Blog
The Guanche statues of Tenerife: a seven-stop route in bronze
From Adeje to Candelaria, seven bronze statues tell the Guanche story of Tenerife. One you can only see from the car, another ended up in court, and the nine most famous have spent more than a year in a warehouse. Where they are, and what lies behind each one.
Safety in the Canary Islands, island by island: the sea, trails that need booking and the new road rules
Tenerife, Fuerteventura and Gran Canaria account for most of this year's drownings, and more than four in ten happened while a coastal alert was in force. Which trails need a booking on each island, what the flags really say and what changes on the road.
Where to work out outdoors in Tenerife: seven calisthenics parks and a stadium
You do not need a gym pass to keep training in Tenerife. We take you to seven public calisthenics parks and an athletics stadium, from Santa Cruz to Alcalá, tell you what each one has, and when to go so you are not doing pull-ups in the midday sun.
Where to eat vegan or vegetarian in Tenerife: six places, from burgers to brunch
In Tenerife you can now eat your way through a whole week without building dinner out of side dishes. We take you to six places, from vegan burgers to brunch, tell you which are fully vegan and which are vegetarian, and what to ask in a traditional Canarian restaurant.
Fiestas del Pilar in Guanarteme: what to see and when to go
For almost two weeks, the neighbourhood at the end of Las Canteras lives in its square. There are galas, dances and concerts, but what makes this fiesta different is a set of cardboard figures with enormous heads and one night of fireworks over the beach.
Garajonay: the forest that outlived its own era
A forest extinct on the continent for millions of years, watering itself here by combing the fog. How it works, and why the sunny day is the worst one.
The Canarian health card: how to get it and what it covers
The health card is the document that unlocks everything else: without it you may have the right, but you have no way of proving it, and in practice that complicates every appointment. The good news is that the process is simpler than it looks, and the piece that unlocks it is almost always the same one.
Cochineal: the insect that was 90 per cent of what these islands sold
Twenty one years of boom, 1845 to 1866, and an ending that started at a London exhibition. What cochineal is, why it makes sense again, and what you see today.
Canarian lighthouses, and the one that marked the end of the world
The western edge of the known world sat on an El Hierro headland for seventeen centuries. The lighthouse came three generations ago, and the others map the hazards.