There were a couple of non flying things at the air display in Puerto de la Cruz on Sunday that caught my eye:
I want to be best friends with this guy.
A portable giant beer can = a fiesta where the beer comes to you. Can life get any better?
It's a case of excess skin.
I don’t think that’s a real dog, I think it’s one of those things that children keep their pyjamas in.
I mentioned a couple of blogs ago about the disturbing new fashion trend (new to here anyway) of some lads rolling up the legs of their shorts so that it looked as though they were wearing nappies. At the closing day of the July Fiestas on Sunday I forced myself, against my better judgement to take a photo of one of the culprits.
I know some women say that men are just big babies, but...
This is horrible. Honestly is there a woman out there who thinks that this is an attractive look, or who would be happy to walk beside their partner if he was dressed like this?
There’s a defining moment which signals that it might be time to call it a day, that the party is almost over.
At the Dia de la Trilla in El Tanque on Saturday the obvious signal may have been when the fire fighting helicopter with the big orange bag full of water passed yards above our heads on its way to tackle a forest fire which was burning on the other side of a hill near the fiesta. It wasn’t.
My defining moment came when I was squeezed shoulder to shoulder with a crowd of hot, sweaty and slightly glazed looking caballeros at the beer kiosk and the barman informed me:
“No hay cervezas.”
By the look of his seriously bloodshot eyes, he’d probably accounted for a good percentage of the drained amber nectar himself.
The lack of beer wouldn’t normally have been a deal breaker, but in 40+ degree heat when your water has run out, downing a cool beer was paramount to drinking the water of life.
Andy pretends that she knows what she's doing...someone should have told her farmworkers don't usually take their handbags into the field with them
We’d spent a couple of hours at this wonderfully laid back and unique little fiesta up in the hills above El Tanque where local farmers gather to have a drink and watch prancing horses and lumbering oxen turn a waist high circle of wheat into a threadbare carpet. There’s clearly some agricultural purpose to it, but it looked more like an excuse to have a frolic in the hay to us than the most efficient way for threshing wheat.
The first thing Andy did when we arrived was to purchase of a couple of straw cowboy hats. That might sound a bit kitsch, but:
I felt my voice taking on a Clint Eastwood/Snake Plissken quality on a number of occasions – in reality it sounded more as though I had a sore throat and a lisp, but hey, I had a cowboy hat and a piece of straw between my teeth and was feeling too cool for school.
El Tanque's version of a beer tent
As many of the older women huddled in the meagre shade under bushes and trees we braved the hairdryer hot breeze and stood at the edge of the era watching the threshing whilst the caballeros drained the beer kiosk of all alcoholic liquids.
In summer at this level, the heat can become not only unbearable, it also turns the countryside into a powder keg and sure enough a fire must have started in the pines on the other side of a hillock from the fiesta. The Island’s fire fighting helicopter flew over and back above our heads dropping huge bag loads of water on the blaze.
This sight was enough to have us wondering whether we should leg it to the car and evacuate the area pronto – but the fact that the locals hardly even acknowledged the copter’s existence was reassurance of sorts and drove home that in summer months the sight of a helicopter dowsing forest fires must happen with monotonous regularity.
They breed ‘em hard up there. The fact that the hot wind could bring a fire racing in their direction in no time was clearly no cause for concern. The idea that the beer tent was about to run out of alcohol on the other hand…
These guys are getting dangerously close...
I’ve mentioned the disturbing ‘Zoolander’ haircuts amongst some of the young lads in Puerto de la Cruz before, but at the Virgen del Carmen celebrations last week we were faced with some sights which made the ridiculous hairdos seem quite sensible. Trouble was that it was also the ‘Zoolander’ lads who had adopted a fashion style which although unique, was quite the most stupid look I’ve ever seen in my life. They’ve achieved a fashion crime double whammy.
So what is this innovative new look favoured by the chavs on Tenerife’s northern coast?
For some reason they’ve decided that rolling one leg of their swimming shorts up as far as it’ll go is an attractive fashion statement.
WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.
Some even go as far as to roll both legs up giving their shorts the appearance of a nappy. I mean nappies don’t even look good on babies, but on 18 year old lads they become really quite unnerving? Is there some weird sexual cult in Puerto that we don’t know about?
There were loads of them dressed like this, but bugger it if I’ve actually managed to capture one on film to have you clasping your hand to your mouth at the horror. My camera must have a built in ‘good taste’ function. I know I usually wait till ‘undesirable’ people exit the lens before taking a shot (I’m not going into detail, lest it offends, but someone wearing knee length socks with sandals results in immediate camera swerve), so maybe I’m doing it subconsciously now.
You’ll just have to take my word for it, the look is beyond funny, it’s frightening; only a complete moron could think that it’s a good look.
“I feel really sorry for their girlfriends,’” was Andy’s open mouthed response when faced with hordes of what could have easily have been young masons at the beach.
Most young Canarios look annoyingly effortlessly stylish, but I think these guys come down from the hills and try to emulate a type of chav style and get it horribly wrong.
As I don’t have a photo of the one-legged chavs I’ve included a shot of these girls on a balcony instead. Not just as an excuse to post some eye candy, but as a cautionary tale. This lot are the Sirens of Puerto de la Cruz with their sweet smiles and gestures luring you closer to take a photo of them…
Closer, closer... just a little bit closer.
…and then their mate appears and does this. Don’t be fooled.
Take that suckers!!!
Whiskas has been well behaved for some time now. Well apart from some disgraceful behaviour during dinner last night. When Whiskas stands on his back legs he can just about see on to the dining table. Every so often he tries to reach out a paw to swipe at something he takes a fancy to (a sort of casting out a fishing hook principle). Usually it’s more in hope than anything else, but last night he got lucky, sort of. He connected with the lid to the chilli sauce bottle and it hit the deck. Now I should have let the little bugger have a lick of the chilli sauce – that would have been a lesson for him, but instead I grabbed the bottle top before he got anywhere near it.
The trouble was that he’d been successful once and that was motivation enough for Whiskas. Within seconds he was back at full stretch, the white paw lashing out to try to grab at anything. For some reason he took a particular liking to my lime green glass cover with little bobbly bits on it and tried to hook it a couple of times – at one point both his legs left the ground and he hung suspended Lara Croft-like from the edge of the table by his front paws. It was quite the funniest sight I’d seen in a long time (I must try and get a picture), but he was in danger of getting overly excited and had to be reminded that a place actually hadn’t been set for him at the dinner table i.e. he was removed by the scruff of his neck.
Anyway that’s another story. As I was saying he’s been well behaved ever since his ‘bed’ on the bench outside our bedroom was rolled up as punishment for NIN (noise in the night). Ironically it wasn’t the punishment which caused him to rethink his bad behaviour, it was the fact that when I rolled up his cushion inside the bench cover, I unwittingly created a bed which was far more comfortable than his previous. A bit of readjustment and fluffing here and there by Whiskas and he’d created the luxury pad. Now when he crawls on to it he crashes out big time – dead to the world – and we don’t hear a squeak from him till morning.
Awww, butter wouldn't melt...that's cos it would be straight down his throat!
Andy is disappointed with the results of her garlic crop, but personally I was impressed. I love it when we pull something out of the garden and it ends up on our plate, doesn’t matter how small it is.
You can guarantee that it’s going to taste a million times better than anything you can buy in the supermarket. The last time we grew some garlic it was stronger than any garlic I’ve ever tasted anywhere.
And the upside to that is: – no worries about getting nipped on the neck by a vampire and also no bugger is going to venture within twenty yards of us, so it’ll cut down the chances of contracting swine flu…yay.
Home grown and even home plaited
Okay, before anyone points it out, I realise that’s a mixed metaphor but it fits. Alexander Supertramp (AKA Jesús the neighbour) has left the building.
He turned up on the doorstep the other Saturday afternoon with a ‘hey, I thought you’d be having a siesta’ when he saw Andy working at her computer.
“Why did you come up now then?” Andy asked.
“Maybe I wanted to snuggle,” he teased back.
This is Jesús’ idiosyncratic way. As it turned out he’d come up to tell us he was leaving. He’d applied for a job as a masseuse in Oregon and had been successful. He planned to leave to spend a couple of weeks with his family in the Basque country before heading way out west to start his new job.
We were both happy and saddened at his news. We were sad because he was leaving and we liked him a lot and would miss him, but we were happy that he was starting out on a new adventure. In truth he’d been stagnating down in his little casita and after he’d lent us the DVD of ‘Into the Wild’ (excellent movie by the way and you HAVE TO follow this link, turn up the volume and DON’T skip the intro) I realised that he was using Alexander Supertramp’s story as a blue print for his own life. However where Alexander Supertramp was starving to death in the wilds of Alaska, Jesús was starving to death next to a golf course and a banana plantation between Puerto de la Cruz and La Orotava. It was caused, I have to say, by an unhealthy obsession with golf; he’d rather play than eat.
Alexander Supertramp, or Jesus - or are they one and the same?
A couple of days before he was due to leave he turned up with carrier bags full of stuff from his house; bread flours, delicious chorizos (including a particularly tasty wild boar one), sausages from his last trip to the Basque country and a clump of acelgas (Swiss chard) from his garden; one of the few things he’d actually managed to cultivate in 10 months. He was clearing out big time.
On the night before he left he popped up to have a couple of drinks and to say goodbye.
“When do you start work,” I asked, pouring him a glass of white wine.
“I don’t,” he replied.
“What?”
“I’ve decided not to take that job,” he explained. “My sister had already paid for a ticket to come and visit me here in August and she can’t get a refund, so I’ll have to come back.”
“To stay?” Andy asked, completely confused.
“Who knows?” Jesús shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe I’ll start from scratch again. Ramon said he’ll help me build a proper garden.”
“God, you really are like a butterfly in the wind,” Andy laughed. “You really don’t know what you’re doing or where you’re going.”
Jesús laughed and shrugged again.
He left for the Basque country the next day. He left his laptop with us so I guess he’s definitely returning, but we’ve no idea if he’ll be coming back to stay or just whilst his sister is here. The only thing I know for sure is that I’m going to see off that wild boar chorizo before he returns.
I had the misfortune last night to turn on the TV just in time to see MI Tierra TV station screening another disgraceful example of ‘pitchfork politics’ in Puerto de la Cruz.
Once again at the centre of the unpleasantness was the man who is unable to accept he is no longer mayor, Marcus Brito.
The protest was in relation to the opening, or delayed opening, of the renovated Cofradía de Pescadores building near Puerto’s harbour. Ironic that Marcus Brito was at the centre of the protest considering the building had lain almost derelict, like many of Puerto’s older buildings, for years under his leadership, but ‘his protesters’ seemed to have forgotten that little fact.
The reason I mention this is that this man and his mob (and I use the word mob deliberately) worry me.
Their politics are spiteful and potentially dangerous and their continual attempts to destabilize the council are not in the best interests of Puerto de la Cruz. But that doesn’t seem to bother them in their quest to regain power.
Mi Tierra TV was there to film the protest, of course. Any time I watch Mi Tierra TV, my heart drops. It specializes in personal attacks against politicians and people it doesn’t like – focusing on personal appearance and even insulting the parents of politicians. It isn’t pleasant. It’s anti women’s rights and anti gay. In fact fascism is the word that springs to mind when I watch Mi Tierra TV.
And according to Wikipedia it’s financed, surprise, surprise, by Marcus Brito.
I don’t know how much non-Spanish speakers keep up to date with politics in Puerto de la Cruz, but if you’re an ‘extranjero’ resident here, believe me it’s worth keeping your eyes on proceedings because you get the feeling these people want our money, but they don’t really want us.
I’ve just read an interview from a couple of years ago where Brito complains about another TV company because of its attacks against him (Brito doesn’t appear to understand irony), he goes to great lengths to emphasize the fact the company is German owned, as though that made its points less valid. A politician in Icod de los Vinos had her integrity questioned by his TV company because, get this, she came from the mainland!!!
Their approach is so distasteful that the UPCC (Union of Media Professionals) once issued a statement denouncing Mi Tierra TV for bringing the honor and professionalism of journalists in the north of Tenerife into question.
Thankfully a lot of people seem to have the measure of them and there are plenty of ‘denunciations’ to be found if you look, but nevertheless the idea of this man getting back into power really worries me, so I’m continuing to keep an eye on his political shenanigans.
If you live in Puerto you should too.
There was a moment yesterday when I felt like Neo being advised by Morpheus.
“This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”
We were standing at the apex of anarchy with our backs to the relative tranquillity of Plaza Charco. In front lay two streets; both were swirling cauldrons of bronzed flesh each moving liking a single organism. Our ears were assaulted by house, dance, trance, trad Canario and that odd whistling El Hierro music – we were on the edge of the abyss and there was only one way to discover whether it was the portal to heaven or to hell…we swallowed the red pill and jumped in.
You might think that my intro is a bit exaggerated, but believe me there were moments on ‘Embarkation Tuesday’ in Puerto de la Cruz when I felt that we were engulfed in an open air hedonistic mad house as our senses were assaulted by a relentless barrage of noise, colour and smells as upwards of thirty thousand people danced, drank, ate, fought running battles with hi-powered water pistols and threw themselves, or were thrown, from the harbour ramparts into the cooling and usually calm harbour waters.
Even when you're planning on getting wet, you've just got to be colour co-ordinated.
I could imagine Father Dougal turning to father Ted with that goofy look of his and declaring:
“It’s all a bit mad isn’t it, Ted.”
Embarkation Tuesday is the highlight of Puerto de la Cruz’ July Fiestas and is generally an excuse for the townspeople to cut loose and party like it’s 1999 (or whatever people party like it is these days).
Carnaval street parties might be lively affairs, but if anything Embarkation Tuesday is wilder…it’s certainly wetter. It’s unlikely that anyone is going to try to throw you into the harbour if they don’t know you, but I always keep my back to something solid when I’m taking photos just in case. What is guaranteed is that at some stage someone is going to take you out with a well aimed jet from a water pistol.
“Aaargh,” Andy shouted at one point. “Somebody just shot me in the boobs.”
“Wow,” I answered, impressed. “Must have been a damn good shot.”
Look out behind you!
The truth is that after a few circuits under a sun whose fierce rays could fry eggs on lobster thighs, you’re almost begging people to ‘shoot’ you in an attempt to cool down. Had I not had my camera around my neck, I’d have welcomed a detour into the refreshing embrace of the harbour’s water.
As the afternoon progresses the party gets wilder, the music gets louder and the beer flows faster. There’s an almost ‘dare’ element to attempting to walk down streets like Calle Perdomo where gun battles rage and there’s always a danger of being taken out by smart bomb from above (aka as a bucket of water thrown from a balcony). We spotted one just about to be tipped over us and did a sharp detour to the other side of the street just as the people around us were drenched by an explosion of water.
At one point in the midst of the madness I had an anxiety attack and wondered where all the other ‘extranjeros’ were and where did they get all that white meat for the ‘pinchitos’ that were sizzling at the entrance to every bar – were the two linked? (Southern Comfort – the movie, not the drink – is responsible for this paranoia that occurs every time I find myself in the middle of a frenzy of music, eating and drinking and I’m not a ‘local’)
We had decided that we weren’t going to queue for hours to see the embarkation this year. We done it year after year and it’s always a test of stamina, but at around 6pm we spotted an almost empty prime position on top of a wall beside the harbour and were seduced into thinking: ‘it’s a wall, it’s only a couple of feet wide – nobody else can squeeze in there.’
