Routes, hidden beaches, restaurants and road-trip wisdom - written by the people who drive this island every week.
If you want to drive with the roof down in winter, hire in the Canary Islands, not on the Spanish mainland: in the Spanish weather agency's 1981–2010 averages, the January daytime high is 20.6–21.7 °C at the four Canary airports we compared and 15.2–17.0 °C at the four mainland and Mallorca stations. In summer the…
Most visitors can rent a car in Tenerife with the licence already in their wallet. A UK photocard licence works, an EU licence works, and most other national licences work too, as long as they are in the Latin alphabet. The things that more often get in the way are our own requirements: the driver's…
Snow on Teide is real, not a postcard trick. The Spanish Ministry for the Ecological Transition describes the National Park's climate as dry and windy with strong contrasts between day and night, and notes that in winter it can snow on some days. [S1] When it does, the whole island wants to see it, and…
A camera on the motorway does not stop you. The car is photographed, the fine goes to the registered owner, and for a rental car the owner is the rental company. Under Spanish traffic law, though, the person responsible for an offence in a short-term rental is the renter. So the fine comes back to…
The Teide cable car is easy to drive to and harder to park at. The base station is at km 43 of the TF-21, 2,356 m above sea level, and it has a free car park that is small by design: the operator itself says the parking areas in the National Park cannot be expanded.…
Tenerife follows Spain's national traffic rules: the same Reglamento General de Circulación applies here as in Madrid. What's different is where you meet those rules. In a single day you can go from a busy motorway to a hairpin above the clouds, and the rules that matter change with the road. Here are the ones…
Vilaflor is where the south of Tenerife stops being a coast and turns into a mountain. The village sits on the TF-21, the road that carries on uphill into Teide National Park, and it is the starting point for the walk to Paisaje Lunar, the "lunar landscape" of pale eroded rock in the pine forest…
Refuelling in Tenerife is simple once you know three things: where to see today's prices, which nozzle is yours, and where the stations run out. The fourth thing, if you're in a rental car, is the fuel rule in your contract. This guide covers all four. Where to see current petrol prices We don't print…