Fiat Panda
5 seats · Manual · Economy
€16per day, cheapest in this class right now
✶ The strip, 30 minutes from TFS
Las Américas,
and the island
it sits on.
This is the busiest stretch of coast on Tenerife and the one people mean when they say they have been to the island. A car is what turns a week here into a week on Tenerife rather than a week on one road.
✶ Live availability on the strip
91 cars from €16 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 rock shore below the promenadeWhat a car changes here, specifically
Las Américas was built to be walked, and it works. The promenade runs for miles, the beaches are in front of the hotels, and there is a restaurant every thirty metres. Nobody needs a car to have a good week here, which is exactly why it is worth being clear about what one is for.
It is for the four-fifths of Tenerife that this strip is not. Within an hour of your hotel door there is a village in a gorge you reach on a road that takes an hour to cover thirty-four kilometres, a wall of cliff six hundred metres straight out of the water, a pine forest at fifteen hundred metres that smells like a different country, and a lava plain at two thousand where the air is thin and the temperature drops twenty degrees. The bus goes to almost none of it on a schedule that suits a day out.
01
Book it for the middle of the week
You do not need a car on arrival day and you do not need it on the last morning. Three or four days in the middle covers everything worth driving to, and the minimum chargeable period is twenty-four hours, so plan in whole days rather than part ones.
02
Take the small one
The roads you will remember are narrow. A supermini is easier on the TF-436, easier to park behind the strip, and cheaper to fuel, and fuel here is already cheaper than you are used to. Size up only for luggage or for a fifth passenger.
03
Know the deposit before you go
Every listing carries its own deposit and its own excess, both visible before you book. What the standard cover leaves out matters more than the headline day rate, because wheels, glass and undercarriage are the parts a mountain road actually threatens.
Where you can actually get to
These times are routed from Costa Adeje, eight minutes up the same strip, because that is the nearest measured origin and quoting a made-up number from a hotel doorway would be worse than quoting a real one from a mile away. Add a few minutes to each and you have it.
| Where | Time | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| Los Cristianos | 13 min | 8 km |
| Tenerife South | 30 min | 22 km |
| Los Gigantes | 27 min | 26 km |
| Masca | 29 min | 34 km |
| Vilaflor | 29 min | 28 km |
| Teide, Parador de Las Cañadas | 52 min | 50 km |
| Puerto de la Cruz | 1 h 09 | 72 km |
Two of those deserve a warning rather than a time. Masca is twenty-nine minutes by the routing engine and considerably more in practice, because the TF-436 is a single lane with blind bends and passing places and you will meet a coach on it. It is worth doing, early, in a small car. And the crater is an hour of climbing, which means an hour of descending afterwards on brakes that have been working hard; take it in a low gear and stop at the mirador rather than riding the pedal down.
Collecting here rather than at the airport
The trade is straightforward. Collecting on the strip means no airport queue and no hire days spent in a hotel garage, and it costs you the freedom to stop anywhere on the way down from the terminal. If your flight lands late, the resort office is also gentler than a midnight counter. Arrivals at Tenerife South is worth reading first if you are undecided, since it describes what the airport collection actually involves rather than what people assume.
And if you want the car for the outbound leg only, look at collecting at one end and leaving at the other. Dropping at the terminal on the way to a late flight removes the last transfer of the trip, which is usually the one that goes wrong.
Toyota Yaris
5 seats · Automatic · Compact
€21per day, cheapest in this class right now
Hyundai i20
5 seats · Automatic · Compact
€21per day, cheapest in this class right now
SEAT Ibiza
5 seats · Automatic · Compact
€23per day, cheapest in this class right now
✶ Before you book
The questions
people send us.
Is a car worth it if I am staying on the strip?
For part of the week, certainly. Everything within walking distance of Las Américas is within walking distance of Las Américas, which sounds obvious until the fourth day. The strip is complete and self-contained by design. A car is the thing that makes the other four-fifths of the island reachable, and Los Gigantes, Masca, Vilaflor and the crater floor are all inside an hour of here.
Where do I park it once I have it?
Blue-lined bays are metered with a time limit, unmarked white bays are free, and yellow means no. There are large paid car parks a street or two back, and most hotels charge nightly for their own garage. Street parking near the beach is genuinely difficult after seven in the evening and genuinely easy at nine in the morning.
Do I need anything different from what the airport desks want?
No. These are the same suppliers working to the same conditions: the physical licence in Latin script, a credit card in the main driver's name, and the deposit that was on the listing when you booked. Photographs of a licence and app-based digital licences are not accepted anywhere on this island, resort office or airport desk alike.
How bad is the traffic getting out of here?
Weekday mornings and Friday evenings are slow along the short stretch between here and Adeje, because commuters and holidaymakers share it. Leaving before nine or after ten avoids most of it. North of Los Gigantes the roads are quiet at any hour of any day, which is part of why the drive is worth making.
✶ Ten minutes either way
Along the
same coast.
✶ High season on the strip
Choice runs out before price does.
Between December and March the cheap end of the list here empties first and what is left costs more. Many cars cancel free, so an early booking is a held option rather than a commitment.