Tenerife's Own Brewery

Wherever I have wandered in the world, the best local beers were usually set up by German brewers. Take China’s TsingTao beer, for example. The very first pint of TsingTao was poured in 1904 and was the pride and joy of German Brewmasters, Wehle and Schuster.

In the Phillippines, the San Miguel beer may take it’s name from the San Miguel brewery in Barcelona, but it owes much of its success to German Brewmaster Ludwig Keine.

Now, in Tenerife, the Germans have lent their beermaking expertise to the creation of six new beers including one which gives a nod to Tenerife’s banana plantations.

Unfortuantely I do not know the name of the German Brewmaster at the Tacoa Cerveceria but I am sure he is owned a big round of applause for introducing the art of German beer-making to Tenerife.

Taco Clara: a blonde Pilsen Taco Copper: copper color, very soft

Taco Black: a strong black beer, flavored with malt alcohol

Tacoa-Wheat: wheat beer with a hint of banana

Tacoa-Light: a low alcohol, refreshing beer.

Tacoa Fiesta: A special festive brew which is created to clebrate special occasions.

As well as the beer, the Tacoa Brewery serves some great grub. As to be expected there is a mix of German and canarian food. Some choices are:

Curry Salad with French goat cheese and molasses, Mushrooms And Tacoa Squid, coated in Dark Beer, nine types of German sausage and homemade Bavarian pasta.

The Tacoa Brewery is located in El Sauzal and if you happen to go on a Friday you can enjoy the regular Friday Jazz and Blues Jam session.

Visis the Tacoa Brewery website for more information.

John worked for fifteen years in the post office.  Now he runs his own bar in Tenerife.

Teresa runs her own gift shop in Tenerife.  She worked for Tesco when she was in the UK.

Kevin and Mary both worked in the Civil Service, but now they are proud restaurant owners in Tenerife.

What is it about Tenerife that makes so many expats turn into entrepreneurs, even though they may have spent their careers far removed from the cut and thrust of running their own business?

“For me it was the lack of any alternative,” says John, a former postman.  “I don’t speak Spanish, and most jobs need you to speak the language,” he adds.

Language is certainly a major barrier for expats hoping to find a job on the island.  Naturally most positions require Spanish, unless they are in the front line of the tourism industry.

Kevin, who worked for the National Health Service in the UK goes further, saying “The jobs that are advertised tend to be fairly low level.  Normally you are faced with a choice between commission only sales jobs, mainly in the timeshare industry, or jobs hustling tourists into bars.  For us, running our own business was the only real option.”

“Yes,” agrees Kevin’s partner, Mary.  “But we were also quite spoiled for choice when we bought our restaurant.  With the recession and everything, there are some really good businesses for sale in Tenerife at the moment.  Our restaurant was quite dated but you could see that with just a bit of modernisation and a menu that didn’t sell chips with everything, the business could be doing so much better.”

“You just have to be adaptable,” says Teresa who was a regular visitor to the island from Manchester, before she decided to follow her dream and buy a gift shop in Tenerife.  “If you move abroad, it’s a life changing experience and you are out of your comfort zone.  Running your own business is only a small step further.”

Frederick Saltmarsh, one of the Directors of FRINA Tenerife a prominent business sales agent on the island, advises aspiring business owners every day.   “Establishing an income that will support your new life in Tenerife is probably the most important challenge you will face.  Employment prospects are very limited, but that is more than compensated by the number and quality of business opportunities.”

And Frederick certainly has a point.  There is a wealth of businesses for sale advertised on the FRINA Tenerife website, and prices seem remarkably low even to a casual observer.

“The local economy is rapidly picking up after a grim recession and the future of business in Tenerife is looking very bright,” observes Frederick, “but businesses for sale in Tenerife are still at rock bottom prices… at least for the moment.  Right now, we are witnessing an extraordinary time in the market for bargain hunters but as businesses start to prosper once again, prices are sure to rise.”

Article kindly contributed by FRINA Tenerife.  If you are interested in a Tenerife Business for sale, you can contact FRINA Tenerife by calling +34 922 085 191 or by visiting their website http://www.tenerife-business.com/

Photo credit: luisrock62 from morguefile.com

Off to see the dolphins!

