Early in the day the marching band tuned up near the African Market, inflatable castles were pumped into life and free parking ensured that all roads led to the capital city. Of the 120 shops joining in, 64 took the chance to invade the streets and expand onto makeshift stalls, 15 artists took pitches around Teatro Guimera, and 32 restaurants drew up special offer menus for the day. Last year 70,000 people flocked to the event and the Sociedad Desarrollo (development society) were taking no chances this year installing temporary toilets around the main venues. Police and Unipol officers kept a high visibility but I even saw some of them smiling and laughing.

Plaza del Principe was the magnet for toddlers, they had more bouncy castles than you could shake a stick at (not a sharp one of course) and even a live puppet show. There has to be music in all things in Tenerife and they did us proud with 14 groups gracing the large stage in Plaza del Candelaria just up from the port. The quirky Tizas En Las Botas went down well, Amatista with their very young and very good singers wowed the parents, Ledesma hit the rap target but Beat Tripper stole the show with their Beatles tribute. Not only were they visually and vocally like the originals, their costume quick change took the band through three stages of the Fab Four’s career. Most of all they were great fun and got the crowd rolling back the years, a passing local drunk dancer was just rolling, and during the encores two of the band ventured out among the shoppers to get them dancing.

The marching band had a tiring day patrolling the edges of the shopping areas hammering out a rhythm to drive shoppers from one section of stalls to another but it worked and even those in the smaller back streets heard their rusty tills ping into action. Cafes and bars were heaving, well it’s thirsty and hungry work shopping. The stretch by Plaza del Principe was the most densely packed with stalls and at times it was almost like a Carnaval afternoon with so many people flowing slowly. There are already plans to do similar events in some of the outskirts of Santa Cruz to give them a well needed pick up. These are testing times for the retail trade but at least it’s forcing the business community to come up with some new ideas.

Mixing scooters with bikers and Tenerife with Gran Canaria doesn’t sound the most harmonious recipe but a shared love of motor bikes made Santa Cruz port a mechanical heaven. As a roaring mass of Vespas, Hondas, Lambrettas and Suzukis revved up and beeped horns more of their friends poured down the gangplank from the Armas ferry that had just sailed in from Gran Canaria.

I was only expecting Vespasion, the annual rally organised by the Tenerife Amigos de la Vespa, but it soon became clear that the quayside near the Armas HQ was hosting two parties with Moteros de Tenerife also awaiting fellow enthusiasts from our neighbouring island. The Vespa group alternate between islands and the 40 or so scooters were due to be joined by the same number of visitors. The bikers had a few more already parked up but were expecting less reinforcements, both of them would be pushing 100 machines once all had assembled.

It was strange seeing so many classic bikes gathered together with two quite contrasting sets of owners but many of them knew each other and there was much mutual admiration of machines going on. Both groups were over for separate mini tours of Tenerife over the weekend, taking the high clear roads up into the northern hills with a hotel break between the two days. It was all well organised and marshalled but there was no mistaking the passion for chrome and mirrors.

Vespas will forever be associated with Mods to British minds and I looking at the scooters I kept humming Poison Ivy in my head. Vespa means wasp in Italian and they originated in Florence made by Piaggio from 1946. The Vespa van was a new one on me but apparently there are many variations on the popular theme out there.

The other iconic scooter is the Lambretta only a year younger but made in Milan until the name was sold to India in 1972. This brand also had a nice surprise for me, the sidecar model that slipped down off the ferry with two very happy riders.

I will admit to a swell of pride at seeing so many Hondas, the Goldwing evoking memories of friends in Oxford who used to run Wing Dings, annual camps followed by mammoth pub crawls. Talking of Hondas maybe some misty eyed reader will chip in with more details on this impressive blue beast.

The ferry was running a bit late but when it rounded into view, helmets were slipped on and bikes made ready. The other passengers must have wondered what they were coming into but couldn’t have helped to be impressed by the vanguard of scooters and bikes that parted to allow their friends to park briefly along the side of the quay as welcomes were exchanged.

