A Moveable Feast
I have made several attempts in the past to understand why the dates of Easter vary year on year, after all, surely the date of Christ’s death and his resurrection are known and can be commemorated annually? But no, apparently the crucifixion took place on 15 Nisan (Nisan being the first month of the Hebrew ecclesiastical year) which in turn depends on phases of the moon. And here is where the problem starts. Phases of the moon vary season to season and year to year, what’s more, they don’t always obligingly fall on a Sunday which is when the Christian church would like to celebrate the resurrection of Christ.

After centuries of contention, which incidentally still continues (the latest meeting of the World Curches Council held in 1997  proposed yet more reforms which were never implemented), the way to calculate Easter is this: find the Vernal Equinox (first day of spring) which is usually the 21st or 22nd March, then look for the next full moon and Easter falls on the Sunday following that – simple.

Holy Week
In Spain, Holy Week which this year begins on April 17th, is the most important event in the religious calendar, even more so than Christmas. The week commemorates so many significant events in Christ’s life, from his arrival in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to his  resurrection on Easter Sunday.

In Tenerife, as all across Spain, Holy Week is a deeply sombre affair featuring masses, blessings and processions, the most important and reverent of which take place in the former capital of La Laguna. But you’ll find events taking place right across the island in Santa Cruz, Los Realejos, La Orotava, Puerto de la Cruz, Garachico, Arona and Adeje.

Holy Friday (Good Friday) is the most solemn of the events as the Church mourns the death of Christ. In La Laguna there are two processions featuring hooded penitents who wear the traditional capirote, or hooded conical hats to hide their faces, and barefooted monks whose ankles and wrists are manacled. The first of the processions, the Magna,  leaves the Church of the Concepción in La Laguna at 5pm while the haunting Silent Procession takes place by torchlight at 9pm with the centre of the city plunged into darkness as a sign of respect. In Adeje, one of the biggest Good Friday events on the island is staged with The Passion, a re-enactment of the crucifixion involving some 300 participants and thousands of onlookers.

Easter Eggs and Bunnies
With Easter perpetually tied to the advent of spring, the humble egg has long been a feature of celebrations. From the use of hard boiled eggs dipped in salt water in the Jewish Passover Seder to the pagan celebrations of fertility and reproduction, the egg is a powerful symbol of the arrival of spring and nature’s awakening from the slumbers of winter. The association of re-birth and the dawning of the light that stems from both the religious significance of the resurrection of Christ and the pagan celebrations of spring also brings the bunny rabbit into play, their prowess in the reproduction business being a well established fact.

The chocolate Easter egg made its first appearance in the early 19th century but without the know-how to separate cocoa butter from the cocoa bean, using moulds to create the egg shape was a lengthy and lumpy affair. It wasn’t until the Dutch invention of a press in 1878 that chocolate moulds first appeared. Naturally, the Cadbury Brothers were pioneers in the industry, their first chocolate Easter eggs being made from dark chocolate and filled with sugared almonds. When they began adding decoration in the form of chocolate piping and marzipan flowers, the fashion took off and by 1893 there were 19 different lines in the Cadbury’s Easter Eggs range. It wasn’t until the turn of the century in 1905 that milk chocolate was launched with the Cadbury’s MilkO Chocolate. Today, milk chocolate Easter Eggs dominate the market.

Incidentally, if all this talk of Cadbury’s Easter Eggs has whetted your appetite for your favourite egg, your best bet for hunting down a real chocolate Easter Egg on Tenerife is to head to one of the out of town large supermarket chains where you’ll find a small selection of familiar names.

Tenerife Magazine’s round up of some of the most interesting news stories of the week in Tenerife.

The Butterfly Effect
Icod de los Vinos doesn’t exactly boast a multitude of attractions to keep tourists in the town for any length of time. The famous Millennium Drago Tree attracts tourists but mainly in a whistle stop tour manner. Then there’s El Mariposario, the Butterfly Garden, dedicated to the conservation and breeding of butterflies and a wondrous place to wander around. You’d think that local politicians would be pleased to have two unique Tenerife tourist attractions next to each other. But no; this is Tenerife where dragging out local political feuds is more important than doing what is best for your town. For sixteen years the council have been trying to close El Mariposario for reasons that are murky at best. What is clear to most people is that the continued presence of El Mariposario in Icod is good for the town. Clear to most people but not Icod’s politicians it seems who, in the past, have stooped to posting a police presence outside El Mariposario in what seemed an incredible bid to deter visitors. The time is long overdue for the petty bickering to stop and for the council to work with the Butterfly Gardens, not against it. The local elections are coming up in May. Lets hope the people of Icod use the opportunity to get rid of the problem that is really harming their town.

