Andy Montgomery has written an excellent post on getting the most out of your holidays in Tenerife. With the island’s glorious sunshine, the sun, sea and sand type break is very tempting but as Andy says (though much more politely), if you burst out of your bubble and try something different you will have so much more to talk about and remember.

I know that is true. Of two weeks I had in Cairns, Australia many years ago, it is the bungee jump and the horse trekking through the tropical rainforest of North Queensland I remember.

While the rest of that holiday has faded into dim and distant memory those two days remain crystal clear.  I can still feel my knees knocking together before I leapt off the bungee tower and the thrill of plummeting to earth only to be snapped back on what seemed to be a remarkably slender rubber band.

Like all first-timers I had nervously asked the steward how many times the bands were used. ‘Awh, ’bout a hundred’, he said. ‘Yer number nointy-noine.’

There used to be bungee jumping in Tenerife at Sky Park but that sadly closed. Still,  the Tower of Power at Siam Park is just as thrilling and you can go camel riding as well as horse riding in Tenerife.

To add a few more ideas to those given by Andy you can also go sightseeing by helicopter, channel your inner James Bond by going Bob Diving and I believe you can even go spelunking.

(I have never come across a half decent link to spelunking in Tenerife so if you run a tour company that organises spelunking tours or this is something you have done in Tenerife and you would like to provide some info about this activity please get in touch).

So while you are making your mind up where to stay in Tenerife this summer, you might also want research which activities to book to fill your days with memories to take home again.

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.

As Tenerife battens down in expectation of a huge storm tonight, many people have been stranded in the north airport for 6 hours or more already.  They are as likely to fly out tonight as Rudolph the red nosed reindeer is to win at next year’s Crufts.

Those big hearted softies at the travel agencies have been handing out dinner vouchers worth a whopping €6 to those who will be spending the night on the tiles, (as in the floor of the airport tiles).

Let’s see, €6. Mmm. The choice is killing me.  A packet of papaps fritas and a small bottle of water? Or I could club together with my mates and maybe get a slap up, single burger with cheese and chips to share.

Come in, Scrooge all is forgiven.

The tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004 killed 230,000 people. The enormity of the loss of life is hard to digest.  It is hard to believe that that many people lost their lives in one cataclysmic event. But is it any easier to imagine the 260,000 men who will die in Western Europe this year from cancer? Or the 277,000 women in Central & Eastern Europe who will succumb to the same disease?

In fact, altogether across Europe over a million people will die this year from cancer. Worldwide, the figure is somewhere near 8 million.

According to the UK CancerStats site more than 1 in 3 people develop some form of cancer in their lifetime. The good news is that the average ten-year cancer survival rate has doubled over the last 30 years and more than seven out of ten children with cancer are now successfully treated compared with fewer than 3 in 10 in the 1960s.

Also according to the CancerStats site, cancer is the number one fear amongst Brits, topping that of heart disease or terrorism. How much scarier then must it be to contract the disease while living in a foreign country, with minimal medical insurance and perhaps not much in the way of family support?

The annual Walk For Life in Tenerife raises money in support of the Spanish cancer charities AECC and Amate. In a sea of pink solidarity, men, women and children walk the 3.5 km from the Mediterranean Palace to the Sal Y Tien plaza. As it says on the Carrera por la Vida website “Once a year, to walk is to support!”

As an expat in Tenerife, you might wonder if these charities are available to you should you fall ill with cancer. For the answer you should read the moving account of one British pensioner in Tenerife Magazine who received such support from AECC that she says they made a terrible time bearable.

Whether you are in town as an expat or a tourist, all you need to do is show up – in a pink t-shirt if you have one – at 10.30 on Sunday 13th December and join the walk.  Sponsorships and donations are passed on to the relevant charities under the guidance of a Notary and with full transparency so you know every penny is going to the aid of somebody who needs it.

You might also announce your participation on the Tenerife Magazine Walk for Life participants page on Facebook.

One of my favourite things to do with visitors in Tenerife is to go for a wander with them round Jungle Park (also known as Eagle Park or Aguilas Park). The plantings in the grounds are mature and lush and the paths and trails cleverly double back on themselves giving the impression that the place is much bigger than it actually is.

The wild bird show is spectacular. I have no doubt that in a perfect world those birds, the American Bald Eagle, the condors and the vultures would be happier soaring over wilder lands far, far away from here but as animals in captivity go, these at least are given the chance to spread their wings and fly freely a couple of times a day.

The first thing you should do on arrival at Jungle Park is check the time of the Raptor Show and make sure that your meanderings within the park will have you near the show arena in time to pick your seat and get settled. If you want to get a truly bird’s eye view position yourself under the wooden posts which are set there for the birds to perch on.

As a presenter commentates, several species of wild bird are put through their paces. One small falcon may hop from head to head of the spectators, while a couple of secretary birds peck seed politely from their hands and larger birds of prey circle over head preparing for the cue that signals their dramatic, plunging entrance to the show.

In previous years, the presenter used to give a running commentary of the birds, their species, size, diet, habitat and so on in several languages. The show was always prefaced with the most important information: sit down, stay seated, don’t eat anything during the show – again this used to be given in several languages. To my surprise, on this visit the presenter only spoke in SPanish and not even the safety drill was given in any other language.

