Volcanic hazard zones in Tenerife
I recently found this while surfing the web for a good map of Tenerife. The map legend explains all the specific danger zones in tenerife, a volcanic island here in the Atlantic ocean.
A Cyclist's Life in Tenerife (Canary Islands)
«Tenergrief»
The rate of construction taking place in Tenerife is mind-boggling. Just 50 years ago, before mass-tourism, the whole La Orotava valley was cultivated land. Today, pretty much every space below about 500m altitude has already been urbanised to some extent. It has one of the highest population densities of anywhere; the average figure is now 400-500 people / km², depending on how many tourists are present. In fact, if this island were a country, it’d be the 24th most populated country on the list… needless to say, I often feel a strange sense of agoraphobia. It’s not like a city, from which you can always escape. [Read more →]
Where do professional cyclists train for the Tour de France?
Many famous names in professional cycling come to Tenerife, including Lance Armstrong, Marco Pantani and Miguel Indurain. A longer list of professional cyclists that have trained in Tenerife can be seen here.
Tenerife is one of the seven Canary Islands, a volcanic island chain belonging to Spain. Tenerife is located in the Atlantic ocean, about 250km off the African coastline (Western Sahara).
Tenerife, the world’s third largest island volcano, is an ideal training destination for serious cyclists as there are several continuous 2300 metre (7000 ft) ascents which commence from sea level. Mt Teide, rising to 3718m can often be seen rising above the surrounding terrain.
Many professional cyclists choose to train in Tenerife during the winter season when the rest of Europe experiences much cold temperatures. The Canary Islands are generally regarded as the Sothern-most part of Europe; Tenerife’s local climate is obviously a lot milder than what the European mainland experiences, even despite the mountains. So much so, cycling in Tenerife is possible all year round.
Professional cycle training camps are often based at Las Cañadas in the centre of Tenerife. El Parador, the only hotel allowed within the entire El Teide National Park, is located at an altitude of 2100m. From here, cyclists are able to become accustomed to high-altitude training within the surrounding volcanic crater; the elevation in this region always exceeds 2000 m.
Spanish food and eating customs:
– A typical Spanish breaksfast consists of an expresso coffee … and that’s often all there is to it.
– The main meal is usually served between 1:00 and 2:00pm in the afternoon. This is sometimes accompanied by a first course consisting of soup. Three course lunches are the norm for the all-important weekend family get-together.
– Parsely is the mother of all herbs in Spanish cooking. I’m willing to bet that more parsely is consumed in Spain than all other [cooking] herbs combined.
– Spanish rarely eat outside their homes (or at least here in the Canary Islands). The proper place to eat is in the kitchen, while the dining room is sometimes just left for show.
– For some unknown reason, if you’re sharing a plate of food, especially tapas, the fork is left resting perpendicularly on the edge of the plate, with the pointy side curving down. Don’t ask me to explain this strange custom. [Read more →]
Spanish fashion oddities:
Supermodelo 2008 got off to a quiet start as Operación Triunfo gathers even more momentum here in Spain. The popular Supermodel contest usually rebounds once the Operación Triunfo wake surges (or at least it did last year). But honestly, I don’t know what to make of Supermodelo 2008 this year; half the instructors are in fact French! Readers will be left wondering if there is anything at all to Spanish fashion. Leave that to me. I’ve recently gathered together many un-hitherto unrelated thoughts during my stay here in Spain, and compiled this list describing just what is popular in the world of Spanish fashion:
- Any English words printed on T-shirts. It doesn’t matter what words are printed, they’re just cool. Partly because to be in a position to buy a foreign T-shirt, you have to have travelled somewhere.
- Car tattoos have become fashionable. That’s right. Car tattoos. The average spanish car enthusiast can’t afford to upgrade what’s under the bonnet. Hence, Spanish hoons restrict their engine modifications & instead focus on the outsides of their vehicles. So you’ll see all sorts of customised designs stuck onto cars. It’s just a small part of what’s called «tuning», but here pronounced more like: «toonin».
