Where once my daughter and I shared a joke about new estate agent offices popping up like mushrooms now they appear to be dropping like flies. As every whitewashed locale window was eventually polished clean to reveal a shiny new property agent, we raised eyebrows and wished for a My Little Pony shop instead. Well she did, I secretly wanted an English book shop.

I wondered at the time how our relatively small town could support them all. Of course estate agents in Tenerife are neither restricted to the towns that house their office nor to Tenerife itself. Many are simply based here and offer services in Fuerteventura, the other Canary Islands, mainland Spain and forays into the Cape Verde property market but still when you have several estate agent offices cheek by jowl in a small local town you do have to wonder if there is enough money flying around to sustain them all.

And it would now seem that there is not. Despite trumpeting rally cries about it being a buyer’s market and Miguel ángel Fernández Ordónez, head honcho of the Bank of Spain comfortingly assuring us that Spain will almost certainly squeak through without a recession, buyers are understandably cautious.

On the one hand there are fantastic bargains to be made – just at the back of me there is a nice little two bedroom house with garden that has dropped €20,000 in the last week. It was not overpriced to begin with. Another property I spotted in La Estrella went from €180.000 to €140.000 just recently and indications are that prices will continue to fall.

On the other hand, potential buyers are being advised to keep an eye on the Euribor which today is standing at 5.454%. As that continues to rise, so do your mortgage repayments.

All the more necessary then, to find a solid, professional and experienced estate agent to guide you through the mine field of potential pitfalls to the crock of property investment gold that lies at the other side. I’ve no doubt those that have the experience and local knowledge will weather the current storm of estate agent closures and that the property market place will be all the healthier for that.

Find some of the Tenerife’s most experienced English speaking estate agents on eTenerife.com as well as property agents for Fuerteventura and Cape Verde.

In Tenerife each local council organises activities through the summer months for the school kids that are registered in its area. Accessing the Arona Ayuntamiento website to find out what is on offer this year I could not find any information at all. In fact, if I had wanted to know what was going on in Verano 2005, I was quids-in but for summer 2008 – not a peep.

Many of the most popular courses have cut-off dates to get your kid’s name down and some have limited places so if you want to take advantage of these activities then now is the time to get them organised. I emailed Arona and received a reply linking to this pdf document listing Verano 2008 Activities in Arona. Too late already for the first round of swimming classes in Los Cristianos but there are plenty of other things to choose from including windsurfing, surfing and recreational and artistic roller skating.

Most activities are available to 6 years and up and there are a few specially for older kids including boxing and beach exercise classes. Pensioners get a look in too with beach exercise and gymnasium.

Great that the BBC and other channels are going to provide programmes via internet isn’t it? Shame that accessing these sites from Tenerife will get you diddly-squat unless you do so via a proxy to disguise your location. Is there an alternative way to get BBC, ITV and US programming for FREE? Uhm, yes actually.

If you have access to the internet and if you are reading this that is a pretty safe bet, then you can access many programmes via streaming sites like surfthechannel.com. Pick whichever tv programme or movie you fancy and start it loading, then go and make your self a cuppa to give it time to load fully.

You may also sign up to sites like tvfreeload.com or forumw.org. These provide you with links to files held elsewhere. You will need membership at Rapidshare or Megaupload (RS works better IMO) in order to download these files and Winrar to unzip them and stitch them back together.

Stock up on fresh produce, fruit and veggies today and make sure if you are on any meds or have young kids that you have the basics on hand for them – like Romilar (dry tickly cough), Mucosan (loose cough) Dalcy (fever). The ructions caused by the truckers strike are likely to create shortages of produce on Tenerife and is also playing havoc with the islands exports.

The fishermen too are finding things very hard. Why bring in fresh fish when what they sell does not cover the cost of taking out the boat?

Popular Tenerife based travel scribe Joe Cawley has launched a Tenerife site that really does look packed with information. Spookily enough its called My Tenerife Info. If you are looking for hotel, car hire, destination information, street maps and events notices its all on there plus much more.

Check it out: My Tenerife Info

Madrid band Nothink heads the No Solo Music Fest on June 21st which is being held in the Plaza de San Juan Degollada in Arafo. There’s also a flea market and various courses and workshops on offer.

120 of the most formidable women golfers will participate in the Tenerife Ladies Open from 19th to 22nd of June at the Costa Adeje Golf course. This is the eight year of this prestigious event and if it all goes off according to form you can expect an exciting event indeed.

For more information on the event itself visit the official Tenerife Ladies Open 2008 website and information about the course itself visit Costa Adeje Golf.