A Hot Spring for Tenerife
Great news for anyone planning a holiday on Tenerife in the next few months. Weather forecasters are predicting that April, May and June are going to be hotter than average this year. After the unusually cold spell a couple of weeks ago it’s easy to forget that the first half of the winter was unseasonably warm. And even with the occasional cool spell (that’s cool for here not Northern Europe) between January and March, temperatures were slightly above average overall even though some places in the Canary Islands did experience more rain than normal – Fuerteventura, Lanzarote and the south of Tenerife, hence the novelty of a green landscape this year.

The New Tenerife Parador
The work to renovate Tenerife’s Parador at the base of Mount Teide is finally coming to an end. The renovation has included modernising the air conditioning and electrical systems, sprucing up public areas and rooms and improving sports facilities. All should be completed within the next few weeks even though the Parador’s website is still showing 1st March as the completion date (what’s a few weeks between friends?). Despite the work, which seems to have been going on forever, visitor numbers to the Parador increased in 2010 with American, French, Italian and Japanese visitors showing the highest increases. What, no British increase despite the millions of us that flock to Tenerife each year?

The End of the Circus
At various times of the year it’s still possible to find what residents from other countries may view as old-fashioned circuses (.i.e. ones that still have wild animals as part of their acts) set up in car parks and recreational grounds around Tenerife. But not for much longer in the municipality of Granadilla de Abona in the south of Tenerife. The deputy mayor Antonio Cabrera has put forward a proposal to ban all circuses that include performing wild animals because of the potential for cruelty towards the animals in terms of training methods and housing conditions. Personally I’d also include in the ban circuses that still had clown acts …because of the potential for cruelty to the audience.

Garachico’s New Port
It looks like the opening of Garachico’s new port will be delayed for some months (no surprise with that piece of news). The port itself should be ready by the first quarter of 2012 but then there’s the little matter of port buildings etc. So it should be around the end of 2012 before the port is fully operational. Garachico’s mayor also announced there were plans for a spa, pool and sports complex as well as a new luxury hotel nearby. What is it with Tenerife and the desire for luxury hotels? Garachico already has a couple of the best boutique hotels on the island; let’s hope the politicians don’t achieve what the lava in 1706 failed to do…spoil one of Tenerife’s most picturesque towns.

And finally the TIT (This Is Tenerife) of the week award goes to…the Santa Cruz Tourist Bus

The new open-topped tourist bus service launched last week was supposed to take visitors to Santa  Cruz on a tour of the best of the city’s attractions. However, the service got off to a start that, even by Tenerife standards, should go down in history as the stuff of pure slaptstick genius.
We’re not going to tell you the details, instead we’ll leave you the pleasure of reading Colin Kirby’s hilarious account of one of the maiden voyages of the Santa Cruz tourist bus that started out, as Colin says, in Cliff Richards Summer Holiday fashion and ended up like a Tenerife remake of Speed. Read it and weep..with laughter.

1. Teide National Park – if the only place you’ve seen Mount Teide is through the window of your aircraft as you arrive and depart the island, then you’re missing one of the most spectacular landscapes on earth.

2. Masca – whatever you’ve read in the brochures or heard from the tour reps, it still won’t prepare you for the wow factor you’ll experience as you enter this lost paradise nestling  amongst colossal peaks on the edge of the world.

3. Garachico – the little town that fought its way out from under a volcanic eruption to provide amazing rock pools where you can swim with tropical fish, the prettiest plaza on Tenerife and more picturesque scenes than you can point a camera at.

4. La Orotava – stretch the thigh muscles on a stroll around Tenerife’s most aristocratic town to uncover stunning island architecture, beautiful parks and gardens and excellent souvenir shopping in the town that gives us streets paved with petals.