- The mullet haircut. I’m trying to work out whether mullet haircuts have made a comeback in Spain, or whether in reality they never went out of fashion! Whatever the case, rest assured that at least here in Spain, mullets are alive and well. They just don’t have a name yet.
- I once heard my friend comment that yellow houses were «vasto» or «cutre» (in my time, the appropriate translation is «corny»). Most houses in Spain are either white or yellow and I’ve always wanted to know why.
- Womens shirts with sleeves should have enormous neck holes to compensate for the increased skin coverage factor. If the sleeves aren’t falling off the shoulders, it isn’t fashionable enough. Think of it more more like a tube top encompassing the arms as well. (you can thank wikipedia for educating this simpleton about the many definitions of what shirt’s are and aren’t)
- In Spain, shoes are everything. Spanish men are lucky enough to have a special subset of shoes which are admitedly very difficult to describe. I suppose they land somewhere between the simplicity of those older canvis tennis shoes and the sleekness of modern sneakers. I had to trawl through dozens of pages to come across this picture representing this particular slice of Spanish fashion.
¡Ni Papas! (Not even potatoes!)
For those of you who don’t know «ni papas» is a Canarian expression which literally translates as «not even potatoes» but really means «nothing» (I suppose because if you’re not even collecting potatoes, there’s nothing left). Usually it’s tacked on the end of a sentence; I’ve heard it used in the following phrase by my driving instructor: «Cuando hablan Inglés no entiendo nada, ¡ni papas!». (When they speak I don’t understand anything, nothing!)
Normally I don’t bother translating local Spanish news because Pamela of www.secret-tenerife.com does such a fine job. But since we here at Tenerife-Training actually live on a combined potato/grape/orange farm, this story is right up my alley so I feel compelled to cover it.
In the North zone of Tenerife potatoes have been grown and harvested for at least the las two centuries. On April 24th 2008, there was a heat wave & the combined strong winds then wiped out up to 80% of production in the worst hit region of Benijos. The entire zone known as «Las MedianÃas» in the North of the Island was affected, especially the La Orotava valley. The losses vary between 70 and 80% of a normal harvest. These damages have been caused by the dehydration and defoliation of the plants. [Read more →]
The top 100 strangest search terms ever?
Many readers who do not host their own websites will not realise this, but yes, whenever you visit a website, the server records how you got there. What does this mean? Well, whatever you enter into google is usually stored by the host-server, and it is in fact all-too-easy for someone like me to peruse that list. Just for the record, it’s also possible to know in which order you viewed the web pages on my site, and how long you remained on each page.
Anyway, browsing through all the many search terms that people use to find this site has quickly become a regular little past time. Knowing what people search for and what is successful certainly helps with Search Engine Optimisiation (SEO). Most of the search terms generally have keywords such as «cycling», «bike hire» or «Tenerife». But here is a list of the 100 all-time most unique search terms I have encountered so far, really standing out above the remaining 13,000+ internet searches used to find www.Tenerife-Training.net. All these people entered my site by typing these exact terms into a search engine:
JUST PLAIN STRANGE SEARCH TERMS:
- «fish with big lips»
- «sea snake santa»
- «benedict alan climbed into a camel»
- «submarine for hire»
- «eggbeater review candy»
- «chocolate coated banana business»
- «in life some hoops you have to jump through will be on fire»
- «purple kettle» (21 people actually searched for this term in the last year alone)
- «crocodile initiation philosophy»Â
- «crocodile scars»
- 2-oxo-l-threo-hexono-1 4- lactone-2 3-enediol
- «tired after eating turkey»
- «perspective of air resistance»
- «what do tongan people look like»
- «is soy good for nerves»
- ujmwutzckmkdwean
STUPID SEARCH TERMS:
- «i don t like turning left when the road marking makes me turn the car to the left»
- «what should u use for a 3 year old when driving a car»Â
- «how much time do i spend in each place when traveling»
- «could it be a big world after all»
- «can you translate words and how»
- «safe to eat a rotten banana»
- «can you take shower gel in your suitcase now when travelling?»