Tenerife has several active groups of bike enthusiasts and most weekends they take off and burn up the hills. If you see a swarm of Vespas or a bunch of bikers approaching give them some room and a friendly wave and admire the pride and polish that goes into their great obsession.

Each week Santa Cruz is home to sleek floating palaces whose sole purpose is to act as a pleasure dome for their residents. Last week, however, the port welcomed a unique visitor, the Logos Hope; a ship whose raison d’être wasn’t the comfort and enjoyment of affluent passengers, but to spread a little hope to disadvantaged people around the world.

The 132 metre long Logos Hope is part of  GBA Ships which for forty years have sailed into ports from Jamaica to Vietnam bringing knowledge, help and hope to the underprivileged.

The main way they do this is by taking the world’s largest floating book store to places where the opportunity to self educate through exposure to books is about as likely as finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Since 1970, GBA ships have berthed in 160 countries and welcomed over 40 million eager visitors on board.

On a day when the capital’s skies were post calima, muggy white, I climbed the gangplank to meet the ship’s Media Relations Officer, Jessie Laplue, an amiable and attractive young American from Tennessee. Jessie joined the ship seven months ago, initially working in the book store before taking over the mantle of Media Relations Officer.

The 400 person crew is made up of volunteers who each spend two years on the ship. Some have the experience and technical skills essential for manning a large ship, many are young people from all over the world similar to Jessie who simply want to help others less fortunate, having a life-changing experience in the process. It’s a multicultural community and Jessie shares a tiny cabin with three other girls from Holland, Japan and Peru.

As we walked around the ship, passing interactive exhibits, film shows and mock-ups of the crew’s cabins Jessie explained that the goal of the Logos Hope, apart from giving people access to over 6000 titles ranging from educational text books to The Chronicles of Narnia, is to promote cross-cultural understanding, train young people and provide practical care in the community.

Since Jessie joined the crew, the ship has berthed in various Caribbean Islands, crossed the Atlantic and worked it’s way up the West African coast stopping at impoverished countries such as Sierra Leone and Liberia. In Liberia they were told that there wasn’t a bookshop in the whole country and by the time they opened the ship to the public, there was a queue of people stretching along the dock. In one day they welcomed 12000 people to the ship, many of whom had been  waiting for 4-5 hours just for the chance to buy or even hold a treasure that most of us take for granted.

The on-board book store is surprisingly big (there are half a million books) and my nostrils were filled with that wonderful smell which promises knowledge and adventure. As we strolled through the aisles Jessie shared snippets about the book-buying habits of various places; visitors in the Caribbean snapped up puzzle books, whilst in Africa it was English dictionaries and text books.
Books are sold at discounted rates utilising a units pricing system so that the cost of books is relative to the economics of each country. A book purchased on board in Santa Cruz, although cheaper than a conventional book shop, costs more than the same book purchased on board in Monrovia. It’s a fair and sensible system.

Apart from bringing knowledge in book form to developing countries, the crew lends support in  practical ways – providing free health and dental care and helping out in hospitals. In Liberia Jesse and other crew members visited a children’s ward. “We knew they were very sick the moment we walked into the ward,” she told me. “We were mobbed by children wanting to touch us everywhere we went in Africa, but there they barely reacted. We spent our time with them singing, telling stories and making animals out of balloons. I know we didn’t change their conditions, but by the time we left there was no doubt they were different; livelier and smiling.”
Bringing even the tiniest ray of light into a terminally sick child’s life is an act to be applauded.

However, Jesse’s descriptions of Africa highlight the chasm between there and Tenerife and I posed the question why the Logos Hope chose to berth at Santa Cruz.

“We don’t just visit developing countries,” Jesse informed me. “We offer whatever support we can to socially disadvantaged people in other ways, visiting drug rehabilitation centres and prisons as well as old people’s homes and single parent groups.” Which is exactly what they’ve been doing in Tenerife.

The Logos Hope departs Santa Cruz on Tuesday 21st September, taking its commendable work and multicultural message of hope to pastures new. It’s a shame that we weren’t aware of the ship’s arrival further in advance. Where there were 12000 people waiting to visit the Logos Hope in Liberia, there were twelve in Santa Cruz when I was there. Possibly that’s partly due to the way information is disseminated last minute in Tenerife, but also maybe because books aren’t a rarity here.