Tenerife is absolutely bristling with tours, trips and things to do. From  theme parks to boat trips, quad bikes, rafting bikes, mountain-biking, horse-riding, sailing, scuba diving… shall I go on? If you are coming to the island with a large family in tow you will want to bring an extra suitcase stuffed with cash if you want to take them on a few trips and tours during your stay – especially at the prices the seafront tour seller’s throw at you.

I have kids of my own so I feel your pain. You want to give everybody the best possible holiday but everything costs money. (Somehow the kids never get that, do they?)

Tenerife Tour Booking Tip

The tour sellers are mostly middlemen with no direct relationship to the actual tour or show they are selling tickets for. The tour owner specifies to the seller a bottom-line price which he will accept per adult  or per child and then he leaves the mark-up to the seller.

For example, if  the owner of a boat trip company told the sellers that he expects €25 per head, but that the public price is €40, the seller is free to sell the boat trip at any price he likes as long as it is not less than €25. The seller would be dumb as a box of rocks to sell over the €40 as he would soon be marked as a cowboy and tourist sites like Tripadvisor would get that message out.

So.. the seller will always start at a higher price than he is willing to accept because the more you pay over the minimum the more commission he makes. Bear that in mind when you are being accosted on all sides by tour sellers as you walk along the front in Los Cristianos and don’t be afraid to bargain.

Personal Recommendation

Not everyone is comfortable squabbling about prices so if you do not enjoy haggling, I have a personal recommendation for you. As you walk from the main seafront promenade that stretches from Arona Gran Hotel at the far right, to the harbour at the left, you turn up to the right in order to go under a small tunnel that takes you through to Paseo de las Vistas. Before you reach that tunnel, there is a set of stairs and tucked at the top of it is Excursiones Jesús.

Jesús Molin Molina is a legend. There is nothing that man doesn’t know about Tenerife tours and he can tell you all about it in about five languages. He is also extremely fair with prices. I do not want to be specific on exact prices for particlar tours because that would lead you to have a certain price expectation which woud not be fair on Jesùs but I can tell you that a recent trip involving four adults and two children worked out about €70 cheaper via Jesùs than it would have done through one of the Paseo Maritimo scalpers.

You can call Jesús direct on 922 796 984.  If you want to mention it, you can say you read about him on eTenerife.com but you don’t have to. This is an open and honest recommendation and I have no monetary arrangement with Excursiones Jesùs.

Have a great trip!

You know, as the webmaster of eTenerife, I do occasionally have a look around  the internet for products that might be of some value to Tenerife residents or holiday makers. If I can find something worthwhile that I might also make a commission on so much the better.  Actually I don’t really do enough of that and that is why the eTenerife you see today really is not stuffed with banners and ads. (And a family of mice have set up home in my piggy bank).

Maybe I’ll put up one of those Buy Me Coffee buttons eventually but for the moment the only affiliate links I have on the site are those to Spanish Learning programmes on the navigation bar (which I have used myself so I know are good) and the Hotelscombined Hotel box which is great for finding the best rates across all the hotel platforms. When I have family coming I use Hotelscombined myself to find them the best deals.

Sometimes I will run adsense ads but lately they have been pretty rubbish. Since I changed to WordPress Google Adsense seems to think visitors are interested in buying farm tractors in Lithuania or real estate in Bristol. The relevance has gone down the tubes for some reason and I don’t have the time or interest to try and fix that right now.

Anyway, there I was looking through a collection of products and I came across a set of six or seven Satellite to PC type products. As you would expect the advertising copy used by the vendors of these products is always over-the-top positive. These things sell like hot-cakes and expat residents in Tenerife are prime targets.

Of course we are. We miss our home tv, the terrestrial channels are crap and cable costs a fortune. These satellite to PC programmes look  like the ideal solution. Even those who are wise enough to do an internet search to verify that the products are genuine are likely to come up with glowing – and seemingly genuine – reviews. Don’t be fooled. Every ‘genuine’ review is adorned with an affiliate link.