- «how many chupa chups have they sold in the world»
- «the best inventions chup & chups»
- «are there cheap paintings by pablo picasso?»
- «earn twenty bucks now»
- «how much space does 11 million metric tons take up?»
- «how do computers remember the time»
- «how big is 6 000 000 000»
- «science learns you essential things for life?» [Read more →]
The «steepest street in the world record» disputed!
The guiness book of records states that Baldwin Street in Dunedin, New Zealand is the steepest street in the world. According to the figures, the Baldwin St is 359m in length (horizontal measurement) with a total elevation gain of ~80m. The plaque states that «over the 161.2 metre length of the top section, it climbs a vertical height of 47.22 metres, which is an average gradient of 1 in 3.4.1. On its steepest section, the gradient is 1 in 2.86. However, there is some dispute over this as only 6m out of the total street length at the steepest gradient.
I’ve seen Baldwin Street in the flesh and was somehwat disappointed – in fact the first part is almost flat! It then ramps up considerably towards the top section. Hence, the average gradient of the entire street is more like 1 in 4.375. That’s the trouble with New Zealand – they tend to exaggerate a lot. So I would like to challenge that record today by making yet another claim for the worlds steepest street:
After scouring over online topographic contour maps, I have chosen Calle Monroy in the district of Santa Ursula, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. I do not possess a global positioning system (GPS) to accurately gauge its gradient. Nevertheless, we can estimate that the length of this street from the data provided by Google maps. Monroy Street descends from 638 to 430 metres in a length of only 740 metres. Therefore, the average gradient over the entire street is 28.1% (a slope of 1 in 3.56) compared to Baldwin Street with an average gradient of only ~22.3%.
Besides, the photo to the left shows that the steepest part of the road has a slope with a ~40% gradient (caculated by the pixel method)! Now until some bright spark can come up with another street with a steeper average gradient, which can be confirmed, I’m going out on a limb and labelling Monroy Street the «steepest street in the world», albeit unoffcially! Or if you prefer: «the street with the highest average gradient». But I think the first one is more correct.
Oh and as far as I am concerned, taking slope readings only on the very steepest parts of the same street is cheating. If that were the case, I’d claim the inside portion of this street. Measured over a few centimetres, the gradient is technically about 80% over the length of one particular piece of aggregate!! Hell, you could probably even find a patch of tarmac with a slope greater than 100% on if you used a micrometer. Obviously, that’s not at all fair. For this reason alone, I challenge people to take the average slope over the whole length of the street. Take the reading from the very beginning to the very end of the same street, don’t leave any sections out, and neither can you add two or more street sections together. Also, I think it should be compulsory that the street has to have a name recognised by the local council…
If you take the entire length of the street and then determine the average gradient the way I propose, Monroy Street (Calle Monroy) appears to come out as the winner. This street does not have any flat parts; it is the steepest continuous grade sealed street with public access that I am aware of, also plainly visible in Google Maps.
OTHER CANDIDATES:
One other very steep street that I spotted also resides in the district of Santa Ursula. This particular street, which includes Calle Los Tosqueras for most of its length, descends from 1012 to 348 metres in a length of 2.5km, although the top section is not paved. Furthermore, Calle Los Tosqueras diverts horizontally while the steeper adjoining street has a different and as yet unknown name.
However, the neighbouring zones of La Corujera and Toscas de Ana MarÃa also provide many other possible candidates for the world’s steepest street. Camino el Monte, Calle La Calzada, Calle Las Turcas, Calle Los Castaños, Camino Los Pajales and Camino La Banderola are all noteworthy, boasting average gradients close to or exceeding 25% slope. Other extremely steep streets in the North of Tenerife worth a mention are Calle Argentina in Icod de Los Vinos and last but not least: Camino de Chasna in La Orotava.
Harnessing the power of the wind in the South of Tenerife.
ITER refers to the windmill farms as «Parques Eólicos» not «Molinos» as you might think. And unlike the fake, stationary molino that was built not far from my place last year, these ones actually work! There are three such wind parks located at Grandailla & Arico in the South of Tenerife, with a combined annual energy production of 36.764 MWh/year. These are enough to effectively reduce the petroleum consumption by 3170 tonnes per year, which is what would have been used to generate the same amount of energy from conventional means.
