PKRA Kiteboarding World Tour in Tenerife 2010

This weekend we headed to the south of Tenerife’s coolest town (in atmosphere terms, not temps), El Médano to watch some seriously disturbed people attempting to commit hari kiri (AKA taking part in the Kiteboarding World Tour 2010).

Andy has already written a wonderful article for Tenerife Magazine about the event so instead of duplicating the information, here are a few photos.

Andy Yates in a more conventional position

Giselda Pulido...and her hair

Andy Yates - Now that's just showing off!

Giselda Pulido - overall winner of two disciplines

CLICK HERE FOR A SHORT SLIDESHOW OF MORE PHOTOS

Stepping Back into Tenerife’s Past: Tenerife Beaches and Resorts in 1969

I’ve just been thumbing through a little hard-backed tourist guidebook for Tenerife written back in 1969 when mass tourism was not so much in its infancy as barely having left the womb.

It’s a fascinating little book – unfortunately it’s in German and although I did study German for a while, I can only remember a smattering of words like der spinne and schizenhousen (actually it was my dad who taught me that one). Funnily enough I can remember more phrases from those little Commando books than I can from school lessons so if ever I need a ‘Gott im Himmel’ or ‘Achtung Englander’, I’m well prepared.

Anyway, the point is lots of the little gems within are lost to me, but names of places are in Spanish and there’s a little information section at the end which is in Spanish and English as well.

The photos are a real eye-opener to the way Tenerife has changed over the last 40 years…or not.

Tenerife's classiest town - looking almost exactly how it looked 40 years ago

There are some places – parts of the north west coast, La Orotava, Teide National Park – where the photos are exactly the same as ones I’ve taken in the last couple of years. However there are others where the differences are staggering. The La Orotava Valley for one, where much of the banana plantations in the lower valley have been engulfed by concrete – but Puerto de la Cruz had been an established port and was used to receiving visitors for centuries, so there was always a decent sized town on the coast.

The real contrast is on the south coast where there are as many small fishing boats on Los Cristianos beach as sunbathers and a handful of buildings at the back of the beach. El Médano is the same; Los Gigantes is almost non-existent and Las Américas not even a twinkle in developer’s eyes. Costa Adeje is a place that is way off in the future.

It was a very different Tenerife back then – just listen to this description of Bajamar.

‘…Bajamar which, after Puerto de la Cruz, can be considered the best equipped coastal resort for tourists.’

Now compare with the description of Los Cristianos.

‘This coastal village should become a resort of more extensive proportions because of its excellent climate…’

An almost identical photo to one in the 40 year-old book

Somebody clearly took that advice on board…and then some.

Interestingly Güímar is described as ‘the most important town in the southern part of the island.’ Which of course it always was and why the road south stopped there for centuries until the tiny southern hamlets were connected to civilisation by tarmac in the 1940s

Then there are the beaches on Tenerife, some of which don’t exactly match their current incarnations.

Playa Las Teresitas  – ‘It is 1450 metres long and the sand is dark in colour.’

Playa Los Cristianos – ‘The sand is light coloured. The road goes as far as the beach.’ The road goes as far as the beach; isn’t that great?

Playa Puerto Santiago - ‘…a length of 63 metres and dark sand; the road goes as far as the village, and then there is a path to the beach.’ Actually, thinking about the access to Playa Puerto Santiago today, it’s not that much different.

Finally the area of Las Américas/Costa Adeje gets a mention at last, except it’s not called Las  Américas.
Even then the beach was known as Playa de la Troya but getting to it was a bit different than nowadays – ’300 metres long with rocks; there is a road to the cliff-top and a path down to the beach.’

Fantastic isn’t it?

Driving Completely in the Dark on Tenerife: Blogging About a Day on Tenerife Part 3

The third incident of the day was one of those infuriating and bewildering TIT (this is Tenerife) experiences.

At the end of a long day in the south we just wanted to get back home as quickly as possible. At that time of night, when the motorway is quiet, around fifty minutes normally does the trick.

