A new BBC1 television programme is underway and it is about the scams, cons and problems experienced by tourists abroad. They want to know if you’ve been had.

Examples of scams are:

-  bags/luggage stolen

-  tricked into boat trips

- taken advantage of in Taxis

-  locals posing as a uniformed officials.

If you experienced any of these or any other situations that conned you out of  money or put you in a tricky spot then then Auntie Beeb wants to know.

Post a comment below or if you prefer to be contacted privately then send me an email and I will pass it on.

As promised, Tenerife Magazine are offering another fab prize for December- a five star one bedroom apartment in Pearly Grey Resort, Callao Salvaje, and entering is easy peasy. All you’ve got to do is sign up (or already be a member of the Tenerife Magazine Facebook page) and also sign as a fan of the Ingane Yami Facebook page.

Ingame Yami is a charitable project to build a special village for young AIDS orphans in Durban South Africa – definitely a worthwhile cause  – which is strongly supported by Pearly Grey Resort and all its staff here in Tenerife.

I find it quite touching that the entrance requirements for this month’s Tenerife Magazine competition does not include becoming a fan on Facebook of the actual sponsor, Pearly Grey Resort or anything specific to Pearly Grey at all – all associated publicity is aimed at Ingame Yami.

Especially for that, I would urge you to become a fan of Pearly Grey as well – though as stated you do not have to do so to enter the competition.

Here are the links you need:

• Tenerife Magazine Facebook page
• Ingane Yami Facebook Page
• Pearly Grey Resort Facebook page

Tenerife Magazine December Competition
One Week, 5 star accommodation in Pearly Grey Resort

The Pearly Grey Resort is perched on the cliff top looking out across the Atlantic, with great views of La Gomera. Your 5 star one bedroom self catering apartment, has the pick of the views, and has all modern comforts for one lucky couple.

How To Enter

It’s FREE and simple to enter our competition, you just need to be a Facebook member of Tenerife Magazine. We also need you to sign up to Pearly Grey’s Ingane Yami charity page. This is a special project to build a village for AIDS orphans in Durban, South Africa.

Competition Rules

The draw will be made on 11th January 2010, and is for a one bedroom luxury self catering apartment for one week. The prize is valid for one year, subject to availability, and is not exchangeable for cash.

And finally, I am pleased to tell you that the winner of the Tenerife Magazine launch competition for a week’s holiday in luxurious Sands Beach Lanzarote, Debbie Schilling, was finally found. Whew! Thought for a minute I’d have to bite the bullet and volunteer to go myself. (Oh dream on!)

This could be YOU!

Have you seen the new Tenerife Magazine yet? It is FAB! Being 100% virtual, I can’t say it has hit the streets running but the very first issue comes with a brilliant competition giveaway – a holiday for up to four at the gorgeous Sands Beach in Lanzarote!

All you need to do to enter is become a fan of the Tenerife Magazine page on Facebook. The draw is to be held on November 30th and results will be announced via Facebook.

It is hard cheddar if you are not on Facebook, I am afraid but not to worry. I have it on good authority that the next competition will be run through a different medium – maybe Twitter.  Perhaps the next competition will even be for a Tenerife related prize?

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.

Surprise, surprise. A Kodak Lens Vision Centre poll revealed that men spend almost a year of their lives ogling women.

Prime goggle territory is, it seems, the supermarket though I suspect the result is skewed by lack of beach and swimming pool opportunities wherever the study was held.

Given the acres of flesh on display on an average day in Tenerife I guess Mercadona would come in a very poor second as a leering location. I know I only have to glance out the patio door when I am visiting Gaga to be slapped in the face with naked boobs and moobs of all sizes or dental floss trussed backsides wobbling unattractively around the pool.

Going topless doesn’t bother me at all really. In general the human body is a beautiful thing but god in heaven what are these people thinking? I see children in g-strings round the pool and I think to myself that if the child is allowed to look this overtly sexual at seven or eight what chance have her parents got of keeping her from leaving the house looking like a tuppenny tart by the time she’s fifteen?

At the other end of the scale are the great wobbling blancmanges which having already consumed the dental-floss g-string look ready to do the same to the nearest small child. What on earth possesses these people to think that they should inflict their huge white bums in such a manner on the rest of us?

I admit I am no Aphrodite myself but then I don’t go baring my wobbly bits for the world to see. Some may say if you’ve got it flaunt it. I say if you’ve got too much of it, please tuck it away in a normal swimming costume.

Back however to our study on men eyeing up women. They are not alone in their appreciation of the opposite sex and it’s not only meat and two veg for tonight’s tea that many women are mulling over whilst they are fondling the cantaloupes apparently. The five top spots that women look at men are at the pub, at the shops, on public transport at the supermarket and at work.

Hmmm. About the only totty I am interested in whilst heaving my overflowing and wonky trolley round the narrow aisles of the supermarket is the kind you layer over mince and veggies to make a shepherd’s pie but to each their own I guess.

Hopefully this is not too late to help some people who have booked their holiday through the now defunct Xcapewithus and are struggling to get their money back.

Xcape seems not to have bothered informing half of their clientele who unfortunately arrived at various foreign destinations unaware that  paid holiday bookings made through Xcape had been cancelled. Those who found themselves on foreign soil were forced to pay the full rate for their hotels again.  To make matters worse, Xcape continued to collect money via their website until the last second.

Given the activity on the Xcapewithus threads on Tenerife Tattle a lot of people were affected and visitors are still landing on the blog using search terms related to the whole Xcape debacle.

If the Xcape situation has affected you then this long and informative thread on Money Saving Expert on Xcapewithus should be of interest. It includes links to authoritative articles from newsapers and seems to have led to quite a few people recovering money they had thought was gone for good whether they paid for their holiday with credit or debit card.