Resilient and adaptable, that’s Tenerife. