PARQUE ROADS - the saga continues!

When the Cabildo improved the TF-655 road from Guaza to Chafiras a few years ago, they levelled out the highs and lows and straightened the bends, but one fifty-metre stretch in Parque de la Reina was left untouched - the houses whose front doors open onto the road would probably collapse if disturbed.

This stretch is a blind hump from both directions with a 40K speed limit that isn't low enough - but drivers ignore that anyway. The only relatively safe place to cross is actually on the brow where your silhouette would be easier to see, but people walk - or run - over on one side to go to Maxcoop supermarket, and on the other side the little old ladies from the little old houses wander across, presumably putting their faith in the Almighty.

Then this week we saw machinery nearby. Was it possible the Cabildo weas about to level it out?

Between downpours, the machine dug out the rough ground at the edge, a metre wide and two metres deep. A man with a stop/go sign stood on the brow of the hill all day, causing even more delays to traffic already diverted away from the collapsed autopista slip road (see earlier posts)

And then at nine o'clock this morning I watched as they began to fill it in again! With picon - small gravel from the volcanic store which comprises Tenerife.


So presumably all they're going to do is cover it with tarmac and go.
Leaving an extra metre for the cars that already zoom over it so fast that their wheels leave the road, and for the cyclists who struggle over it three abreast to spread out even further.

Nice one, Cabildo!

SHOW AND TELL SUNDAY

poinsettia

First things first - apologies for absence. I have been busy lately rewriting a novel - I'll tell you about that another time - and my blogs have been infrequent, to say the least. So I have decided to kick-start it again with a "Show and Tell Sunday", and if I have any followers and visitors left, please leave a comment to encourage me to continue!


Christmas is coming in Tenerife as well as the rest of the world, and one of our first signs is the poinsettias coming back to full colour in the gardens. We also have Los Reyes - The Kings - waiting on the roundabout to be lit up at night.


For those of you who have been following the avalanche story - here is this morning's set of photographs.
When the workmen told me it would take twenty days, they should have added 'probablemente' - this is manana country, after all!


People have been blaming the rock-fall on the heavy rain we had two days earlier - our first in over a year - but I think it is more likely to be due to the banana plantation perched on top. This is a closeup of the cliff through which they cut the access road when building the autopista 25 or so years ago -  Huge rocks, so heavy that I cannot lift a head-sized one - interspersed with gravel layers riddled with holes in which the local pigeons nest.

Twenty-five years of steadily-seeping water - we are lucky there wasn't a school built at the base of the cliff.

Steady as a rock? I will never use that phrase again without visualising this - and  yes, that side road really IS that steep!

RECYCLING ROCK

We see this sign all over Tenerife and usually drive light-heartedly past it.
As I blogged last week, we should not be quite so blasè, for although there was no warning sign here, on November 11th a rock face fell and almost crushed a young couple in their car.

Since then we locals have been following the progress of repairs with interest, because anyone wishing to go south on the motorway from here has to take another, more convoluted route, and the sooner it's fixed and re-opened, the better.

I walked up there this morning, and stood under the bridge to watch while a workman wrapped a canvas belt round a rock as big as he was. He then stood practically underneath it while a machine lifted it into position in what appears to be a retaining wall built from the rocks that fell. Recycling at its most basic.

Oh yes - and someone has covered "Los Cristianos" on the road sign. I looked round the back and it's just several strips of black bin liner tied together, but I suppose it's better than nothing - perhaps I should take some parcel tape with me tomorrow?

AVALANCHE!

These two pictures appeared on the website www.newsinthesun.com this week - the young couple just escaped being crushed when tons of rock fell from a vertical cliff-face on the road from our village - Parque de la Reina - to the motorway on Monday 11th. Luckily the driver reacted quickly enough to swerve onto the other side of the road.

The Cabildo put a barrier across the tunnel, but failed to warn drivers leaving the roundabout in Parque de la Reina that they couldn't get through -

a Men Working sign and a Falling Rocks sign is not enough information. The traffic during the rush hours since has been chaotic. Cars wanting to access the southbound carriageway of the TF1 drive up, stop and look, and then do a three-point turn in the road and go back to find another route.

Cars wanting the northbound carriageway have to wait until the 3-point-turn is completed, and cars rushing OFF the northbound carriageway have to slam on their brakes to avoid hitting them.

