Hyundai i20
5 seats · Automatic · Compact
€27per day, cheapest in this class right now
✶ San Miguel, 22 minutes from TFS
Golf del Sur.
Quiet, low-rise,
and very close.
A low-rise resort built around golf courses on the arid corner east of the runway. It is the closest proper base to Tenerife South, it is noticeably quieter than anywhere on the west coast, and it holds far fewer hire cars than either.
✶ Live availability at Golf del Sur
15 cars from €26 a day on these dates
Pick-up and drop-off
Dates
Free cancellation on many carsThe deposit is on the car, before you book itPrices in euros, the figure you see is the figure you pay
Pick-up
Dates
The dry corner east of the runwayWhat this corner of the island is like
Golf del Sur and the villages around it sit on the driest part of Tenerife. There are no tall hotels, the buildings are white and two storeys, and the landscape between them is volcanic rubble and low scrub that has clearly never been watered. It is not pretty in the way the north is pretty. It is calm, warm, and about as far from the Las Américas experience as you can get while still being in a resort.
The trade-off is that there is not much here on foot. A handful of bars, the courses, a black-sand beach or two along the coast. That is the case for the car, and it is a stronger case here than in the big resorts, where you could plausibly manage a week without one.
Three things worth knowing before you book
01
The stock here is genuinely thin
This is a real pick-up point with real cars, not a marketing address, but it holds a fraction of the airport's stock. If the list on your dates is short, that is the honest state of it rather than a caching problem. Collecting at landing at the south airport and driving over takes twenty minutes.
02
You are on the right side for the north
Santa Cruz is fifty minutes and Puerto de la Cruz is an hour and a bit, both shorter than from the west-coast resorts, because you start further round the island. If your week includes the green half, this is a better base than it looks.
03
The airport run is twenty minutes, not seven
Seven kilometres, twenty-two minutes. The number is right; the terminal approach is what makes it slow. Build the trip home around twenty-five and you will be early rather than sprinting.
Where you can get to from here
Routed from Golf del Sur itself, free-flow, so these are the floor rather than the expectation. The useful thing about this corner is how evenly it sits between the two halves of the island: the western resorts are about twenty minutes and the capital is fifty, which is a spread no west-coast base can match.
| Where | Time | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| El Médano | 15 min | 12 km |
| Los Cristianos | 19 min | 15 km |
| Playa de las Américas | 20 min | 16 km |
| Costa Adeje | 21 min | 19 km |
| Tenerife South | 22 min | 7 km |
| Vilaflor | 29 min | 23 km |
| Los Gigantes | 41 min | 41 km |
| Masca | 43 min | 49 km |
| Santa Cruz | 50 min | 67 km |
| Teide, Parador de Las Cañadas | 52 min | 46 km |
| Tenerife North | 56 min | 74 km |
| Las Teresitas | 1 h 03 | 75 km |
| Puerto de la Cruz | 1 h 12 | 98 km |
The one drive to plan properly is Masca, at forty-three minutes on paper and rather more in reality. The TF-436 is sealed and a small car handles it, but it is single-track in places with blind bends and coaches. Go early, go slowly, and read how the island's roads behave first if you have not driven anything like it before.
The car to take
Small, and manual unless you have a reason. Parking is not a problem here, which removes the usual argument for the smallest thing on the list, so if you want the comfort of a slightly larger car for a week of longer drives this is one of the few places on the island where that costs you nothing in convenience. What it will cost you is availability, because the list is short to begin with.
Citroen C3
5 seats · Manual · Compact
€29per day, cheapest in this class right now
SEAT Arona
5 seats · Manual · Crossover
€33per day, cheapest in this class right now
SEAT Ateca
5 seats · Automatic · SUV
€40per day, cheapest in this class right now
✶ Asked about this corner
Three honest
answers.
Why is the airport twenty-two minutes away when it is only seven kilometres?
Because the routing measures to the terminal building, so every journey in or out includes the access road and the approach at walking pace. Every origin on this island shows the same shape, which is how you can tell it is the road and not an error. Treat it as about twenty minutes. Understating a drive is the mistake that costs people flights, so we publish the larger figure.
Is there much rental stock here?
Not much, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise. This is a genuine pick-up point with real cars in it, but it holds a small fraction of what the terminal twenty minutes away holds. Expect a short list, expect it shorter in winter, and treat collecting at the airport as a sensible fallback rather than a defeat.
Do I need a car at all if I am here to play golf?
For the golf alone, no: the courses sit within a few minutes of one another and of the apartments. It stops being optional the moment you want dinner somewhere that is not the resort, a beach that is not the one below you, or any part of the island north of the motorway. This is a quiet corner, and quiet corners are easier to enjoy when you can leave them.
✶ Few cars, short list
Book early or drive to the airport.
There are two honest options at a pick-up point this size: book well ahead and take the choice while it exists, or collect at the terminal twenty minutes away. Many cars cancel free either way.