Once a sparsely populated rocky
shoreline, the arid coast that
stretches from
PLAYA DE LAS
AMERICAS and
LOS CRISTIANOS
in a contiguous string of
developments is now the centre of
commercial tourism on Tenerife. By
averaging 320 days of sunshine a
year, this area has become a
package-tour
heaven for sun seekers, with
vast swathes of land occupied by
huge, impersonal hotels and
consistently crowded beaches that
are home to two thirds of the
island's visitors and countless
expatriate hangers-on.
With the exception of the old
harbour town of Los Cristianos, most
of this conurbation has been built
from scratch in the last thirty
years. It must have taken a
considerable leap of imagination to
see economic potential in the
barren, baking-hot land,
particularly when even the most
basic aspects of the local
environment had to be adapted for
tourism. Not only did engineers have
to pipe in water and build
desalination plants, but they even
shipped in sand from the Sahara to
make beaches, constructing huge
concrete breakwaters to prevent them
from being washed away. The vast
scale and complexity of the
engineering that went into making
these resorts is phenomenal, and
given the speed at which it has been
created, it is a tribute - of sorts
- to human achievement.
Most visitors spend a good part
of their time on one of the area's
half-dozen beaches , which
are crowded with regimented lines of
sunshades and loungers. The
breakwaters that shelter these
beaches produce a gently lapping sea
which is perfect for swimming. A
range of water sports and
equipment is also on offer - from
pedal boats, jet skis and motorboats
to parascending or being towed on an
inflated banana. The more
adventurous might also like to try
learning to scuba dive, with one of
a number of local dive operations.
And should resort life become too
much to bear, you'll find that even
the tackiest resorts have their
quiet and exclusive spots, and the
well-developed tourist
infrastructure makes it easy to
escape to the region's quieter
parts, making this a good base from
which to explore the rest of the
island.
In addition, there are a couple
of attractions within easy reach of
the resorts - Parques Exóticas
is an imaginatively laid out animal
park and Jardines del
Atlantico:Bananera is, as you
might expect, a Banana farm with
exhibitions on the locally grown
fruit.
Playa de la Las Americas
The reputation of Playa de las Americas
as a concrete jungle of tackiness
and hedonism is second to none in
the Canaries. This three-kilometre
long sprawl of hotel and apartment
complexes, housing some 100,000
beds, divides up into a number of
districts...
read
more >>
Los Cristianos
Though it's difficult to tell where
Los Cristianos finishes and Las Americas
begins, the centre of Los
Cristianos, nestling beside the
steep bleak Montaña Chayofita and
the town's main beach and harbour is
easy to identify. The atmosphere
here, while...
read
more >>
