El Medano toSanta CruzCar hire brought to your address · Candelaria and Tenerife North within the hour

El Medano to Santa Cruz is about 44 minutes and 62 km without traffic, and the hire car for the drive is brought to you. El Medano has no named pick-up point: it is delivery only, so the car comes to the address you give, an apartment or a hotel, and each listing shows whether delivery is included or priced. Candelaria is about 32 minutes and 44 km away. The city at the end of the drive is where the TF-1 meets the TF-5, and the terminal at Los Rodeos, Tenerife North, is about 51 minutes and 68 km from El Medano.

Fixed speed cameras stand on both the TF-1 and the TF-5, and Tenerife's motorways are toll-free. The shortest chargeable rental is 24 hours, so a car booked for a single day in the capital is charged as a full day, and a car collected on a Monday morning and returned on the Tuesday afternoon counts as two.

In El Medano, at the TGAS on the TF-64 at km 7.7, which is open 24 hours. At the other end, where the TF-1 meets the TF-5 in Santa Cruz, the BP at Avenida Tres de Mayo 85 is open from 06:00 to 22:00 and the DISA at Ortega y Gasset 1 is open 24 hours.

The car goes back with the fuel level it had at the handover. A lower level is charged at the rental company's rates, and a fuller tank is not refunded. Fuel, parking and fines are the renter's to pay. The kites on the beach are there for the alisio, the north-east trade wind that blows across El Medano for most of the year.

These times are without traffic, so a real drive takes that long or longer. Heading west instead, Costa Adeje is about 23 minutes and 26 km from El Medano, Los Cristianos about 24 minutes and 23 km, and Los Gigantes about 42 minutes and 48 km.

In El Medano the handover happens at the address you give, so everything an airport handover needs has to be there with you. That is the licence card itself, with its details in Latin script and an expiry no earlier than the end of the rental, since copies and electronic licences are not accepted; an International Driving Permit is strongly recommended where the licence is valid only in the country that issued it. Then there is the card the booking asks for in the main driver's name, which can be a physical embossed credit card. If a debit card is accepted, the booking and the voucher say so, and it too has to be physical, personalised, embossed and in the main driver's name.

The phone number given at booking must be reachable throughout the rental and on the day before the car is due. Each car's minimum driver age and experience are on its page, and the agent can refuse the handover if they are not met. How the rest of the rental is paid, how the deposit is held and when it comes back are in the booking and the voucher.

Yes: set Tenerife North as the drop-off in the search and the one-way fee shows with the price. Tenerife South is about 18 minutes from El Medano, and collecting at Tenerife South and leaving the car at Tenerife North is the deepest one-way pairing on the island by a wide margin, in both directions. At both airports the named handover place is the arrival area.

Tenerife South handles mostly international flights and Tenerife North mostly domestic ones, which is why some trips land at one and leave from the other. Any other drop-off is set in the search the same way, and its fee shows with the price too.

Automatics are a minority of the list, found mainly in the compact and crossover classes rather than the economy one, so if nobody in the party drives a manual, filter for a car with two pedals from the start. Seven-seaters are scarce, so a car for a larger group is one to book early.

Most cars come with unlimited mileage, and each listing says whether its mileage is limited, which matters on a day that takes in Santa Cruz and Tenerife North and comes back to El Medano.

The questions below cover the drive up the east coast from El Medano and the car for it: how long each leg takes, where the car is handed over and what changes in Santa Cruz. The rental conditions are set out in full on the terms page.