They may all look the same, but ITER uses aerogenerators which are supplied from several different manufacturers: Vestas, Ecotecnia, Made, and Enercon. They’re currently experimenting which ones are the most suitable (offering least noise & superior performance).
Interestingly, Spain already generates the highest proportion of it’s energy from wind energy (compared to other countries) and the new industry is booming. [Read more →]
Farming the suns rays in Granadilla.
It’s not often I post an article in both the «Inspiration» and «Island Life» categories simultaneously. But looking out the bus window earlier last month, I noticed a strange series of dark, tilted platforms located in an arid coastal region of Granadilla. They’re only visible from freeway TF1 for a few seconds. To my eyes, it appeared to be a vast series of solar-cell panels forming one giant array.
Well after doing a bit of investigating, the project turns out to be called «SOLTEN«, constructed and operated by the Instituto Tecnológico y de Energías Renovables (ITER). My hunch was correct: SOLTEN is reportedly the biggest photovoltaic solar power station in Europe, so I’m really suprised I haven’t heard about it before!
The SOLTEN solar installation was initially expected to consist of 150 solar energy modules; each module was comprised of 576 photovoltaic solar cell panels distributed in 24 rows and yielding up to 100 kilowatts of electricity. The installation was expected to generate a total energy capacity of 15 Megawatts of power. Source.
Instead, SOLTEN has been conceived in two steps, SOLTEN I and SOLTEN II. The photovoltaic solar units ultilised in the SOLTEN project are fabricated by Kyocera, ITER, Yingli and Solarworld. The good news is that the energy that is generated will be connected to the local electricity grid, which is managed by Unelco-Endesa. [Read more →]
Flags of the Canary Islands.
Today, I thought I’d share with my readers this fantastic old link to the many flags of the Canary Islands! It is a comprehensive site (dating back to at least before 1999) with all the islands represented, and many municipalities within each island. It includes a brief history section of each region, flag descriptions and important dates. Further descriptions about the History of the Canarian flag and its coat of arms make interesting reading.
I’m pleased to discover that the author, José Manuel Erbez, is now promoting a new site based on the content of of the old site with a blog layout, Symbols of the Canary Islands, although it currently doesn’t have all the flags of the old site uploaded. Like the old site, the new site is also available in three languages: Spanish, English and German.
Recognising the sounds of another spoken language.
As far as most people are concerned, all foreign speech sounds more or less the same. When you are first learning another language, you can soon expect to identify people only by hearing their voice. In my experience, this important listening skill takes place within a matter of weeks or months, depending on the amount of exposure you’ve received.
This is because everyone has a unique voice, just like their fingerprints, retina/iris; all three can be used for biometric recognition scans:
I was exceptionally good at identifying actors in different roles by their voice patterns, especially when wearing some sort of disguise. Just recently, I identified [Read more →]
Tenerife North airport will get a new control tower, more than 30 years after world’s biggest air disaster.
It appears that Tenerife North airport (TFN) will get a new control tower, more than 30 years after the world’s biggest air disaster took place there. While the existing control tower is only one of three to be fitted with sophisiticated surface or ground radar equipment in Spain, it’s the second oldest air traffic control tower in the country, apparantly dating back to 1965.
With an height of 41.3 metres the new tower will stand almost double the height of the current tower at TFN airport. Costing an estimated 7.3 million euros, construction is already underway. This is part of a 77 million euro plan to upgrade TFN airport before 2010. The planned completion date of the new control tower in Tenerife is at the end of 2008. The building proposal shown above is part of a project to upgrade the air traffic control tower, dating back to 2002. It certainly looks to be taking the same shape.