If the Logos Hope returns to these shores, please visit it; any project dedicated to bringing the merest glimpse of light to places where darkness prevails deserves our support.

The event starts at 9.00am and it promises to be a great day.

Entry fee is €50 per person and this includes Buggy & Buffet
Places for this event are limited so to make sure you are registered please book early.

To reserve your entry please contact either of the following:
Email: gina@pearlygrey.com or telephone Gina on 657 628 544
Call into the Costa Adeje Golf Course or telephone them on 922 710 000

Ask anyone to name three blockbuster movies filmed on Tenerife and the chances are that they’ll reel off Star Wars, Planet of the Apes and Clash of the Titans.
It’s a pretty impressive pedigree apart from one little fact…only one of them was actually filmed on Tenerife.

Who knows which creative tour guide started the story about Star Wars and Planet of the Apes? Clearly it was Tenerife’s equivalent of Slumdog Millionaire’s Jamal showing tourists around the Taj Mahal.
No doubt he, or she, also told visitors that Las Américas was named after Richard Burton and Liz Taylor and that the first astronauts to stand on the moon trained on Mount Teide – other popular Tenerife myths.

The fact that Star Wars and Planet of the Apes weren’t filmed on Tenerife might come as a bit of a surprise, but what’s a bigger shock is that no major mainstream movies have been filmed on Tenerife since Raquel Welch slipped into a goatskin bikini (a nice authentic Guanche touch) and strutted her stuff in front of some decidedly rubbery looking dinosaurs in One Million Years B.C. (maybe that should now be B.C.G.I.) back in 1967.

Since then there have been other movies filmed here that most of us of a certain age will have heard of, such as The Land That Time Forgot and Journey to the Centre of the Earth (the 1976 Doug McClure version, not the Brendan Fraser 3D version from a couple of years ago), but there’s been nothing to set the box office alight.

Parts of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy were filmed on Tenerife in 2005 at Loro Parque, but despite that film being an adaptation of the cult novel which, when I was a teen, every geek at school could quote to death, it still wasn’t in the same league as Star Wars.

European filmmakers have long since cottoned on to the wonderful cinematic qualities of Tenerife’s epic landscape ever since the silent movie El Caíd was shot here in 1926. ‘C’ list actors such as The Good, The Bad & The Ugly’s Lee Van Cleef and Reservoir Dogs‘ sadistic Mr Blonde, Michael Madsen have starred in instantly forgettable Euro-Anglo productions shot on Tenerife. But the Hollywood big boys pretty much shunned this filmmakers’ paradise until a local boy, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (director of 28 Weeks Later, the sequel to 28 Days Later) made a truly original movie which made them sit up and take notice of Tenerife.

Intacto earned rave critical worldwide acclaim when it was released in 2003. Its tale of four people who can absorb the good luck of those around them, taking part in a life or death competition to discover who’s the luckiest of them used Tenerife’s gorgeous scenery to stunning effect. One classic scene involved blindfolded competitors running helter skelter through the pine forests. With scenes also shot at Taganana, Masca and Las Cañadas del Teide, filmmakers were exposed to a Tenerife many didn’t know existed.

And now, thanks to Intacto’s impact, we have a true Hollywood blockbuster about to launch Tenerife onto a more mainstream world stage on Friday 2nd April when Clash of the Titans in 3D is released in the UK and USA.

We don’t know yet whether the mythological tale of men clashing swords with gods and monsters will actually be any good, but with Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes and rising star Sam Worthington as hero Perseus, it’s got a quality cast; the latest trailer is pretty damn exciting and last, but not least it’s got a secret weapon that most other movies don’t have…Tenerife’s unique scenery.

Get ready people, it’s almost time for the titans to clash.

Let us know on Facebook if you can make it

EXTRA SHOW – Just added, an afternoon show on 4th January at 5pm.
Start Date: 2009-12-28
End Date: 2010-01-04