Your First Day in Tenerife: A Gentler Plan for Older Visitors
You’ve landed in Tenerife. The sun is shining, you’ve been looking forward to this holiday for months and it can be very tempting to start immediately.
Drop the cases. Find the beach. Explore the resort. Book dinner. Perhaps squeeze in a sunset drink while you’re at it.
There is another option.
Do almost nothing.
For older visitors in particular, arrival day is often much nicer when it’s treated as the transition into the holiday rather than the first opportunity to start ticking things off a list.
Travelling is tiring. Airports involve more walking and standing than we sometimes realise, flights are rarely particularly restful and you’ve then got luggage, a transfer and unfamiliar accommodation to negotiate.
Give yourself a few hours to arrive properly.
Before you even leave Tenerife South Airport
If somebody travelling with you finds airports physically difficult, don’t assume you simply have to struggle through them.
Tenerife South Airport has Aena’s assistance service for passengers with reduced mobility or disabilities. The airport also has accessible toilets throughout the terminal.
Aena recommends arranging its assistance in advance, so this is something worth considering before the holiday rather than waiting until you arrive.
You can check the current arrangements directly on the official Aena Tenerife South Airport special assistance page.
It is worth remembering that airport assistance and holiday care are different things. Airport services are there to help passengers through the airport process. If somebody needs personal or practical support beyond that, it may need to be arranged separately.
Tenerife Carers can provide airport help in Tenerife where additional practical support would make arrival easier.
Don’t underestimate the journey to your accommodation
Touching down isn’t the end of the journey.
You still need to leave the airport, find your transport, travel to the resort, check in and get yourself and your luggage into the accommodation.
Even a straightforward transfer can feel surprisingly tiring after a flight.
If you’re travelling with an older parent or somebody with limited mobility, this is not necessarily the moment to economise on convenience.
A direct taxi or pre-arranged transfer can sometimes be worth considerably more than the money it costs simply because it removes another layer of waiting, walking and luggage handling.
And if you arrive before your room is ready, think about where everybody will actually wait. Sitting comfortably with a drink is very different from spending another hour standing around a reception area with suitcases.
Unpack what you need, not everything you own
Some people cannot relax until every shirt is on a hanger and every pair of socks has been assigned a drawer.
If that’s you, we’re probably not going to change you now.
For everyone else, arrival day doesn’t require a complete unpacking operation.
Find the essentials:
- 💊 any medication or personal items you need
- 👕 something comfortable to change into
- 🧴 sun protection
- 🔌 chargers
- 💧 drinking water
- 🛏 whatever you need for a comfortable first night
The rest can wait.
You’re in Tenerife. Nobody is judging the organisation of your wardrobe.
Make your first exploration deliberately small
Once you’re settled, it’s quite natural to want to have a look around.
Do.
Just don’t accidentally turn it into a three-mile reconnaissance mission.
Your first wander only needs to answer a few useful questions.
- ☕ Where can we get coffee or breakfast tomorrow?
- 🛒 Where is the nearest supermarket or small shop?
- 🚕 Where can we easily get a taxi?
- 🍽 Is there somewhere nearby that looks good for dinner?
- 🌊 How easily can we reach the seafront?
Once you know those things, you’ve achieved quite a lot.
If you’re staying somewhere like central Los Cristianos, you may find that many everyday facilities are concentrated within a relatively small area. Tenerife’s official tourism information describes Los Cristianos Beach as an urban beach with easy pedestrian access, disabled access, bus connections, bars and restaurants nearby.
That doesn’t mean every part of Los Cristianos is flat or equally convenient, but it illustrates why choosing the precise location of your accommodation matters.
Don’t let the map fool you
This is worth learning on day one.
A short distance on a map is not necessarily a short walk in Tenerife.
The island is volcanic and many resort areas rise quite sharply away from the coast. A restaurant 600 metres from your accommodation might be an effortless stroll along a promenade or a rather less enjoyable climb up a hill.
If somebody in your party has limited walking ability, look at the route rather than simply the distance.
And use taxis without guilt.
A five-minute taxi journey that saves someone’s energy for an enjoyable evening is money rather well spent.
Find your nearest easy place
One of the most useful things you can do on the first day is find somewhere that requires almost no effort.
It might be the café beneath your apartment, a hotel terrace, a nearby restaurant or a bench overlooking the sea.
