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

Another Beach Festival for Las Vistas?
You wait ages for a beach festival and then what happens? Two come along at the same time. After last week’s announcement about the replacement for the Son Latinos festival comes news that two entrepreneurs have put forward a proposal to hold a series of beach festivals called Son del Atlántico. The ‘eco-event’ would feature aspects of previous festivals like Son Latinos and Aguaviva and would culminate in a massive concert on either, or both, Las Canteras beach in Las Palmas or Las Vistas in Los Cristianos. Like the festival mentioned last week we’ll have to wait to see if the Canary Government give the proposal the green light. It’s unlikely that two major beach festivals will get the go ahead…still even one would be nice.

Tenerife’s Other Saint
This week the body of a 280 year old nun was put on display in the Santa Catalina Convent in La Laguna attracting 50,000 visitors…but why? Sor María de Jesús was born in El Sauzal in 1643 and in the 87 years she lived performed at least 1251 miracles across Tenerife – and that’s only the ones that have been documented. The miracles mostly involved worshippers regaining health after coming into contact with Sor María and even after her death the miracles continued…hence the 50,000 annual visitors when the nun’s remains are annually put on display to the public. It may seem incredible in this day and age but every year hundreds of Tinerfeños report improvements to their health after visiting the nun.
A couple of years ago an application was made to Rome to have Sor María beatified, but there’s still no word whether the miracle-working nun will join Brother Pedro on Tenerife’s saintly roll call.

Internet…what internet?
Despite playing host to millions of people who have arrived on their shores thanks to finding out information and booking their holidays online, Canarios are woefully behind even their fellow countrymen when it comes to using the internet. A study by Spain’s Electronic Business School discovered that Canarios were almost at the end of the line when it came to using the internet to make purchases. Only 11% of Canarios utilise the internet as opposed to 24% of Madrileños and 22.6% Catalonians. Funny – there seems to be a parallel when it comes to football as well. Reasons given for the lowly showing were mistrust and ignorance.

Work on Los Gigantes Beach Begins
It’s official, the work to make safe the cliffs above Los Guíos beach began at the end of last week. It really does look as though visitors to Tenerife will be able to throw down their towels and enjoy soaking up some sun on Los Gigantes’ beach by Easter…just as the British high season is ending. Unlucky guys.

Puerto’s New Port is Still a Car Park
Anyone with one of those maps for Puerto de la Cruz that for 30+ years has labelled the harbour car park as futuro parque marítimo won’t need to swap their map for a new one quite just yet. Work to begin the development of the proposed new harbour, marina and sports development that politicians claim will transform the town’s fortunes has been put on hold yet again by the Directorate General of Coasts due to technicalities. It would seem the futuro parque marítimo is going to remain a pipe dream for the moment.

And finally the TIT (This Is Tenerife) of the week award goes to the Island Connections newspaper for recent reports about walkers on Tenerife.

A few weeks ago the English language paper published a report about walkers ignoring the Barranco del Infierno’s closed signs and attempting the popular walk anyway.
Whilst it is responsible to bring potential dangers to the attention of visitors and residents to Tenerife, it’s probably more credible if it’s done in an informed way. To accuse people of having “…a level of ignorance or stupidity that beggars belief,” and asking who will be blamed if someone “…loses their life attempting an unguided walk,” is in the first part insulting and in the second betrays a complete lack of understanding regarding what walking on Tenerife, or anywhere for that matter, actually involves.
The Barranco del Infierno is one of the very few natural areas on Tenerife where walking is controlled. Everywhere else involves – shock, horror – walkers generally heading off under their own steam, often along paths that are nowhere near as neat and maintained as the Barranco’s. It’s called interacting with nature and every experienced walker is aware of the risks involved.

An experienced local walking guide sent a wonderfully balanced, but clearly irritated, response to the article and all credit to the paper they printed it. But then let themselves down in their next edition by running another biased article about irresponsible walkers.

Tenerife is quite rightly being strongly promoted as an ideal walking destination. To single walkers out for journalistic abuse is a rather strange approach. What next – swimmers, windsurfers, kite-boarders, cyclists, runners, footballers and anyone else who puts themselves in danger by undertaking some sort of physical exercise?

Anyone who’s trekked around Mount Teide’s upper slopes will know only too well that the least bit of exertion leaves you gasping for air as though the breath has been stolen from your lungs by a mischievous mountain imp. Climb the mighty mountain from the estancia de los ingleses all the way to the summit and by the time the pointy peak is within touching distance, the imp has made off with the bones from your legs as well, leaving useless rubbery things in their place.

For those of us who have been through this painful, but exhilarating experience and are unlikely to pencil it into our ‘things to do on Tenerife’ list for quite some time, the idea of adding a gruelling extra 1000 metres to the ascent seems like sheer madness. But that’s exactly what a team from Tenerife did when they exchanged tackling Spain’s highest peak, Mount Teide for its African counterpart, Mount Kilimanjaro.

Subjecting yourself to the buckets of blood, sweat and tears that’s part and parcel of climbing mountains like Kilimanjaro is one of those masochistic activities that begs the question, why? For some, the classic climber’s response is ‘because it is there’. However, for James and Karen Beckley and Dougie Kirkwood from the Pearly Grey Ocean Club in Callao Salvaje and Tenerife wine distributor Troy Gerrity, the reasons for pushing themselves beyond the limits of exhaustion came from more altruistic motivations. They climbed Kilimanjaro to raise awareness and money for a charity called Ingane Yami which means ‘my child’ in Zulu. Ingane Yami is the name of a village in South Africa which will be built specifically to give orphaned children, particularly those made parentless by the AIDS epidemic, a safe environment in which to blossom into adulthood.

For anyone planning on climbing to a height where they can almost touch the stars, there are few more suitable training grounds than Tenerife’s mountainous countryside. In preparation for Kilimanjaro’s oxygen starved air, Dougie and Troy trekked through the pine forests above Vilaflor before testing their physical reactions to high altitude hiking on Mount Teide. Many people don’t handle walking at high altitudes very well, but Dougie and Troy reported feeling none of the usual symptoms of altitude sickness; something they partly attributed to being well stocked with chocolate, brandy and whiskey – not your average mountaineers’ supplies.

Their preparations on Tenerife paid off and on the 8th December the Pearly Grey team dragged themselves to the top of Africa and the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.

It’s inspiring and humbling when you hear about people who push themselves to their physical and mental limits purely to help others. And it seems especially poignant at this time of year. Actions like this renew faith in human nature and it’s commendable that Pearly Grey donated this month’s fantastic prize, a week’s holiday in a luxury apartment at the resort, to promote Ingane Yami’s cause. The least we can do in response is to become a fan of Ingane Yami on Facebook and help support Africa’s orphaned children in the process.

Isn’t it heart-warming to know that the spirit of Christmas is alive and… well, if not exactly kicking, at least hobbling about on the top of a snow clad mountain in Africa.

“Sinifisela Ukhisimuzi Omuhle” – you’ll have to Google that if you want to know what it means.