Tenerife aiport (TFN) is well known among aircraft enthusiasts as the site for the world’s biggest air disaster. This occurred on March 27, 1977. A total of 583 passengers & crew were killed; only 56 people aboard the Pan Am jet survived the tradgedy. [Read more →]
Suggested Spanish TV programs…
Here in the north of Tenerife, we have about 15 free Spanish TV channels and zero english ones. Spanish television can be an enjoyable experience. First I reccommend reading this article about spanish television customs in preparation, and only watch the suggested TV shows described briefly below.
Spanish Comedies- If you have an advanced understanding of Spanish, the sitcom Aida is very funny. The characters are all very unique and the acting is excellent. My favourite character is Chema. currently it is aired on Sundays on channel tele5. Aqui no hay quien viva is also a very famous Spanish sitcom.
Meridian Zero, the one and only local metal rock band.
Meridian Zero is a local ‘homegrown’ metal rock band based in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. They do give me a lot of inspiration, especially when I see the individual band members playing separately in the videos below. How they manage to create new music by melding all the sound contributions together never ceases to amaze me. Meridian Zero is fast gaining popularity which is also good to see.
After releasing their debut album «Doors of Creation» in late 2007, Meridian Zero is holding several concerts in the Canary Islands later this month to promote sales of their compact disc. One concert will be held in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria on the 15th of March, 2008; two concerts will also be held in Tenerife – one on the 29th of March in Los Realejos and the other on the 25th of April right here in La Orotava! Check www.Meridian-Zero.com for more information.
Here’s their video «Fighting to Arrive»:
Here’s the lead guitarrist and good friend Ivan «Scalpel» Ruiz playing the solo from «Fighting to arrive»:
Making sense of chaotic Spanish drivers.
You may not be able to think of anything more chaotic than a crazy spanish freeway, and in many cases you’d be absolutely darn right. But there is an underlying order in chaos, and this is what I’ll attempt to extract and share with you here. As many regular readers know, after many delays, I recently obtained my Spanish driving license, so I’m in a unique position to make sense of it all now. Far from being totally random, vehicle movements on Spanish roads are actually quite predictable when you can recognise the patterns:
- At high speeds, spanish drivers prefer to swerve rather than initiate abrupt braking manouvres. This avoids the chances of a pile up caused by multiple rear-end collisions. It increases the risk of crashing into everything else, but never mind that.
- To aid the fluidity of dense, high-speed traffic, giving way to merging traffic is not advised. Instead, spanish drivers help them to incorporate onto the freeway by changing lanes, but only if there is an opportunity. Otherwise they’ll shoot straight through without slowing. The rationale: why molest all of the cars behind you for the sake of a few in an entrance lane?
- To further aid the fluidity of dense traffic, drivers are taught from the very beginning to use the right lane unless overtaking. Except that this rule is not merely reccommended, it’s truly extolled here in Spain, being drummed into all driving students by all driving instructors for hours on end.
- Unfortunately, Spanish highways have become so clogged, that travelling in the right lane inevitably means encountering slower moving vehicles within less than 20 seconds’ time. And because the Spanish are usually running late for their appointments, there is also an overwhelming presence of Spanish drivers in a hurry to get somewhere. Hence, you’ll encounter a wide spread of driving velocities, from the achingly slow to the dangerously fast. Simple explanation? In Spain, there is always some schmuck in more hurry than yourself, so you can’t stay in the left lane very long either…
- What all this means in real terms is that Spanish drivers change lanes more times in one hour than they change their underpants in a whole year. [Read more →]
Learn Spanish watching television!
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Learning Spanish:
A very good program to watch when you are learning Spanish is «Karlos Arguiñano en tu cocina» (Karlos Arguiñano in your kitchen) currently aired on channel 5 (telecinco) at 1:00 – 2:30pm weekdays. He well-renowned Spanish chef, known for three things: his ability to cook an extremely wide range of authentic Spanish dishes, his cleanliness around the kitchen studio is second-to-none and his reputation for telling bad spanish jokes.
Finding a needle in a haystack
I’m pleased to announce that I have recently become an official sponsor of www.pedaltheocean.com! As a part of the pedal the ocean team, my designiation is ‘Canary Islands support advisor’.