Boy, were we wrong. Canarios, like nature, abhor a vacuum and despite the danger of the wall collapsing, or someone falling, they piled in behind us, inching forward at the least sign of weakness. It’s always the way, you have to come to accept it, but it’s rarely done with malice or anger.
Many Hands Make Light Work
The Virgen and San Telmo eventually turned up to be loaded onto their boats at around 8-ish to shouts of ‘No Pasa Nada’ and after a day of drinking beer, eating spicy pork and chicken pinchitos and being machine gunned by water pistols on numerous occasions we were able to retire, exhausted, to the calm sanctuary of our house.
Embarkation Tuesday is great fun, but there’s an underlying seriousness to the day’s events and the loading of San Telmo and the Virgen del Carmen onto their fishing boats is a deadly serious affair. If I’ve made it sound a bit crazy, then good. Like I said it’s great fun, but if you’re the slightest bit fainthearted, take the blue pill and enjoy it from the fringes.
The Sardinada Stall - you'll be smelling of grilled sardines for days
Two things occurred to me as I was doing my customary shuffle, which masquerades as my version of dancing, to dodgy music at San Telmo during the ‘Sardinada’ last night.
The first was that I remembered that I actually originally liked ‘I Will Survive’ before women in Britain turned it into an anthem celebrating the fact that they were crap at choosing the right man. Here there are no screams when ‘First I was afraid, I was petrified…” starts to blast out of the speakers, immediately followed by hordes of girlies rushing to the centre of the dance floor belting out the lyrics with heartfelt emotion. Here it’s just another song. Well, actually it’s still a gay anthem, but that’s okay – that doesn’t make you feel that you’re responsible for doing the dirty on every woman in the vicinity just by virtue of your sex.
The other thing that occurred to me was that we were seriously starved of good music. No, that’s unfair. We hear lots of really good Latino and traditional Canario music all the time. It’s just that every now and again we’d like to hear a bit of Faithless, or the Kings of Leon, or the Killers…or even Robbie Williams. But the DJ who preceded the Latino band San Telmo last night was stuck firmly in the early eighties. He started well enough with a bit of Amy Winehouse, but within a few lines changed it to ‘Black is Black’ and a Stars on 45 medley that they used to play in discos when I was 18.
It didn’t matter, it wasn’t Latino, or Canario, it was something different and when the Bee Gees started singing ‘Staying Alive’ I felt Tony Manero course through my veins and suddenly it was 1979 and I was imagining I was John Travolta again. Luckily enough I hadn’t downed many cervezas, so there was no embarrassing attempt to actually replicate his moves from Saturday Night Fever (not this time anyway), but I did sing-along with mucho gusto as did Andy.
DJ in Puerto - If Gene Hunt time travelled to Puerto's Sardinada - would he know he'd time travelled at all?
And so it continued as Karma Chameleon was followed by YMCA (the crowd here don’t spell it out) and then some really bad Spanish Euro pop which the crowd of twenty to fifty some-things lapped up. Ironically the teenagers opted to congregate on the promenade above San Telmo waiting for the Latino band to strike up before they swamped the natural dance floor overlooking San Telmo’s rock pools. The DJ finished his set with ‘Song 2’ by Blur – almost the most up to date sound he played all night (Amy didn’t count).
It was kitsch music, but it was really good fun and Puerto was buzzing with an infectious fiesta atmosphere. Before we’d musically time-travelled, we’d forked out our €3.50 each for a plate of grilled sardines, a chunk of anis bread and a cerveza and sat on the wall peeling the sardine’s delicate and salty flesh away from its bones as a stream of stylishly dressed young Spanish and Canarios paraded by like models in an unplanned fashion show.
The Sardinada is only the ‘warm up’ event for Embarkation Tuesday, but it’s a wonderful experience in its own right and shows Puerto and its people’s joie de vivre at their best. It was one of those nights that make you wonder is there a better place on this earth than this town.
Living beneath the volcano 