5. Candelaria – the spiritual heart of the Canary Islands, pilgrims travel on foot and on their knees to worship at the feet of the Black Madonna. Luckily, buses also run from all over the island to transport you to the bronze icons of a forgotten era.

6. Santa Cruz – When its streets aren’t filled with the semi-naked women, drag queens and Maquinería bands of Carnaval, they’re home to museums, art galleries, splendid architecture and pretty plazas spread around the island’s best shopping and bordering a busy cruise liner port.

7. Santiago del Teide – travel into the rural heartland for a Tenerife a million miles away from its popular travel brochure image. Riding stables, picnics under the eucalyptus trees, a beautifully restored country house and unspoilt beauty await.

8. La Laguna – pack an umbrella and goad the rain gods with a trip to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Tenerife’s former capital city. Beautifully restored mansions and monasteries span five centuries and they have one of the best farmer’s markets on the island.

9. Icod de los Vinos – with a pedestrianised street lined with pavement cafes and boutiques, a splendid church square and a butterfly farm, there’s more to Icod than just dragon trees, volcanic tubes and Jackass antics.

10. Vilaflor – climb up into the pine forest where thermal spas and fir trees create a landscape more akin to an alpine village than Spain’s highest, and try to resist the urge to yodel.

You would think that, having fought so hard to take Tenerife from its original inhabitants, the Spanish would have immediately set about shoring up their defences so that no-one else could come along and steal their prize. But it would seem that the blueprint for Tenerife political life was set right back at the end of the fifteenth century when the policy of ‘do nothing’ was first established.

After the discovery of the New World, Tenerife became the gateway to trade between Europe and the Americas bringing her untold wealth and the attentions of every English and French ship sailing the Atlantic under the ensign of a skull and crossbones.

Despite repeated attacks on her major ports throughout the sixteenth century, Tenerife remained incredibly and completely bereft of any form of defence and it wasn’t until the invaders came under threat of invasion themselves that the thoughts of Tenerife’s settlers turned to the issue of strengthening island defences.

In 1513, with nerves on edge over the Spanish war with France, a committee was convened in Santa Cruz to agree a defensive strategy. Suggestions for the construction of a fort were dismissed on the grounds that a military presence may disrupt the ‘socio-economic rhythm’ of trade. The committee disbanded having left the defence of the island to the watchtowers and smoke signals that lined the coast scrutinising for foreign sails anchored beyond shipping routes.
No-one apparently thought to point out that, without fire power, the ability to spot an invasion as it happened was tantamount to selling tickets to your own demise and was probably not the sharpest military strategy ever devised.

Money talks
Economics eventually dictated common sense when, at the end of the 16th century, war impoverished Spain woke up to the fact that her treasury was completely dependant on gold and silver imports which came via Tenerife. Finally, moves were made to shore up that income stream.

Work began on fortifying Tenerife’s lucrative ports, beginning in Santa Cruz with the construction of the Castillo de San Cristóbal in 1575.
Sited in the centre of the bay on what is now Plaza de España, the castle became the centrepiece (and for 60 years the only piece) of the city’s defences.
At the same time, Tenerife’s wealthiest port of Garachico constructed the Castillo de San Miguel and a few years later the moated Castillo San Felipe was constructed in the port of La Orotava, now Puerto de la Cruz.

In 1604 as wine exports grew, the port of Santa Cruz was expanded prompting the need for further defences beginning with the construction of Paso Alto which became the mainstay of the port’s protection against the attempted invasion by Admiral Blake in 1657.

In 1641 the outbreak of the Portuguese revolution sparked further fear of invasion and the Castillo de San Juan Bautista, or the Black Castle as it was known, was constructed.

The addition of the Torre de San Andrés in 1706 made Santa Cruz virtually impregnable and by the time Admiral Nelson attacked the port in 1757 it had the firepower of 84 canon and 7 mortars housed in three castles, two forts, a tower and 12 batteries. What Tenerife lacked in numbers of castles, it made up for in defiant spirit when the Santa Cruz defences held against that attack by Nelson and the proudest day of the island’s military history was born.

You’ve got to love the sense of humour exhibited by Garachico’s residents. They live in the unluckiest town in Tenerife; a place that’s been the victim of plagues, pests, floods and most famously the wrath of the volcanic gods who sent rivers of lava through their streets, destroying the harbour.

