Hollywood stars on Tenerife

Today, the 15th of May, Warner Bros Pictures fly in a 350-strong production team to work on the island for the next coming three weeks.
There will be big stars like Liam Neeson (Schindler's list) and Ralph Fiennes( The English patient) and many others.
The team is also hiring about 100 local people for various scenes.
It's predicted that the contract will earn Tenerife about 2.5 million euros in revenue because of expenditure on accommodation, transport and maintenance.
Nearly 20% of the total of the film will be shot here on Tenerife.

The movie will be released early 2010 and is called "Clash of the Titans" and is directed by Louise Leterrier.
It's an adventure filled with epic which tells the tale of the war between men, kings and the gods.
Based on the cult 1981 film with the same name, the storyline revolves around the myth of Perseus and his quest to save Princess Andromedia.

Keep you eyes open if you are on Tenerife the next three weeks!
You might see real Hollywood stars, and if you visit Teide you also might see the film team working.

My breakfast

A new problem has come up.
Now it's hard to figure out what to eat when the refrigerator is filled with different delicacies.
This is what I had for breakfast today.

Bread made of 5 kind of corns, American coleslaw and
grilled chicken slices + coffee with spray cream.

Our refrigerator

Can you believe this is our refrigerator?
It's a long time since it last was so full!
Normally when you open the door it's so empty and light that the whole thing is shaking like an aspen.
We have both been out buying different delicacies and I wish it would look like this all the time.

I have even been curing a fish in salt and sugar today ( gravad sik in Swedish) and it will be ready after a couple of days.
This time I choose a whitefish when we had salmon last time.
But to be honest with you I even bought a package of gravlax today.
You can see it to the right of the big melon.
In other words it will be breakfasts including fish here now for a couple of days.

Latte drinks

I bought two latte drinks from Mercadona today.
I have already had the cappuccino and it tasted good.
You just take of the aluminium lid that's inside and heat it up in the microwave for one minute and it's ready to enjoy.
Quick and easy and no dishes! Perfect when you are on vacation!

The summer is here

I had a walk to the insurance company today to get a certificate that prove they are willing to pay the manometry examination that I will have in Sta Cruz Monday.
I really enjoyed the walk. It's so beautiful here on Tenerife now.
All the trees and flowers start blooming and we have warm days with a wonderful calm breeze from the Atlantic ocean. It's just perfect!

I couldn't resist to start taking photos of some of the trees and bushes that I passed.
I had only brought the phone with me and now I'm surprised how nice photos my Nokia phone takes.
I think they are as good as the ones we take with the other camera, which Clas is so proud of.
Don't you think so?

Even the cactus flowers start blooming now.

My insurance company, Mapfre.

A lot to do

I have a lot of projects to do during the vacation.
Right now I have taken out everything from the refrigerator and defrost it.

We had a really lovely breakfast this morning.
Clas have been out buying big prawns and we had egg sandwiches with them. Delicious!

I also spend a lot of time on one of my friends blogs up in Sweden giving people coaching about how to overcome daily problems in their life and how to live a life in victory and happiness etc.
I do it anonymously and because of that I can't tell you the address to the site even when I wish I could.

A short update

Our breakfast at Little Italy's

Yehaa! It was 17.000 visitors a couple of days ago.

I haven't had time to blog the last days. To be on vacation makes you more busy than ever.

I have started learning new songs and Clas has been busy mastering them.

We have changed the song play list that we use in the nights and now it will be easier for Clas to find the right song in the computer.

We have been out on town for breakfast and have had grill parties on the balcony in the nights.

I have been out shopping one day.

I have got an appointment to the hospital in Santa Cruz and will go there the 18th of May for a esophageal manometry test that measures the function of the lower esophageal sphincter.
This coming week, before the examination, I'm not allowed to have the medicines that control the acids in the stomach, and I will probably not feel so good. But it's only during one week and I will make it.
The manometry will be the last test and when it's ready I will see the surgeon who is going to do the operation of the hernia.
Three weeks after the operation I hopefully will be like normal again.
I really look forward to that day.

Our time off in May this year, is not going to be like a vacation like it seams.
We will anyhow not work any more this month and plan to preliminary start again in June.

