Tenerife must be lying several centimetres lower in the
Atlantic at the moment – apparently there’s hardly a spare bed to be had. This
is good news for the tourist industry and a much-needed boost to the economy of
an island that has more than 35% unemployment.
Not all visitors are welcome, of course. Those who come to
swell the membership of foreign gangs of various nationalities are indicative
of the downside of tourism. When we go to meet a friend at the airport and find
the place crawling with police, we know they have been alerted to the arrival
of more criminals.
Although one shouldn’t blame the victims, it is difficult
not to when many holiday-makers are so incredibly careless.
Some of them – not always the younger element, I might add -
get stupidly drunk and become easy prey for muggers when they stagger back to
their hotels in the dark.
Far too many men carry their passports and wads of cash in
the back pockets of their shorts instead of using the hotel safe.
Both sexes leave handbags and bum-bags unattended while they
swim in the sea.
They buy tablecloths from swarthy women in the street when
there are shops that sell them much cheaper, and the tourists often
hold their purses so carelessly that the women’s nimble fingers can steal enough
money to buy a dozen tablecloths.
One of the criminals’ latest tricks is to stick a piece of
paper on the rear window of cars in car-parks. The driver slings handbag,
camera and shopping on the back seat and starts to reverse, then sees the paper
and gets out to remove it. Before he/she has reached the back of the car the
thieves have got in and driven off.
A variation on the car-park theme is to wait until a driver
has unlocked the car and put their belongings inside, and then shove a map
under their nose and ask for directions. While the driver obligingly looks at the
map an accomplice steals anything of value from the car. This actually happened
to a friend of mine – her handbag was of no particular value, but she lost her
credit card, her cash, her Residencia, her Health card, her prescriptions and her house
keys. After a lengthy visit to the Policia she went home via a ferreteria and changed the locks,
then set about replacing all her lost paperwork. Her husband suffers from dementia so he forgot about it quickly, but she was traumatised
for days.
But don’t let me put you off! Your chances of falling into
any of the above traps are the same wherever tourists go, and Tenerife has more
sunshine this time of year than the Mediterranean. So come here and enjoy your
holiday, but do please be careful.
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