Everywhere you look in Tenerife you will see banana plantations – or you won’t see them -  but they are there, hidden behind that tatty looking grey net that festoons the island.

Now, for the very first time, Tenerife is hosting a banana festival complete with all sorts of wacky competitions and events – banana sculpting for example.

There will be prizes for the best banana inspired dish and plenty of banana booze as well as non-alcoholic banana drinks for the kids. It sounds like a lot of fun and I am promised more bananas than I can carry if I go along with the weans so I guess I’ll see you there.  I’ll be the one checking out the banana rum…
Festival Del Platano

April 24 & 25th 2010

Troya, Playa de las Americas.

At the risk of being a gullible mug once again and falling for another email prank, I do want to pass on something just in case there is substance to it.

The notice below says you should not pick up any mobile phone that you find laying around in the street because it may be booby-trapped with enough dynamite to blow off your hand, courtesy of the ETA.

PASADLO AL MAYOR Nº DE PERSONAS POSIBLE.
ES MUY IMPORTANTE. LO HAN PASADO DE LA DIRECCION GENERAL DE LA POLICIA , Y DEL MINISTERIO DEL INTERIOR.

NO RECOJAIS NINGÚN MOVIL QUE ENCONTREIS Y LEED ESTO ATENTAMENTE :
POR DETERMINADAS CIUDADES ESPAÑOLAS, INCLUYENDO MADRID, BARCELONA Y VALENCIA, SE ESTAN PREPARANDO ATENTADOS INDISCRIMINADOS CON LOS DETONADORES ROBADOS RECIENTEMENTE EN ‘GRENOBLE’ POR E.T.A.
EL ‘MODUS OPERANDI’ ES ACOMPAÑARLOS DE UNOS GRAMOS DE DINAMITA E INSERTARLOS EN TELEFONOS MOVILES, LLAVEROS, ETC… QUE LUEGO SE ABANDONAN POR LAS CALLES. TIENEN POTENCIA SUFICIENTE COMO PARA ARRANCAR UNA MANO.

ALERTAD AL MAYOR NÚMERO DE PERSONAS QUE PODAIS..

Most people if they think of K9 Animal Refuge,  think of it as a dog shelter. With 80 dogs in their care, they are definitely that, but K9 also provide shelter for many cats in their large cattery including the fine felines shown below.

[View with PicLens]

Please call Hazel at the K9 kennels on 667 638 468 from 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday to ask about the cats pictured or about the other cats.

Okay, we all know that there are cat people and there are dog people and when it comes to their favourite four legged friend never the twain shall meet. But there are those who love both – the cog or the dat people depending on which kind of furry friend was first in their household.

Much as I love dogs, I have always had cats. Even my very first feline friend gave birth to her kits in my bed when I was only three years old.

I arrived in Tenerife in 2000 from Thailand already kitted out (boom boom) with two furry friends that I brought with me. The venerable Boodle (originally Kitten Caboodle) who lived to a ripe old 22 years and Chokdi, whose name meant Lucky in Thai, but who was one of the unluckiest creatures I have ever come across.

Chokdi settling in

Chokdi and her littermates had been thrown from a three storey window on to the roof of the outside cludgie  of my Bangkok local, ‘Cheap Charlie’s’. Chokdi was perhaps the least appealing because no one had wanted her and while all the others had been spirited away by CC regulars, Chokdi was left in a cardboard box behind the bar. I took the little scrap home.

In the first week it turned out that she had in-turned eyelashes (ouch!) and a fracture in a back leg – not that it seemed to slow her down any. She got stuck behind the oven and stranded mewling at the top of the curtains on a regular basis. At first very scared and nervous, over time she became  a loud and bossy family member with a short, bright tortoiseshell coat and long legs.

Chokdi getting better (believe it or not).

When we went on holiday, the cats went into the care of a local vet. Apart from being mightily pee’d off with us for leaving her there, Boods was fine, Fergus just as fat and contented but poor Chokdi had been struck by a dreadful flesh-eating type disease.  Her beautiful soft fur was peeling off in long, raw tatters, her ears had begun to disintegrate and she was covered in gentian violet. Had we been much longer the vet would have put Chokdi down.

At home with us she recovered slowly although it took a long time  and her ears never looked right again.

Skye and Chokdi just chilling.

The two cats settled into Tenerife very quickly and neither were phased by the addition of a puppy boxer a couple of months later. Everything was great for a year or so until the night Chokdi picked up poison outside. She went into convulsion and died in pain shortly after. My poor soi baby had been through a lot in her short life but she had known love, a full belly and a warm bed which is more than many get in this life so maybe she wasn’t so unlucky after all.