It's very nice weather on Tenerife right now. No clouds and +23-25 degrees.
But yesterday it was windy and the waves were huge.

Clas made a somersault!

I was laughing hysterically some nights ago. Hopefully I didn't wake up the neighbors...
Clas have had problem with his ears the last weeks because of the flu.

In the night when we got home from work he got an idea that he needs to turn a somersault backwards in the bed when he felt like he had got fluid in the channel inside the ear.
He thought that this kind of movement would move the fluid so that it would come out.

You know the Americans are very practical people and they know a lot of "help yourself out treatments".
While we lived in Florida we got to hear about how you can turn and roll and make somersaults to get rid of fluids in the ears...

He laid down in the bed, but old as he is he was too stiff to do this kind of acrobatic movements and he couldn't make it.
He asked me to grab his feet and help him out.
I tell you! It was not easy to get a piece of that size to roll over!
I laughed so much that I almost thought I would die, but in the end we finally made it.

Did it help? No!
Clas meant that he was too clogged for it to come out.
I'm not sure if it really works...and I'm not sure if we did it in the right way either.
But anyhow, we tried and it's always better to act than to just think about stuff.

New schedule for May

We met the owner of restaurant La Karina and Country Grill Karina last night. (Our employer)
We asked him for permission to be off from Country Grill Karina for the rest of the month and he agreed.
It's not many tourists on the island right now and then it's best for all of us if we take the opportunity to have some vacation.
This means we will play only three nights a week the whole month through.
We will continue like normal at La Karina, close to Hotel Tenerife Sol, and we play there Sundays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays 8.30 - 12.30.

We'll use some of our spare time to do rehearsal of new songs.
I have already started to sing some and Clas has got many new ones too, that he will start learning as soon as he gets time.

Our day off

It's Monday and our day off.
I have spent a big part of the day at the hospital doing some of the tests the surgeon like me to have before the surgery.
They did X-ray my lungs, made a gastric duodenal X-ray of the larynx and the stomach and took a lot of blood tests and made a ECG test.

All the different examinations had a good timing and I only had to wait a few minutes in between.
Even the drink for the gastric duodenal X-ray went easily down when I was not allowed to eat anything in eight hours before I got there.
It just felt like a smooth breakfast.

I walked into the hospital 8.30 and was ready about 11.00.
Then I went back in 4 pm and met the doctor who took away the polyps.
He had got the evaluation of the biopsy and I got to know that the polyps were of a good type.
But he like to see me every year and do an endoscopy to be sure I don't get new ones.
No problem for me when they always put me to sleep during the examination.

Up in Scandinavia they don't and people say it's one of the worse experience you can have.
I am very happy with the treatment I have got here in Spain so far and my wish is that everybody in the world could have the same.

I had my "second" breakfast at the crêpes restaurant in Vista Sur.
This time I had a salty one called Hawaii.
It was really lovely and I recommend you to try out this restaurant
while you are on Tenerife.


When I got home Clas had started preparing for our first grill party this summer.
And he had bought me a bouquet of roses.


He also had bought this wine that is produced in Arona, which is
the community of Tenerife where we live.
We had it with the dinner and it tasted very good.


Clas is a very good in making food and the dinner was excellent.

Last night at Country Grill Karina

It was very quiet last night, only 26 guests in the whole night.

We are planning to stay off from Country grill Karina and only play at La Karina the coming week. We have, of course, to talk with the restaurant owner about it first, but probably he will agree.
That means we will only play at La Karina Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday and we can be off the rest of the days. We'll see!

Clas, Marja, Rune and me.

Marja and Rune visited us last night and they invited us to cheer in champagne during the break. This couple are "winterbirds" from Sweden and they often visit our venues.

The kitchen staff returning from the trash bin.


Clas and Me at La Karina last week.
Photograph: Marja Ahlgren (above).

Busy

I don't have much to blog about right now.
I have been out shopping groceries today and on the way back home I bought Sushi for lunch.
Clas called a while ago and said he will have lunch at Hooters.
He eat the Hooters chicken wings many times a week and I can't understand why he don't become fed up.

I will now start cleaning the apartment and doing the laundry and I have a big pile of clothes to iron. But I don't look forward to it when I rather would like to start looking for new songs on the internet. Maybe I get time to do that as well...