These Satellite to PC offers are not cheap. Some sell for over $200 – pure scam artist gold. Don’t be fooled. There are ways to find and access tv programmes via your tv (using a free UK proxy to access Channel 4′ channel on Youtube is one) but this is not one of them.

You might wonder how I can be so sure that these products are rubbish and that is because I bought one of them a few years ago. Rather than write my own review though, I’d rather leave you with this Youtube video which tells it like it is very clearly. If you have also been bitten by this or any other internet product scam, feel free to post about it in the comments. The more info that is out there about the crap that chokes the internet the better! That way people stand a better chance of finding out the truth before they waste their money.

Following on from the popular Tenerife Pool Balls post, I have some more ideas for pool party games for kids of all ages, kindly supplied by Duncan of Owners Direct who has quite clearly cracked his head on the bottom more than once.

Pool Party Fun or Everyone

We’re lucky enough to be enjoying a very pleasant summer right now and people are spending lots of time in their pools or at their local lidos. But whether at home or abroad, there is only so much enjoyment in cooling off from the sun and doing a few laps before swimming becomes about as interesting as painting Nan’s toenails.

Luckily, being a rather creative species we have come up with lots of games to make swimming jolly good fun. And just so you don’t get bored this summer, here is a selection of the very best.

Volleyball

Yes its cliché and yes people get far too competitive than is strictly necessary, but pool volleyball is great fun all the same. Ideally you need a net to play this game, but it works equally well with two willing volunteers holding a length of string across the pool. Whether you’ll find willing volunteers is another matter all together, so netless (not to be confused with topless) volleyball usually regresses into a game of keepy-uppy.

Marco Polo
A classic American swimming pool game here. As far as I can tell it involves a group tormenting a sightless individual by all replying ‘polo’ each time they shout out “Marco.” This person who is ‘Marco’ is encouraged to use their well developed sense of hearing to filter out the sounds of screaming, splashing water and the muffled instances of “polo” coming from every angle to home-in to someone. If the child with his or her eyes closed cannot pinpoint one of the other kids who is sporadically shouting out whilst also moving around, and invariably getting out the pool to run along the side, he or she is deemed a failure and plays no further part in the day’s activities. Only joking…they’re allowed to hold string for the volleyball game.

British Bulldog

All the way from the UK is the game that has been banned on land and since moved to the safety of deep water. That’s right, the game British Bulldog was banned in English schools after it caused more injuries than playing conkers (which has also been banned). The game involves running from one end of a field to the other whilst trying to avoid being caught by a ‘bulldog’ (another kid) who has to hold on to their victim long enough to say “bulldog 1,2,3” and then usually tombstone their captured runner . Any runner who is caught, providing they are still breathing, turns into a bulldog and the game goes on until there is one poor sod left that has to run the width of a field whilst being chased by twenty frustrated and concussed bulldogs. It’s good to see that whilst we’ve lost the tomb-stoning fun, the serious risk of drowning has now been introduced into the game.

Belly Flop Contest

When all creativity has been exhausted, you can always rely on an impromptu belly flop contest to bring some smiles. If big Johnny from around the corner who has a glandular problem is in attendance then the contest is usually over before it began. If however the field is quite equally matched then it can make for some nail biting action as performers are judged on:

• Difficulty
• Creativity
• Form
• Airtime
• Maximum Water Disturbance
• Tidal Wave Creation

Winners should get second helpings from the BBQ.

King of the Ring

This game usually materialises out of the blue as opposed to being planned. All it takes is for one territorial individual (usually male) to claim rights to the best rubber ring and start palming off attempts to share it whilst he starts pondering the best colours for his national flag. This tends to anger the other pool users and soon a revolt is in full swing with wave upon wave of attack being unleashed on the sole ring defender. When the original ring-hogger has been dethroned a new king (or queen) takes his place and the games starts over. The activity usually only ends when someone gets hurt, the ring bursts, or everyone realises Johnny has been at the BBQ for an awfully long time.