One of my current tasks is to help Greg Kolodziejzyk find a dedicated support boat + skipper to aid him on his -trans Atlantic quest. His aim is to break the Human Powered Boat record for crossing the Atlantic Ocean. I have already joined 3 or 4 online sailing forums to post this request. Here is the official message we would like to spread:
———————–
Be part of a WORLD RECORD!We are attempting to set a record for the fastest HUMAN POWERED Atlantic crossing and are in need of a support/safety boat for a December/January, 2008 attempt from the Canary Islands to the West Indies. We can pay your costs and provide some crew if required. www.pedaltheocean.com contact greg@pedaltheocean.com for more information.
—————————————————–
Mission Impossible: Driving in Spain, a rite of initiation.
In many cultures, the passage of childhood through adulthood is defined by various types of initiation cermonies or «rites of passage». In Vanuatu they exchange pigs, mats, kava, and other goods between a child’s father’s and mother’s families. In indigenous Australian and African tribes, they perform face painting rituals and circumcisions. Similarly, throughout Melanesia and Polynesia, tattoos are used to symbolise the same transition.
Here in Spain, that same journey is marked by the ability of an adolescent to endure the official vehicle licensing beauracracy. In a word, it can only be described as exasperating. Now I actually relish challenges, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into…
“There are few things in life as difficult or intimidating as getting a Spanish driver’s license,†says American expat Sal DeTraglia of Sal DeTraglia’s Virtual Tapas Bar. “It is a process akin to trying to solve Fermat’s last theorem while sitting on death row in a Texas prison. If you don’t believe me, just ask anyone who has been through it.â€
Pedalling across the Atlantic ocean. A new world record attempt.
In Dec. of 2008, Greg is planning on pedaling his human powered boat «WiTHiN» 3000 miles across the Atlantic ocean in less than 43 days setting a new world record for the fastest human powered Atlantic crossing. Pedal The Ocean explores the limits of what is possible with human power.
2700 miles from Canary Islands to Barbados
Greg will start at the Canary Islands off of the West African coast. The Canary current is a southwestward flow that will take him onto the North Equatorial current which is a broad westward flow. It is fed by the Canary current and its waters eventually end up in the Gulf Stream system, via the Antilles current which should deliver Greg and WiTHiN to one of the islands near Barbados.
The average distance that various ocean rowers covered over this route is 2700 to 3000 miles. Rowing times from the Canary islands to Barbados range from a record of 43 days by Emmanuel Coindre to over 100 days. Ocean Rowing statistics are here.
Our modern sedentary lifestyle is putting our kids at risk of becoming the first generation that will have a life expectancy shorter than that of their parents. Worldwide, between 10 and 15% of our children are obese and 60% of the general population is overweight. Obesity in childhood often leads to obesity in adulthood. Most parents want the best for their children – including the chance to lead a long and healthy life. For obese children this goal is seriously threatened. The solution is education.
GREG’s MESSAGE:
3 million years of evolution has produced an animal whose natural environment probably consisted of walking the distance of a full marathon each and every single day*. Now take that animal (also known as a «human being»), and stick him in a small cage, rob him of natural sunlight, make him sit in a chair all day and feed him a steady supply of chemicals and refined foods.
Is it any wonder that 60% of North Americans are over weight? Described by the World Health Organization as an «escalating epidemic», obesity is «one of the greatest neglected public health problems of our time with an impact on health which may well prove to be as great as smoking.» Being overweight leads to many serious medical problems like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and many other health related issues.
An unnatural sedentary lifestyle causes chemical imbalances in our bodies which can lead to a host of psychological problems. Population studies have shown an inverse relationship between physical activity and depression, and there is evidence that active people who become inactive are more at risk of depression that those who remain active. According to a study from Duke University, aerobic exercise was MORE effective than antidepressant drugs in treating depressive symptoms in three study groups.
The cause of the obesity epidemic and skyrocketing rates of depression is obvious in my opinion. We need to become reacquainted with our «natural environment». Break out of your cage. Get outside and get ACTIVE! Ride your bike, run, walk, swim, climb – whatever it takes.
Greg Kolodziejzyk
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