It has been very quiet the last nights at La Karina.
We have had about 50 guests per night when we normally have about 200.
Tonight we are playing at Country grill Karina.

Cave warning

We stopped at this cave yesterday, but didn't go in to it.

You should under no circumstances be tempted to enter an unsupervised or abandoned gallery on Tenerife because it's mysterious appeal can prove a killer.
This is a warning published in the last issue of Tenerife news.

Tenerife has some 1,114 galleries, 77 of which are deemed to present a high risk, 18 a very high risk and 182 an average risk.
Many are not properly closed off, or are in a defective state, or located near populated areas.
Gases have been detected in some of them, either with a high concentration of CO2 or little oxygen.
In fact 36 galleries have been identified as having a CO2 concentration higher than 0,5%.

About three years ago six hikers lost their lives when they were overcome by fumes in a cave in Los Silas.
After this accident an order were given by the government that all the owners of underground caves, mines, wells and galleries have to put up proper signaling and closure systems, proper paperwork and exact details of location etc.
The owners are also required to put up a poster indicating potential danger.
Tenerife Cabildo has now been given responsible of checking whether the work has been done or not.
If not the owners will face sanctions and fines.

Eruption at Teide?

The risk of Teide having an eruption is again discussed in the media here on the island.

The president of the Tenerife cabildo, Richardo Melchior, has now sent a letter to the consejo superior de investigaciones cientificadas, CSIC, saying you can not allow statements like those of the researcher Alicia Garcia, who has recently stated that there is concern about the sientists about the situation due to the activity of Mount Teide and a possible eruption.

Garcia acnowledges that in the next 50 years it is expected there will be a volcanic eruption in Tenerife as during the last century it was once in every one hundred years.

Melchior said at a press conferance that there is no risk of an explosive volcanic eruption and meant that Alicia Garcia's statements are not supported by the other scientists. (Canarian weekly).

When we moved to Tenerife in October 2004 Tenerife was under "yellow flag" for the possibility of an eruption. We are now back under the "green flag"".
There are 4 flags; green, yellow, orange and red.
When it's orange flag you will be evacuated and when the eruption has started it's red flag.
At that time the discussions went high about the need of having an evacuating plan, but the cabildo said it's not cleaver to start talking in that kind of terms when it could scream the tourists away.

Tour Video

Here is a short video clip from
Puerto De La Cruz and
The Canadas National Park at Teide.

Please, click on the arrow to watch it.

Our big island tour

The tour guides here on Tenerife arrange "big island tours" and
"small island tours", and I think the tour we made today is something
similar to the big island tours.
We left at 10 o'clock in the morning and came back home
around 5.30 in the afternoon.
It has been a lovely day.

We started our day by having breakfast at
a restaurant called Sira in Guia Isora.



A cute donkey in Tamaimo.
It was very stubborn and looked away
when I was going to take the photo.
But I can be stubborn too and I didn't give up and
finally it looked the right way.



Some unemployed camels at the camel park in Tanque.
It's a lack of tourists on Tenerife now.



A Canarian tractor.



Garachico from the view point up on the mountain.



The nature is more green in the north part of the island.



Me at the pier in Puerto De La Cruz.



Big waves at the pier.



The harbor of Puerto De La Cruz.



Fishing nets placed along the bridge.



Lunch at our favorite restaurant called
Marec in Puerto De La Cruz.
We had grilled prawns, garlic bread and salat.



"La Tarta", means "the cake" in English.
It got this look when ashes in different colors
blowed down from the volcano.



Me at "La Tarta".



On the way up to Teide.
Teide is the volcano of Tenerife. (3918 m.)



Like always the weather was nice in the National park of Teide.



These famous Teide flowers start blooming now.
Are they called Teide buglosses in English?



Back down to Los Cristianos.
It looks like it has been a cloudy day in the south of the island?



Back home we rested for a while and then we went out for dinner.

No tourists

It's very quiet in Los Cristianos now.
I think I only saw about 6-8 people in the whole neighborhood where we live when I went out to the bakery earlier today.
Normally it's very crowded (50-100 people) in the restaurants on our street.