We were going great guns until we passed the airport. If you’ve driven on the TF1 motorway at night you’ll know that a lot of it isn’t lit. Good for light pollution, but not for spotting a row of cones which suddenly appeared out of the blackness forcing me into one lane and then off the motorway altogether. I spotted them almost as I hit them and followed the slip road onto a road running parallel with the TF1 and an unmoving line of traffic stretching into the distance.

“WTF” I exclaimed. It was 10.30pm and we were gridlocked in the darkness.

Eventually we moved forward at a snail’s pace. Up ahead I could see JCB’s and a load of workmen, but there was no work actually taking place on the motorway itself. It seemed to take us forever to crawl forward, which seemed odd as there couldn’t have been much other traffic from anywhere else interfering with our progress.

As we reached the workmen’s lights the two causes of the traffic queue were revealed.

Workmen were working on a bridge over the TF1 and there was a large rig on the motorway itself under the bridge. Fair enough if you have to carry out work, night-time, when traffic is light, is the sensible time to do it.

However, the actual cause of the queue had me wishing I had a machine gun to hand. I’m surprised that unemployment is so high in Spain because, despite the fact that there was no traffic coming in any other direction, they had not one, not two, but three idiots directing our queue of traffic…or more accurately making a right old balls up of trying to keep the traffic moving.

One of them had one of those ‘stop’ and ‘go’ signs with which he was waving traffic forward. His two colleagues were stood in the middle of the road waving their arms about willy nilly.

This was causing all sorts of consternation as the road back on to the motorway lay straight ahead and the road the guys seemed to be gesticulating towards headed bizarrely to El Médano.

I say bizarrely, cause if you know this road you’ll know that you can’t get back to the TF1 from it. Well, actually you can if you head south – in the direction we’d just come. But then you’d end up hitting the roadworks again, being directed to El Médano again…and so on forever and ever.

We made a snap decision, ignored the goons on the road and took what seemed to be the logical route – straight across and back on to the motorway. Ominously nobody followed us; the whole line of traffic turned right towards El Médano as directed.

As we drove into the darkness I kept one eye on my rear view mirror hoping that some lights would enter it, and that if they did they weren’t blue flashing ones, but none came. It was completely unnerving and we expected at any moment to turn a corner and plough into a load of workmen even though we knew that the workmen’s apparent detour didn’t make any sense. There was simply no way to get back on to the motorway other than the route we had taken. After about five minutes I saw red up ahead and we caught up with one car, then another and another and relief swept over us. We’d made the right decision.

God knows what happened with everyone else in that queue – they’d have reached El Médano and then what? I imagine that there would have been some pretty pissed-off drivers when they realised that the idiots at the bridge had sent them to what amounted to a dead end. Hundreds of cars had followed their bizarre detour.

Sometimes, some might say a little bit too often, we encounter behaviour on Tenerife that is difficult to rationalise. It can be amusing, bewildering or annoying as hell. But as long as you know to expect the unexpected and to follow your instincts rather than cerebrally challenged morons in yellow jackets, then it might just be possible for an intelligent and logically minded person to survive living here with their sanity intact.

Christmas and New Year on Tenerife: The 12 Days of Christmas – Mas o Menos Part 2

30th December
After our climb it was back to work full steam until my birthday. I’ve got a sort of Victor Meldrew attitude to my birthday. Not because I don’t like birthdays, but because it falls at a damned awkward time. If my mother had held on for another 16 minutes it would have fallen on New Year’s Eve and that would have been just tickety boo for partying, plus I would be sharing it with the great Sir Alex F. We spent the morning at La Villa which was a nightmare as Canarios were still shopping en masse for presents for Tres Reyes.

Morcilla con Almendras...yum!

Queuing to escape the chaos didn’t help with the birthday spirit, but an afternoon spent at tasca El Olivo and some of the best tapas I’ve tasted on Tenerife soon brought it back. The boquerones , olives in a spicy sauce and home made croquettes were above average but the morcilla con almendras (a type of black pudding with crushed almonds) and lightly grilled cheese drizzled with cilantro sauce, a spicy red sauce and honey were exceptional.