BIO:Duncan is a writer and blogger who represents a holiday villas company, specialising in holiday apartments and cottages in Cornwall

Mexican star Alejandro Fernandez made his first mark on the international charts via ranchero and mariachi music but soon added Latin pop and ballads to his repertoire. His 1997  album  Me Estoy Enamorando topped Billboard’s  Top Latin Albums chart and from it came several chart-topping singels including  En el Jardín – a duet with Gloria Estefan.

Since then Alejandro Fernandez has consistently released albums that have been well received in the Latin charts and alternating these with releases of ranchero style albums for his original fan base.

Catch Alejandro Fernandez in concert at the Campo de Fútbal in Los Cristianos on 31 July. Tickets are available from:

• LM Producciones
• Ticketmaster 7
• La Camisoteca
• GeneralTickets.com
• ServiCaixa
• El Corte Inglés
• Discos Noda
• Centro Comercial Maya (sur)

Yikes, looks like Gran Canaria is suffering from a plague of snakes! If you have a few minutes to practice your Spanish today then listen to the video in Spanish. And by the way… ¿Crees que se puede nadar?

Well that’s it all over bar the shouting. At the end of every World Cup there are winners and there are losers. For the winners, there is adulation, champagne and groupies galore. For the losers, a frosty reception and a post-match, post-mortum that probably left blood on the floor.

But just imagine the reception the conquering heroes will get when their toes touch the tarmac. Whooooeeee. Everyone wants a piece of those boys. They are heroes, every one. Viva España!

Joseph Jacques Césaire Joffre knows all about victory. He was a French General during WWI and is best known for defeating the Germans at the First Battle of Marne. (Thank you Wikipedia).

His greatest moment was regrouping the retreating allied armies and getting them to return to the fray quite likely by shouting this at them:

La victoria tiene cien padres y la derrota es huérfana

Yes indeed. Everybody loves a winner.

Derrota means defeat or rout and a huérfana is an orphan.

I bumped into a Spanish friend that I haven’t seen recently and she had a good laugh at me as I mangled all the Spanish I had learned since I saw her last.  I told her I had been taking adult Spanish lessons at the Cutural Centre before the school broke up and said she would never have guessed. (Cheeky besom!)

Then Paola went on to ask why I stopped posting the Sugar Sachet Spanish series I used to post in Tenerife Tattle.  She said that even as a native Spanish speaker she found the Spanish quotes that I dug up interesting and my interpretation of them worth a laugh. I am not sure she meant to be complimentary with that last statement but she is right, I used to have a lot of fun with the Sugar Sachet Spanish series.

There  is a little cafe in Las Galletas owned by the lovely Maria.  From time to time she gets in boxes of sugar sachets which are printed with Spanish quotations. I stopped taking sugar years ago but I always pinched her sachets so I could print the quotes on the blog. It got to the point where I had gone through all the Spanish quotations in the box. Maria got a kick out of finding me ones I hadn’t used before but eventually we had gone through them all. For a while I used other sources and then to my surprise Maria found a different style of sugar sachet. These had odd facts printed in Spanish. Things like …Did you know an elephant is the only animal that can’t jump? When I had gone through them, Maria surprised me with a book called the Anthologia de Frases Célebres. What a sweetheart!

Pamela Heywood of Secret Tenerife fame also sent me a fabulous source of Spanish quotes so I had lots of material to work with. On top of that I used to print the lyrics of Spanish songs and of course, with the kids at Spanish school I am a killer at Spanish nursery rhymes.

Paola pointed out that before I ever took that Spanish class, I paid more attention to the language and I enjoyed it more. I generally understood what was being said and could make myself be understood. She thinks that concentrating to much on Spanish verb conjugations is getting in the way of actually speaking Spanish.

I think she’s right! The adult education classes will start back up in October and I will be hoping to squeeze in again but in the meantime I am happy to annouce to Paola that I am going to resurrect my Sugar Sachet Spanish series.  I ended up incorporating more than the Sugar Sachet quotations but the idea is the same – a quick five minute look at a Spanish quotation, joke, song…whatever I happen to find.

Because it was Maria’s sugar sachets that started the whole thing I’ll call the series The Spanish Cafe and you will find a link to it on the nav bar. I hope you join me in there as it was a good laugh the last time. Besides as Paola would say, “El campo fértil no descansado, tórnase estéril.”