Towards the end of the show, a dopey Englishwoman stood up and wandered over near to a handler, urged on by her husband, as he angled the camera trying to get a dramatic shot. He quite likely would have got a more dramatic shot than he had bargained for if the handler had not quickly changed position and smartly connected with the bird of prey that he had been signalling to plummet at him from the sky.

The lack of translation would only bother those that expected to hear it. The birds are more than dramatic enough to make up for the missing commentary. I guess it was a cost cutting exercise that put paid to that and to the African dance group that used to welcome the African ibex at the end of the show.

Moving on round the park after the Raptor Show you will come across many other animal and reptile species and also another bird show -  parrots this time.

On our most recent visit to Jungle Park,  we were accompanied by Scottish couple, Jim and Carol Ramsay who had recently been visiting some theme parks in Florida.  They commented on how Tenerife’s Jungle Park measured up most favourably to what they saw on the other side of the pond.  Jim is a talented freelance photographer and took the shots that you can see in the gallery below.

[View with PicLens]

I finally got round to putting up a little video about our Rafting Bike day out just before the weekend. (No cracks about ‘fat-bottomed girls’, if you please).

I made the vid with Windows Movie Maker which has an annoying habit of freezing the computer every 10 minutes so the little clip nearly never got finished at all. Despite a growing urge to turf the whole lot into the briny, I finally got the it done and am quite happy with the results. What do you think?

Ready to Go

Cousin Jan and her wild bunch are returning to Tenerife for the third time next month. There can’t be many of the activities on offer on the island that they have not tried already (except perhaps spelunking down the lava tubes) and they will be revisiting their favourite adventures this time including Bike Rafting and Bob-Diving.

It was Jan’s  family’s  enthusiastic reaction to their day Bike Rafting that encouraged me to add the activity to my Tenerife portal website (eTenerife.com) in the first place knowing that if it was equally enjoyable to 50-something parents, a teenage boy and girl and an 11 year old girl all with vastly different characters and hobbies that it was a pretty safe bet that any website visitor booking through eTenerife would also enjoy the day.

Now, I can see what they were all raving about. Nino and I and two of his French rellies an four other people went Bike Rafting on Saturday and we all had a ball!

Put simply, bike rafting involves being picked up in a minivan and transported up the mountain to a starting point from where you sail back downhill the 22 miles to Los Cristianos (or Golf Del Sur or Playa San Juan). Being downhill all the way there is hardly any peddaling involved at all – something which came as a great relief to me.

The Journey Begins…

The journey begins in the pine forest corona at the lip of the crater. The pines scent the air and the view over Tenerife South is magnificent. Where everyone else seemed to breathe deep and grin madly at the scenery my tummy was doing backflips.

I don’t know if everyone on the Bike Rafting trip that day was as nervous as I was to start with but then my biking track record is pretty grim. I have had my lip stitched back together from a bike accident when I was three, a black eye from a lonely concrete post that stood sentinel at the bottom of a scruffy hill  along from my house when I was ten. I ran my cousin’s friend’s motorbike up the school wall in Belgium (and it had a crate of beer on the back at the time), nearly cut three old Belgian ladies off at the knees as I crash landed into them after trying and failing to brake in Aalst and caused the domino effect on a long line of bikes for hire in Yangshou, China which resulted in me being chased down the road by the furious business owner.

In the ten years flocks of bike rafters have been shepherded down the mountain no-one has ever had a serious accident. Even so, my disasterous biking experinces warned me that there was a first time for everything and if anyone was going to go careering off the road and down the hill the hard way it would be me.  It didn’t help that guide Thomas quipped that should anyone’s brakes fail to remember that we were heading for Los Cristianos.

I needn’t have worried. Almost as soon as we started, I began to relax and enjoy the ride.  The feeling of the wind rushing past, the smell of the pines, the silence and the spectacular views just wrapped me up in a bubble and carried me through that first nervous patch.

The pace is easy and relaxed. For most of the time brakes are applied to keep behind the guide but now and then there is a steep downhill slope followed by an uphill surge where all brakes are off and you pelt down hell-for leather in order to maintain the momentum to get you back up the rise without pedalling. It is totally exhilarating.

While the bike riding is the main event there is more to the day than that alone. Owner Mauricio and guide Thomas have the route so carefully planned that they have interesting stories to tell on each stop.  They also play off each other like an old comedy team and you have to keep a careful eye on Mauricio to know when he is pulling your leg. On the rare occasion when  the group of bikers is required to cross lanes of traffic Mauricio positioned his van and trailer across the road like a mother hen  spreading her wings  while her chicks scampered to safety on the other side.

The scenery was not restricted to the rural lansdscape either. We flew though the villages where the locals waved and bid us “Buenas Dias!” and then on down to just past La Escalona where we stopped for a drink and traditional Spanish nibbles. From there it was small sideroads all the way down to the highway into Los Cristianos and the day finish with a gallop along the beachfront and an explosive surprise from Mauricio.

If you are looking for something to do in Tenerife, I can not recommend this day highly enough to everyone.  So far Mauricio’s oldest participant is an 85 year old World War II veteran and young kids can ride along on a baby chair fitted to their parent’s bike. At about nine or ten years old a child will have enough strength and maturity (depending on the child of course) to handle their own bike and I imagine the day would give them a huge sense of accomplishment.

Book your Bike Rafting at eTenerife (my website) or direct with Mauricio at Rafting Bikes. If you do book direct with Mauricio please let him know you read about the day here so maybe he’ll give me a freebie the next time.