Andy played a blinder for my birthday; she got me a bottle of something that I’d wanted to try for eight years, absinthe. Its link with bohemian artists had intrigued me ever since we’d read a guidebook in Barcelona which mentioned this bar, Marsella I think it was called, specialised in absinthe and was allegedly frequented by dwarves, ladies of the night, transvestites and circus performers. We tried to find it one night, but it lay down a dark alley full of people who lurked in the shadows so that all you could see was the whites of their eyes and the glint of steel blades in their hands (well that’s what my imagination saw). We bottled it after a couple of hundred yards. But I’ve had a hankering to try it ever since, so we spent the evening trying to perfect how to pour absinthe properly – it involves sugar lumps, ice cold water and a special absinthe spoon.

The 'Rave' street in Puerto

New Year’s Eve
I thought bohemians drank absinthe to be creative. We woke up on NY Eve morning feeling about as creative as a pair of amoebas and the malaise lasted all day. The idea of traipsing the three kilometres into Puerto de la Cruz for the Nochevieja celebrations didn’t appeal in the slightest and we considered giving it a miss this year.
But you’ve got to do these things, so at around 10pm we deseeded our grapes, stuck a couple of bottles of cava into a Zara bag and dragged ourselves off to the party.
Of course as soon as we got there the infectious atmosphere took hold. As usual the place was full of smiley, dancing people looking fab. This year the style of evening dress seemed to be from the 50s and many of the girls had dresses of green silks with wide stiff hems. There were enormous waves pounding the harbour walls, so the firework display took place from the direction of Plaza Europa. We had the usual grape eating fiasco at midnight. I managed to get all mine down as the bells rang out for midnight, but Andy still had some in her gob.
“I didn’t know I was supposed to swallow” was her excuse, something I attribute to a good catholic upbringing.
After the fireworks it was party time again and the streets around the harbour filled. Calle Perdomo, the ‘rave’ street was particularly impressive this year as the fairground’s big wheel added the disco lights to the scene.
However, the effects of the absinthe hadn’t fully worn off, so we only managed to last a couple of hours this year before being party poopers and heading for home.

New Year’s Day
Pretty much a rerun of Christmas Day, except with a lot less alcohol. It was a beautifully sunny day, but we didn’t venture outside at all. Once more it was a case of overeating and slobbing out on the sofas; this time to watch Slumdog Millionaire. What an incredible film and a rollercoaster ride of emotions – There were tears before bedtime.

2nd January
Another walk to try to combat the effects of overeating throughout the festive period. This time we headed down to El Médano to meet our friends, Richard and Nikki for a hike across Montaña Pelada. The island’s volcanic cones are fascinating places to explore. Pelada’s surreal slopes lead to a flattish plateau which overlooks the windmills at the Institute for Renewable Energies.
In typical Tenerife fashion, this Eco centre lies right beside the area where a big new and controversial port is planned. I wonder if the windmills will power it and if the Tenerife authorities understand irony?

Snow on Teide...again

A great walk was finished off with an even better lunch courtesy of masterchef Nikki.

Tres Reyes - 5th & 6th January
The day after our walk we both woke to find we had what felt like the start of a cold. It turned out this was Andy’s fault as she had mentioned whilst chatting to Nikki, that we rarely caught colds and in saying that completely jinxed us. The symptoms got worse until by the night of the arrival of the Tres Reyes in Puerto, we were in no shape to go to the parade of the wise men bearing gifts which was a bit of a shame as the press release promised that there would be 60 animals involved. As I type, Andy is still in bed coughing and spluttering and feeling completely sorry for herself, whereas I’m feeling quite sprightly (but then she felt like that yesterday before relapsing). It’s a beautiful sunny day and there’s actually some snow on Mount Teide, so as Tres Reyes is actually Christmas Day for Canarios it looks as though we’ve got a white Christmas on Tenerife after all…even if the temperature is in the mid 20s.