Plane crash survivors on mysterious tropical island

Lost? "We're alive, but we don't know where." is roughly the message given by the woman travelling in the plane which crashed in the north of Tenerife on Sunday, which she relayed, via her mobile phone, to the emergency control room when she phoned 112 herself to report the accident.

"The only thing we can see is vegetation", continued the message from the stricken plane as local police from La Orotava, Tacoronte, La Victoria, El Rosario, Candelaria, Santa Úrsula and El Sauzal joined the search.

As the three occupants of the plane remain in hospital in intensive care, the story begins to unfold over what may have happened. It's still speculated that the cause was the drastic change in the weather during the flight - when they took off the conditions were optimal - and it's now thought that the plane may have struck the top of a tree, before falling onto a natural terrace.

Monday, Guardia Civil judicial police, who will initiate the investigation into the crash, were still working in the area of the Montaña de Joco where the plane went down, while this video footage from Television Canaria will give you some idea of the especially hostile terrain at the site of the rescue.

Tenerife Weather: The official weather word for the Canary Islands is yet another yellow level pre-alert around the coasts, especially the north of the islands. The situation came into force at 08:00 on Monday and, will remain active until 15:00 on Tuesday in Tenerife. Once more, we'd like to remind you that - spectacular though they are - this is not a time to be "'thrillseekers' walking along the harbour wall to get a closer look at the waves."

Official Tenerife Novelties

As Tenerife prepares to promote it's novelties at Fitur 2009 travel trade fair in Madrid later this week, it's always interesting to read what the island "officially" thinks needs underlining and is important to them for tour operators to promote. This year, they're betting on two luxury hotels, Eco Resort San Blas and the Hotel Gran Meliá Palacio de Isora, as well as theme park, Siam Park and Tenerife Top Training's cutting-edge T3 AthleticSphere Center that opened to the public in October, 2008.

We can't help thinking that Tenerife already had many more natural attractions that we would have promoted first, but then we aren't paying, are we?

Also mentioned in the press report are the annual paragliding festival, Flypa (Los Realejos town hall are backing that up by handing out leaflets promoting the town in general, as well as promoting their annual Firework Battle); the Tenerife Ladies Open, surfing and beach volleyball events, the Festival Aguaviva Canarias and the upcoming Rod Stewart concert in May. 

Animal Crackers

The good folks from Going Native in Tenerife, wandered west yesterday to join the 5,000 people and 1,000 goats, horses, mules and cattle (give or take a naught) to see the antics of the Fiesta de San Antonio Abad in Buenavista del Norte. Obviously, it was "business as (un)usual" (here's my report from 2008), as they begin, "A Yorkie riding a pony; an iguana squaring up to two bulldogs, a donkey wearing a straw bonnet and a mongrel in full traditional Canarian costume … you really don’t need to take mind altering narcotics when you live in Tenerife."

(No, you only need those to survive living elsewhere! :)

Eroticism in times of crisis

If the animal antics aren't weird enough for you, at least there's the Tuppersex parties to look forward to, which, apparently, have become quite usual in Tenerife. No, I'm sure that I don't need to explain that these are parties, Tupperware stylee, where, instead of selling little plastic food boxes, there's all manner of sex toys on offer.

Only now it's not just house parties, as two discos in Santa Cruz are about to hold theme parties based around the sale of erotic toys.

The first of these, is at Dreams on Friday, January 30th, jointly promoted by "El Punto G Radio" (G-Spot Radio) and the SexShop Channel and is open to women only. There'll be male strippers to entertain you.

The second is at disco A Saudade on Thursday, February 5th and is open to both men and women. There will be both male and female strippers, as well as chats on subjects such as tantric sex, or the Karma Sutra and the Tuppersex party is to be provided by the Candelaria based sex shop, Lipstick.

Juan Campos wonders if it's pure coincidence that the two entities should decide to promote the same kind of products at this time, citing a study published a few weeks ago by British sociologist Jeffrey Weeks, claiming that the financial hardship makes people more conservative in their sexual habits.

Your other crisis time news in Tenerife ...

The crisis is closing two restaurants a day in the Canaries and a lack of training, planning, quality and professionalism are being implicated in the closures. La Federación Canaria de Ocio (The Canarian Leisure Federation) lament that in the first 22 days of January, no less than 44 restaurant were closed, with a loss of 280 jobs, without counting self-employed bosses and owners. In Tenerife, in the year so far, the closed sign has gone up on 21 restaurants; Adeje with 6 and La Laguna and Puerto de la Cruz with 5 each being the areas most affected.

Carnaval in Tenerife 2009 – Crisis, what crisis? Good question when, in Puerto de la Cruz alone there's "a whopping eight all night parties in nine days." :)

Aids in Spain: It's estimated that between 130,000 and 150,000 people are infected with the HIV virus in Spain, but around 30% of them have no idea, which means that they continue to risk transmitting it to others. Furthermore, the report states that the majority of infections in Spain are from sexual contact (and not from needle sharing among drug users) and, contrary to what many believe, the largest number of infections are between heterosexuals. 

The president of the Tenerife Island Corporation, Ricardo Melchior, has formally received the new British Consul in the Canaries, Matthew Vickers. Vickers, who hails from Glasgow, comes from the private sector in the UK where he has been working in sales, marketing and customer care. He replaces Stephen Jones, who became the British Consul for the Canary Islands in 2007, who has gone on to become Consul in Málaga.  British Consulate in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.