This becomes your fallback.
If somebody is tired tomorrow, you already know where to go. If plans change, you’ve got an easy alternative. If you simply can’t be bothered doing anything complicated, excellent — you’ve already solved the problem.
For visitors staying around Los Cristianos and Playa de las Américas, Las Vistas is another useful example of this kind of environment. The official Tenerife tourism site currently lists easy pedestrian access and disabled access, with a broad seafront avenue and restaurants and shops alongside it.
You don’t have to walk the whole promenade. Sometimes knowing there are places to stop is more important than knowing how far you could theoretically go.
Have an easy first meal
Arrival evening is probably not the time to embark on a gastronomic expedition to the opposite end of the island.
Choose somewhere reasonably close.
If everyone feels energetic, you can always wander a little further. But having a simple option nearby means nobody feels obliged to keep going because a restaurant has already been booked somewhere awkward.
This is particularly useful when travelling with an older relative whose energy can change quite quickly.
They may have felt perfectly fine when the plane landed and be thoroughly ready for bed four hours later.
Let the first evening adapt to the person rather than expecting the person to adapt to the itinerary.
Buy tomorrow morning’s essentials tonight
This is one tiny job that can make the following morning much nicer.
If you’re self-catering, pick up some water and whatever you need for breakfast.
Even in a hotel, having water and a couple of familiar snacks in the room can be useful.
It means nobody has to begin day two by urgently finding a shop because somebody is hungry, thirsty or needs to take medication with food.
Ten minutes of organisation can buy you a much lazier morning.
Don’t book your biggest excursion for the following morning
This is especially worth considering if you’ve travelled a long way.
You don’t yet know how well everybody will sleep. You don’t know whether travelling will leave someone more tired than expected. And you haven’t adjusted to the rhythm of the holiday yet.
So perhaps don’t make 7.00am the next morning the starting point for your grand tour of Tenerife.
Give yourself a gentler second day.
Explore your resort. Find the promenade. Have a long lunch. Sit beside the sea.
Our holiday planning service in Tenerife can also help families think through the practical side of a trip when mobility, care or support requirements make ordinary holiday planning a little more complicated.
What if someone is already exhausted?
Then stop.
This sounds obvious, but holidays create a peculiar pressure to make every hour count.
If somebody is tired after travelling, the most useful thing they may be able to do is sleep for an hour.
They haven’t wasted their first afternoon in Tenerife.
They’ve recovered from the journey so they can enjoy the days that follow.
The same applies if walking around the airport or getting to the accommodation has been more physically demanding than expected.
Change the plan.
Dinner can be closer. The sunset will happen again tomorrow.
Arrival day can tell you a lot about the rest of the holiday
The first few hours are also useful because they reveal things you couldn’t completely predict at home.
Perhaps the hill outside the accommodation is more difficult than it looked online.
Perhaps the nearest supermarket is further away than expected.
Perhaps your parent can comfortably walk to the promenade but needs a taxi back.
Perhaps everything is much easier than you feared.
Use that information.
If a route was tiring on the first day, don’t repeat it every day out of stubbornness. Find another route, take a taxi or change how you organise outings.
A good holiday plan should become more accurate once you’re actually here.
If you’re travelling with an older parent, don’t make them prove anything
There’s sometimes a difficult little dynamic on family holidays.
An older parent doesn’t want to slow everyone down, so they say they’re fine.
The family believes them.
Three hours later, they’re exhausted.
A gentler first day removes some of that pressure. Nobody has to announce that they can’t manage something because there isn’t much to manage in the first place.
And once you’ve seen how everyone copes with the journey and the local surroundings, you can plan the rest of the week much more realistically.
Start the holiday as you mean to continue
There will be plenty of time for Teide, beaches, boat trips, restaurants, villages and whatever else brought you to Tenerife.
Your first afternoon doesn’t need all of them.
Arrive. Get comfortable. Find the sea. Have something nice to eat.
Perhaps sit outside with a drink and enjoy the slightly wonderful realisation that you don’t actually need to be anywhere tomorrow morning.
That’s not wasting the first day.
That’s starting the holiday.
If you or someone travelling with you would benefit from practical help during arrival or at other points during your stay, you can request support from Tenerife Carers and arrange it around the holiday you want to have.