Chokdi died about nine years ago so you might wonder where this trip down memory lane came from.  Well, except for the most recent addition to our family, Mia, who was given to me by a friend, every cat I have ever owned has been from a shelter or was a street stray.  Every one of them has been a wonderful family member and dearly loved friend and none have had any health problems whatsoever except for Chokdi. I just would never consider paying money for a purebred cat when there are all these fantastic waifs and strays out there just wanting someone to take them in.

The good people at K9 asked me to remind TT readers that they have a cattery which is  bursting wth great felines just  waiting for you to take them home. Please don’t miss the next post which will be all about the K9 cats….just remember not to call your new feline friend Lucky!

Well the Kid’s Parade went off very nicely yesterday although I did get into trouble for calling it a cabalgata. ‘It’s not a Cabalgata,’ my daughter informed me witheringly, ‘There are no floats!‘

In previous years the kids went dressed pretty much as they liked or possibly as they last had for Halloween which would explain the preponderance of devils, witches and mommias, but this year was different. The school chose the disfrazes and they organized getting them or making them as the case may be.

This made our Kids Parade more like the real thing where the dancing troupes called comparsas wear group costumes and pass the spectators together in a band.

First off were the traffic lights of which I have to apologise to all the other mums because my little semaforo clearly shone the brightest.

There were roving gangs of pirates, chefs in tall paper hats, American tourists in loud shirts brandishing cameras, Hawaiian dancers (who certainly seemed to be having the most fun!) and  ‘Indios de La Palma’, a nod in the direction of the immigrants who left the Canaries for the Americas and a traditional part of the Carnaval of Santa Cruz de La Palma since the ’60s.

My daughter has been teased by one of her classmates lately, who calls her ‘Ugly’. Telling her that little boys are more likely to torture the little girls that they like the best fell on deaf ears I am afraid, but guess who that is on her arm???

Ha! Change the world as much as you like but the little things will always stay the same.

I took many, many photos on Friday and in all the streets are thronged with parents, grandparents, friends and townspeople. As one local said to me,  ”This day makes us all happy. It is not only for the kids but also for the town.”

Does anyone know where the Three Greyhounds bar is? And no, smartypants, I don’t mean the one in Knutsford, Cheshire.

Apparently there is one in Tenerife somewhere and Michelle has been hunting for it high and low.

Should any kind TT reader know the place in question, please post an address and/or phone number in the comments below.

(And you might want to tell the landlord that it is cheap as chips to advertise his bar on eTenerife if he wants to drop me a line about that. )

Muchas gracias

The big parade in Santa Cruz which is scheduled for Tuesday 16th February is the Carnaval event, the one that all the tourists are here in Tenerife to see; the one ’second only to Rio’. But it is far from the only Carnaval event.

Every town in Tenerife has its own Carnaval with the one in Los Cristianos which runs from 5th to 14th of March and has a Viva Mexico theme this year being the last.

Even though the Arona Carnaval is not until next month, schools are out next week and so those schools which wish to do so will be having their Kids’ Parade tomorrow.

For whatever reasons my kids’ school was a bit of a wet blanket last year with none of the outings and fun stuff the kids had got to do in the previous years. There was no Carnaval Parade, no Canarian Day celebration nor big organised march through the streets to meet the Three Kings and have a picnic in the street.

All their excursions were curtailed too. No visit to the bomberos or to the airport or day spent at the Quimpi farm or environmentally-minded expedition up the side of the Red Mountain.

Although you might think the overall recession was behind the moratorium on fun outings I have a suspicion it was more to do with the teachers lobbying for better pay and jibing at the extra duties required of them in organising and sheperding these missions when they are not paid enough for their daily grind as it is.

Anyway this year somebody put the Ooooh! back in school and we are having a Carnaval Parade. Yaaay! The kids are all aquiver and very much looking forward to their special day tomorrow.

The following information should therefore be of interest to you whether you like kids and want to watch them all march past in their Carnaval disguises or whether you loathe the little monsters and want to stay the hell out of Dodge.

If you are in the Las Galletas neighbourhood tomorrow, the kids will emerge blinking into the sunlight at approximately 12.30. Some kids will be blinking more than others, especially my son who for some mysterious reason is being dressed by his teacher as a traffic light.

My daughter and her classmates will be dressed as natives of La Palma complete with white frocks (at least the girls will be in frocks) and big floppy dress hat.  This year the school chose the outfits and ordered them from El Kilo. Saved a lot of messing about of course but in typical Tenerife fashion we only just got the blouse and skirt home now (2.p.m. on Thursday the day before the big event) to fix or fiddle with if it is too big or small.

As is traditional, all the parents will be there, stepping on each others toes and jostling for position to get the best shots of their babies. It is all in good fun but if you should be there and happen to get a belt in the ribs, well, I apologise in advacne but you really should know better than to get between a mum and her dookied-up darlings.