Most driving-tour first days are logistics disguised as an itinerary: an airport, a transfer, maybe dinner, and the real trip starts tomorrow. Day 1 of the Mustangs Tenerife skips that pattern almost entirely — by the time you’re checking into your room, you’ve already had the car for a couple of hours.
Touchdown to handover
Most flights into Tenerife South Airport land in early afternoon, which turns out to matter: there’s real daylight left for the drive to Abama, and enough of the afternoon remaining to actually settle in before dinner rather than arriving exhausted after dark. A private transfer meets every group at the terminal, and the Ford Mustang Convertible handover happens close enough to the airport that the drive to Abama becomes the first taste of the island rather than dead time. It’s a short run, but it’s enough to feel the difference between a rental counter and an actual fleet handover — the guide walks the group through the car, the route, and the week ahead before a single kilometer of the tour’s five driving days has started.
The road to Abama
The drive southwest toward Abama runs along Tenerife’s coast before climbing slightly inland, past the built-up resort strip most first-time visitors expect and into something closer to countryside — banana plantations, dry volcanic hillside, and the first real view of the Atlantic from altitude. With the top down on the Mustang, it’s a fifteen-to-twenty-minute reminder of why the car is a convertible and not a coupe.
Arrival at The Ritz-Carlton, Abama
The resort itself announces itself gradually — palm-lined private roads, terraced grounds stepping down toward the ocean, and a lobby that opens onto a view most guests stop to photograph before they’ve even checked in. Rooms are ready, bags are handled, and the group has the rest of the afternoon free before the evening’s welcome cocktail.
That cocktail is deliberately not a formality. It’s the first time the group is actually together off the road — guide included — and it sets up the dynamic that carries through the rest of the week: a small group of people who arrived as strangers, already talking about tomorrow’s drive to Masca. Most groups are a mix of couples and pairs of friends who don’t know each other going in, and by the time the sun’s down over the Atlantic, the conversation has usually moved from “where did you fly in from” to comparing notes on which car each person drives at home — the exact kind of overlap the DRV.club community is built to keep alive after the trip ends.
Why Day 1 matters more than it looks like it should
A driving tour lives or dies on group dynamics as much as on the road itself, and Day 1 is where that gets decided. Getting the car into guests’ hands within hours of landing — rather than after a full day of transfers and check-in admin — means the trip psychologically starts on arrival, not on Day 2. By the time dinner is over on the first night, nobody is still thinking about the flight.
It also means the group walks into Day 2’s drive to Masca already comfortable with each other and with the car — nobody’s still figuring out the Mustang’s blind spots or getting used to the top-down cabin noise on the tightest road of the whole week. A first day built purely around transfers would push that adjustment period into the one drive that has the least room for it.
Curious what the rest of the week looks like? See the full Mustangs Tenerife itinerary.
Ready to check dates? Book the Mustangs Tenerife here.