With this history of natural disaster on their shoulders and the knowledge that they’re in the most vulnerable place on Tenerife should Mount Teide decide to throw a fit, how do you think they celebrate their biggest fiesta?

The answer is they set fire to the beach and launch flaming balls from the cliff top in the direction of the town. It’s a brilliant two-fingered response to nature’s fickle ways.

Garachico’s Fiestas Lustrales take place once every five years and on the night of Sunday 1st August, around 30,000 people packed the streets and the harbour area of the normally sleepy town. They were there to witness one of the most bizarre and spectacular events in Tenerife’s fiesta calendar, the Fuegos del Risco, a re-enactment of the eruption that filled the town’s harbour with lava just over three hundred years ago.

At somewhere between 10 and 11pm Santísimo Cristo de la Misericordia was paraded through the streets, the town was plunged into darkness and the beach set alight. Impressive enough in itself, but the real show was only just beginning.
Heads turned skywards as flames spread down the cliff behind the beach following the same path as the lava in 1706. After a few moments a fireball was launched from a vantage point high up the cliff face. It tumbled down the slope, bouncing its way earthwards urged on by screams of encouragement from the crowd. The excited buzz changed to groans of disappointment when the fireball became lodged in a crevice halfway down. The disappointment didn’t last long, within seconds another fireball appeared and another and soon a whole stream of flaming balls were careening their way towards Garachico, burning a fiery trail down the hillside.

Some didn’t quite make it and some ended their journey in a ravine at the base of the cliffs whilst a couple of stray fireballs bounced into an unfortunately situated lone tree, setting it alight. The most determined fireballs refused to be stopped by something as puny as gravity. Racing down the cliff face, they hit the ground at speed, bounced, clearing walls and natural obstacles and just kept on going toward the beach before finally coming to rest dangerously close to a fire engine in position to prevent the Fuegos del Risco becoming too realistic.

As Garachico’s hillside burned, an explosive firework display in time to a booming operatic soundtrack added to the epic spectacle (sadly the music didn’t include Great Balls of Fire). It felt like being at the centre of a volcanic eruption, but one scored by Wagner.

That’s Tenerife for you. You think you’ve seen the most outrageous fiesta there is, but then the Tinerfeños come up with something that tops it. Fire-balling the town is going to be a hard one to beat.

We suspect there’s a mysterious hippy community lurking around the north of Tenerife that spends most of its time lying naked on some beach sporting rainbow bandanas and getting their consciousness expanded by herbal inducements, man. They only appear in public when a really ‘sound’ fiesta comes along.

Well this month Los Silos staged the ‘Boreal Festival of the Whale’ and out came the beautiful people in their droves; all dreadlocks, patchouli oil and multi-coloured harem pants.
Pastel flags fluttered in the breeze above stalls selling kitsch bags made from recycled plastic, natural un-dyed clothing, juggling paraphernalia and beads – naturally.
There were infectiously rhythmic Batucada bands accompanied by a sort of Chinese Dragon whale, jugglers, a dreadlocked hippy on a uni-cycle and paragliders floating lazily above the whale skeleton on the cliff top.
All in all it was a gentle, earth-friendly affair that oozed love and peace.

The odd thing about it was the lack of live music which had been scheduled to appear at intervals throughout the afternoon and into the early hours. By the time Tenerife Magazine left just after 9pm all we’d seen was two bands taking an eternity to go through their sound checks and no actual live performance.
We suspect the sound engineers had experienced just a little too much consciousness expansion.

Dropping down the coast to the rock of Garachico, the scene couldn’t have contrasted more sharply.
The gentle tinkling of Tibetan Bells was replaced by the guttural roar of 1000cc motorbike engines; floaty pastel shaded cotton was replaced by black leather and studs, and a large stage bereft of musicians was replaced by a small one bouncing with screeching punk and rock guitars.

The Moto Rock festival was a fusion of biking and rock and filled the harbour with sexy, dangerous looking beasties and their bikes. In-between bands, the Kings of Leon and Kasabian blasted from the speakers urging performers waiting in the dressing tent to ever greater fantasies of rock stardom.
What the fest lacked in numbers it made up for in heart as one lead guitarist, clearly enthralled by his one-night rock stand, smashed his guitar to pieces at the final chords of the set.

Long live rock n roll indeed.