beautiful.
We went to the zoo and ended up in kayaks
Rancho Texas was one of the few places we knew we wanted to visit before the trip.
It combines a zoo with a water park, which sounded slightly unusual and extremely convenient.
We walked through the zoo, saw animals and plants and enjoyed how beautifully the whole place was kept.
Then came the pools.
And the slides.
And, for reasons we had not expected, kayaks.
Rancho Texas is an easy recommendation for families.
We can also confirm that two adult women are perfectly capable of enjoying it without children.
Timanfaya remained on the list
We knew about Timanfaya before coming to Lanzarote.
Of course we wanted to go.
We also assumed we could book it during the trip because it was February.
Timanfaya quickly corrected that assumption.
When we checked online, there were no available places.
So we did not visit.
We are not going to quietly include it in an idealised itinerary and hope nobody notices.
We missed it.
If Timanfaya matters to you, book before you arrive.
“It is February” is not a booking strategy.
What we would do differently
We would reserve the car before flying.
Panda was excellent company, but finding her required more luck than planning.
We would book Timanfaya and the most popular timed attractions before the trip.
We would still pack spring jackets.
Lanzarote in February gave us sun, pool weather and time on loungers, but it also gave us wind and calima. It was a lovely escape from Polish winter.
It was not guaranteed summer.
Was one week in Lanzarote enough?
For us, yes.
We had three days of proper sunshine.
We swam in the pool.
We explored the island in Panda.
We found a house on Instagram and then behaved like gazelles on its staircases.
We became unexpectedly enthusiastic about cacti.
We went underground.
We looked across the water towards La Graciosa.
We kayaked at a zoo.
We failed to visit the most famous place on the island.
That is a fairly successful week.
More importantly, we rested.
Not by doing absolutely nothing.
Apparently, we are not very good at that.
But we laughed, drove, walked, sat in the sun and spent a week somewhere completely different from the cold and responsibilities waiting at home.
That was what we had needed all along.
Two friends. One small island. One very determined Fiat Panda.
We will take it.