You get an unusual senses when it's so quiet and you start wondering if Teide ( the volcano here on the island) has had an eruption and everybody have been evacuated.
Or has Jesus come back and everybody has been caught up except me? *smile*

It's only a few days to May which is the most quiet month in the whole year.
I don't know why nobody likes to come to Tenerife in May but think it maybe has to do with the preparation of the school examinations and maybe not many people get vacation this time in the year.

Tomorrow when it's our day off we will rent a car and take a trip along the west coast of Tenerife. We will go all the way up to the north of the island and I will show you photos from our journey later.

The Salmon

I had two salmon sandwiches in the afternoon.

The salmon is ready!
No boiling and no heating! Only salt, sugar, pepper and dill and you keep it in the refrigerator for three days and turn it every day.
Very simple but delicious!

A couple from England told us the other night, that some people over there wrap salmon fillets in plastic bags and steam the fish in the dishwasher.

Before when we lived in Finland we sometimes wrapped salmon fillets in wet greaseproof paper and then we put foil around it and put the whole package into the fireplace among the embers and kept it there for half an hour.

There are many special ways of how you can prepare a salmon...

My Day

I started the day by having a sandwich and coffee at the Bananas bar.



Then I went by taxi to the hospital.
The taxi driver was driving fast with all the windows wide open.
My hair went into a mess and I had to keep it in a tail during the whole travel.
This is Tenerife! *sigh*


In the waiting room.

I thought this was the last visit at the hospital before the surgery,
but learned that this was only the beginning.

I met the surgeon who is going to correct my hernia.
He explained everything and I know now what he is
going to do with me.
He like to check me out carefully before the operation and I got 5
new referrals to different examinations.
Four will be done at the hospital here in town and one will be done at the hospital in Sta Cruz, which is the main capital here on the island.

I don't know what all these examinations are called in English but in Spanish it says:
Manometria Esofagica y PH metria (in Sta cruz)
Transito Esofago-Gastroduodenal
Electrocardiograma
Torax PA
Laboratorio:
Glucosa, Creatinina, Sodio, potasio, Cloro, Tiempo de protombina INR,
Tiempo de Cefalina APPT, Hemograma Completo.

If you are a nurse or a doctor you probably know what it's all about.

Sorry, that I blog much about the hospital and the illness now.
If I knew it would take such a long time and that it would
deserve so many different examinations I probably
would have kept it a secret.
I thought it will only be a couple of visits at the hospital +
the surgery, and then it's over.

I am very tired of the illness and the hospital visits now and
would like to concentrate on something more positive instead.
All my spare time goes to be at different examinations,
which is not fun, and I think some of you will get tired of
reading about the illness all the time.

16.000 visitors

Gravlax

Clas has been out buying two big pieces of salmon today and when we got home from work tonight he told me to cure them in salt and sugar.

You put the same amount of salt and sugar on all sides of them (about 1/2 dl of each) + some ground pepper + dill.
Then you lay the two pieces together, with the skin sides out, and put them into a small tight plastic bag which you close around the fish with a knot.
Then you keep it in the refrigerator and you turn it ones every day.
After 3 days it's ready to eat.
Then you open up the plastic bag and take it out and slice it in thin pieces and enjoy it.
It's very delicious to have on dark rye bread, with boiled eggs or as it is.

Now we both look forward to Saturday night when it will be ready.

Clas and me

Gigolos

This is not the gigolo I met today!

The culture here on Tenerife is far away from the culture of Finland where we come from.
Here the "chicas" daily add zest to themselves and the guys openly show their appreciation by cheerful shouts and whistles.
Some men here seems to be hot like potatoes and they are continuously out hunting for new quarries.
Many times they even hang out from the car window screaming after you.
They like long hair, high heels and short skirts.
If you have all these things + light hair color they will act like crazy.
I had light hair before but changed it to dark and then it calmed down a little bit.

Today when I walked into Vista Sur there was a good looking man, a real gigolo with a muscular body, who stopped me and started telling me quietly how pretty he thought I was. *laugh!*
What can you do? I just said; Oh, thank you! and smiled.
But he didn't give up!
He asked me out for dinner tonight and even offered me his phone number.
I told him that I am married and then he just wished me good luck.

If somebody in Finland would behave like this on the street the people would think the person is crazy.
You know in Finland a real queen can show up without anybody showing an expression!