Car hire atTenerife South AirportReina Sofia · TFS · collect in arrivals or a two minute walk away

Almost every flight to Tenerife lands at the southern airport, and almost everyone who lands there needs a car within the hour. It is a single terminal, which makes this simpler than it sounds: you walk out of arrivals, meet whoever your voucher names, and the TF-1 begins at the airport exit. El Medano, twenty minutes east, is the closest town of all, with the golf urbanisation at Golf del Sur about the same again along the coast. The resorts are about half an hour west, Santa Cruz an hour north, and the crater road climbs away from the motorway about halfway between the two. It is also where the choice at the south airport is deepest, which is why the cheapest cars tend to sit here.

The practical case for collecting at the terminal rather than in the resort is simply that the car is yours from the moment you have your bags. No transfer to wait for, no second trip across the island on your first morning, and the freedom to stop at a supermarket on the way rather than pay resort prices for the first two days. The case against it is narrower than people think: it only really applies if the car is going to sit unused for most of the week, in which case collecting locally for a few days is the cheaper plan.

01 El Medano, 18 min

Six kilometres east and the closest town to the runway. The wind town is where to head if you have landed late and want the shortest possible drive before you stop.

02 Playa de las Americas, 30 min

Nineteen kilometres west on the TF-1 to the resort strip. Costa Adeje is a minute further and Los Cristianos, which the map makes look closer, is thirty-three because of the run down into the town.

03 Vilaflor, 39 min

Twenty-seven kilometres inland and about a thousand metres up, through the terraces and into the pines. This is the crater road, and the village is where most people stop on the way.

04 Los Gigantes, 50 min

Forty-five kilometres to the far end of the motorway on the west coast, where the cliffs drop straight into the water. The last part is steep into the town.

05 Santa Cruz, 59 min

Sixty-six kilometres up the east coast to the capital, and the one drive from here where traffic is real. Time it outside the commute and use a garage rather than the metered street bays.

06 Teide crater, 62 min

Forty-nine kilometres up the TF-21 through Vilaflor, wide and sealed the whole way, climbing past two thousand metres. The crater drive has its own page. Take a jacket and use a low gear coming down.

Those are free-flow times measured by routing, so a real journey is that or longer, never shorter. The north is the long haul from this airport and there is no shortcut: Tenerife North is 65 minutes and Puerto de la Cruz 81, which is the drive the one-way below is designed to save you doing twice.

What it costs to rent a car at Tenerife South is shown to you twice before anyone asks for a card: during booking, and again on the voucher.What is due at the desk, how the deposit is held and how long the refund takes are all stated up front rather than discovered at the counter, which is the part of this that goes wrong most often elsewhere. What you have to bring is small and non-negotiable: the licence as a physical card, in Latin script and valid past your return date, and a payment card in the main driver's name. Copies and licences on a phone are not accepted, and most suppliers here want a real credit card with raised numbers rather than a debit card.

The south is dry, red and open, and the motorway covers the distance without asking much of you. What the pictures never show is how fast the island changes once you leave it: twenty minutes inland the scrub gives way to pine, and the road to the crater climbs through cloud that sits on the ridge most afternoons. Take the car off the motorway and stay on tarmac, because the rental terms allow paved public roads only, and the tracks that tempt people in Teno and Anaga are not covered by anything. What driving in Tenerife really asks of you is patience with the vertical: plan by time, not by distance.

The first ten minutes are the only part worth rehearsing. The exit road feeds straight onto the TF-1 and the two directions are signed simply: north for Santa Cruz, south and west for the resorts, which is counter-intuitive because the resorts are on the same carriageway you would take for El Medano until the road swings west. Junction numbers count down as you head toward Adeje. There are no tolls anywhere on the island, so nothing has to be paid for at the roadside, and the motorway is free and fast the whole way.

Fuel is the other thing to plan on the way back rather than on the way out. Return the tank at the level you were given it, since nobody pays you for bringing it back fuller, and fill up on the motorway rather than at the last station before the terminal, which is where everyone else is doing the same thing at the same time of the morning.

Small wins here more often than it loses, which is not the usual airport advice. The motorway from this terminal is fast and straight and any car does it; the roads that make Tenerife worth driving are the narrow ones, and a compact car is easier on the Masca hairpins, easier in the resort streets and easier in a hotel garage bay laid out for Spanish city cars. It is cheaper to fuel as well, over a week in which you may cover several hundred kilometres.

Two things move you up a class. Four adults with luggage climbing to the crater will feel the smallest engines on the long haul up through Vilaflor, so a bigger carearns its place if the party and the mountain days are both real. And if nobody drives a manual, filter for an automatic from the start rather than hoping: there are fewer of them here than in the UK, and in the busy weeks they go first. Beyond that, price the classes for your own dates rather than taking anyone's word for what is cheap this week.

The questions below are the ones that decide whether the pickup goes smoothly: which airport this is, what you need when you collect, what the licence has to be and how the fuel works. The rental conditions themselves are written out in full on the terms page.