I walked up there again this morning and in five minutes I counted 23 cars, one truck and three motorbikes maneouvering to turn round.
Oh yes - and three near-collisions.

There were workmen clearing more of the rubble, but they couldn't tell me when the road would be re-opened - presumably the cliff must be made safe first, although the banana plantation worker on top of it didn't seem concerned as he chopped back cacti within inches of the edge.

24 HOURS IN PUERTO

 To anyone who lives in Tenerife, and to knowledgeable visitors, ‘Puerto’ can only mean one thing – Puerto de la Cruz.

Don’s son treated us to a night there on Tuesday, and although the drive up took little more than an hour, it felt like a holiday.

Puerto is on the north coast, and its exuberant verdancy is in stark contrast to the arid south where we live. Both are beautiful in very different ways, but a change is always refreshing.

We stayed in Hotel Marquesa – one of the old hotels in the centre of town, with wooden balconies overlooking an internal courtyard - 

– so much more atmospheric than a tall modern block.

Having checked in – the rooms have been modernised and all are en suite - we walked around the town and harbour. 

Tourists for the day, we admired the castle and the old houses, 

 a bronze statue of a fisherwoman on the quay 

the Fishermen's Fraternity building with some seriously dangerous-looking external stairs,

and a couple of nice young men swimming among the boats.   

We ate lunch and then ice creams and had a siesta, then went out in the soft evening to eat again –dinner this time - listened to Spanish songs over a brandy, 

and then slept, despite the rumble of cars over the cobbles and the chiming of the quarters from the church in the square.

I was up early in the morning to stroll through the old streets alone, admiring the houses, 

some beautifully preserved, others in desperate need of some TLC.

After breakfast in the main square we spent a couple of hours in the Botanical Gardens. I do love trees and added many photos to my album,

but here are just a few of the more exotic ones.

Then it was coffee in Garachico – the last town on the island to have suffered from a volcanic lava flow – and lunch (more food!) in Los Gigantes, home of these gigantic cliffs,

and back to Parque de la Reina.


We seemed to have been away for much longer than 24 hours, but even so there simply wasn’t time to take in the Agatha Christie Festival which I saw advertised in Puerto.

BLACK NIGHT IN TENERIFE!

This ball of fluff and hundreds of its cousins have been growing over the past few weeks from this. . .











. . . . .. to this

and are due to make their maiden flights this full moon, after which these large, magnificent birds will live at sea and only return to land to nest and breed.
But they will only reach the sea unharmed if the inhabitants of the coastal regions of Tenerife put their lights out between 10pm and 1am tonight, November 2nd.

According to the local paper, the Corey's Shearwater is an endangered bird that breeds on our cliffs, but the new fledgelings can become confused by electric lights and crash-land. We are asked to turn off our lights during those crucial hours, and there's even a list of numbers to call if you find a grounded chick.

The authorities are calling it "Noche en Negro" = "Black Night" 

It's not much to ask, is it?

WHAT I DID ON MY HOLIDAYS!

I've been to England - where else could I have taken a photo like this in an otherwise sober museum?
We had planned to go on Brighton Pier but it was raining heavily, so Brighton Museum in the grounds of the Pavilion got our vote instead.
The first thing my elder grandson noticed was the grey metal chair just inside the entrance. It looked fun but the question that popped into my mind was "Why?"

There are various rooms filled with thousands of things, including ethnic outfits from New Ireland. No, I had never heard of it either, but the map showed it to be an island somewhere near New Zealand.


The coat was more like a rug, and heavy enough to make a child sag at the knees.


The boys loved the fact that you could actually try things on without getting into trouble.






In the Local History Room we learned that the Palace Pier was preceded by a Chain Pier that succumbed to a storm just as the West Pier did some years ago.
There is an Egyptian Room where you can help to embalm a mummy by removing it's insides - only on screen, of course!
Lots of lovely china, ancient and modern, and so many artefacts that we will have to go back. That's not a problem, even with a family, because it's FREE!

And then, to [please my family of addicts, we went to help the Lego shop celebrate it's 10th birthday.

When I returned to Tenerife people asked, as they do, "How was England - cold and wet?"  Well, yes it was for a couple of days, as this bedraggled dove bears witness, but we didn't let that stop us enjoying ourselves. Most of our fortnight was lovely.