Los Gigantes sits on Tenerife’s west coast, about 41 km from Tenerife South airport (TFS) — roughly 35–50 minutes by road. From Tenerife North (TFN) allow around an hour and a quarter.
From the airport
A pre-booked transfer is the least friction after a flight: a driver meets you in arrivals and delivers you to the apartment door. Comparison sites quoted around €67–71 for up to four passengers at the time of writing. A taxi from the rank works around the clock; expect a metered fare in the region of €65–80 from the south airport, depending on time and luggage.
The green TITSA bus network is cheap and reliable. From the south airport, connect via Los Cristianos to the coastal 473, about 74 minutes to Los Gigantes; aggregators suggest roughly half-hourly by day, so check titsa.com. The 477 runs as a faster express from Costa Adeje station.
Paying on the bus
Contactless bank cards and phones are accepted on board across the network; cash works too. If you’ll ride often, the rechargeable ten+ card (€2 at stations, airport machines and kiosks) discounts fares by roughly 20–30% versus cash.
Do you need a car?
Not for the town itself. Los Gigantes is compact, and restaurants, marina, beach and pool are all walkable, though streets are steep in places. A hire car earns its keep on excursions: Garachico, Icod and the north are far easier with your own wheels (note that Masca’s gorge now requires arrival by its dedicated shuttle bus, and Punta de Teno has been closed to private cars during 2026 roadworks — the local bus covers it). Hire for two or three chosen days rather than the whole week.
Parking: arrive with a plan
Los Gigantes was built on a steep slope long before everyone arrived by car, and it shows: the streets are narrow, mostly one-way, and spaces near the marina are gone by mid-morning in high season, when the boat excursions pull in day-trippers. For free parking, our local habit is to check the open-air lot on Avenida José González Forte at the entrance to town first (free, though it fills by midday in season) and then try the streets working up from the bottom; the higher you climb, the easier it gets, with Calle Tabaiba (an eight-minute downhill walk from the centre) as the classic last resort.
For something more certain there are two paid options. The small car park at the marina is the closest to the harbour and Playa de Los Guíos — practical before a boat trip, though drivers rate it a middling 3.3 on Google Maps and it queues when full. The covered Parking El Mirador at the upper edge of town is the reliable choice: over 300 staffed spaces, open around the clock, at roughly €1.60 an hour or €15 a day (operator’s published prices, July 2026; 2.10 m height limit). If everything is taken, the streets near Playa de la Arena in Puerto de Santiago sometimes come to the rescue, likelier early or late in the day than at midday in season, with a fifteen-minute coastal walk to Los Gigantes as consolation.
Getting around without a car
Local taxis wait near the centre and any restaurant will phone one. The 473 links Los Gigantes with Puerto de Santiago, Alcalá and Playa San Juan — handy for beach-hopping — while the 325 crosses to Puerto de la Cruz via Icod for a car-free north-coast day. For La Gomera, ferries leave Los Cristianos harbour, thirty minutes away.
Photo: Flocci Nivis, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons