Where is the best place to stay in south Tenerife for a long stay?

It depends on the car. Without one, Los Cristianos is the strongest choice, with its bus interchange, ferry port, supermarkets and flat walkable seafront. With one, the residential edges such as Palm-Mar are far quieter, and the west coast villages of Playa San Juan and Alcalá are cheaper and more Canarian.

Is Palm-Mar a good place to stay?

It is if you want quiet and have a car. It is a residential development at the southern tip of Arona with a promenade, a small beach and a nature reserve at the end of the street. It has few restaurants, no nightlife and one bus line with eight departures a day, so it is a poor fit for anyone who wants choice on foot.

Which is quieter, Costa Adeje or Playa de las Américas?

Costa Adeje, clearly. Playa de las Américas contains the island's main nightlife strips, and blocks near them are loud into the early hours. Costa Adeje is newer, more expensive and built around large complexes, with a long promenade and good supermarkets.

Is El Médano too windy?

For windsurfers the wind is the reason to be there; for anyone hoping to eat or work outdoors it often is too much. The trade wind blows on most afternoons on that stretch of coast. The town also sits directly south of Tenerife South airport, so there is aircraft noise as well.

Do you need a car in south Tenerife?

Not in Los Cristianos, Playa de las Américas or Costa Adeje, where the bus network and the promenades cover most of what you need. Everywhere else, effectively yes. The residential zones and the west coast villages have far fewer services and the last bus is often mid-afternoon.

Where to base yourself in south Tenerife

The south coast is about forty kilometres of largely continuous development, and the difference between one part and another is larger than the map suggests. For a stay of a month or more the deciding questions are not about the beach. They are the noise at eleven at night, the wind at four in the afternoon, how far the supermarket is on foot, and how many buses a day stop near the door.

#Which part of south Tenerife suits a long stay

Broadly there are three kinds of place. The resort towns, where everything is walkable and nothing is quiet; the residential edges, where it is quiet and you need a car; and the villages with a life of their own, which sit between the two and have a character you either want or do not.

#Is Los Cristianos a good base if you do not want a car

It is the best on the south coast: the bus interchange with island-wide services, the ferry port for La Gomera, La Palma and El Hierro, supermarkets within walking distance of most of the town, and a flat seafront promenade with step-free access along much of it.

It grew from a harbour into a town of a little over twenty thousand, with a Swedish community since the late 1950s that left its mark on the street names. There are two beaches: Playa de los Cristianos in front of the old town and Las Vistas behind a breakwater.

The trade-off is that it is busy all winter, the front is loud in the evening, and older blocks near the centre have thin walls. Two streets back it is calmer.

#What is the difference between Costa Adeje and Playa de las Américas

Age and price. Playa de las Américas was built in the 1960s and straddles the boundary between Arona and Adeje; Costa Adeje is the newer development north of it, taking in Fañabé, Torviscas, El Duque and, at its far end, La Caleta.

Playa de las Américas is where the island's nightlife concentrates, around the Veronicas strip, the Starco centre and the Patch. Rent within earshot and you will hear it until the small hours; two streets away you will not. It is the cheapest of the resort areas, which is why the address matters more than the district.

Costa Adeje is quieter, more expensive and built around large complexes, with a long promenade, wide imported-sand beaches and good supermarkets. It has a bus station of its own, the southern end of line 111 to Santa Cruz, and suits people who want everything within walking distance and do not mind that it is unmistakably a resort.

#Is Palm-Mar too quiet

For a lot of people, yes, and it is better to know in advance. Palm-Mar is a residential development at the southern tip of the island, ten kilometres from Los Cristianos, with no old centre, no fiestas of its own, a short promenade, a small rocky beach and a handful of places to eat.

It is bounded by the Malpaís de la Rasca nature reserve and the ocean, which is why it is silent. The cost of that silence is choice: for a range of restaurants, a large supermarket or anything after ten at night, you drive.

The bus is one line with eight weekday departures, the last at four in the afternoon and a five-hour gap in the middle of the day, changing at Guaza for Los Cristianos. Palm-Mar suits people who work from home and walk. It is a poor choice for anyone who wants to step out of the door into something.

#What is El Médano like to live in

Windy, and that is the whole story in both directions. El Médano sits on the exposed east-facing coast in Granadilla de Abona and is one of the better windsurfing and kitesurfing places in the world, because the trade wind blows most afternoons.

The town itself is the most convincing of the southern coastal settlements: a real plaza, cafés not aimed only at visitors, a long natural beach, La Tejita and the Montaña Roja cone next door, and a mixed population, around two in five residents born abroad. The drawbacks are honest ones. Eating or working outside is often not possible, sand gets into everything, and the town lies directly south of Tenerife South airport.

#Are La Caleta, Playa San Juan and Alcalá worth being that far out

If you want a village rather than a resort, yes. If you want to walk to a choice of shops, no. All three face west, are built around a small harbour, and are quieter and more Canarian than anything on the Arona strip.

La Caleta, at the northern end of Costa Adeje, is an old fishing settlement ringed by expensive development, with a rocky bathing coast, a promenade and a row of well-known fish restaurants. It is lovely and not cheap. Playa San Juan and Alcalá, further west in Guía de Isora, are cheaper and more ordinary in the good sense: Alcalá has a shaded plaza with bars around it, a grey-sand beach of about thirty metres beside the fishing harbour, and sunsets into La Gomera. Guía de Isora itself is inland and uphill, cooler than the coast, a working town rather than a coastal one.

The price is distance. The airport is at the far end of the coast, bus services are thinner, and a car stops being convenient and becomes necessary.

#What to check before you commit to an area

Stand in the street at nine in the evening and again at eight in the morning, or ask someone there to do it. Almost every complaint about a southern address is about noise, wind or the last hundred metres, and none appears in photographs.

If you cannot visit, choose the compromise on purpose: a resort town if you can sleep through noise, a residential edge if you want silence and will drive, a village if you want a life of its own and will accept less choice.

Where to base yourself in south Tenerife: seven areas compared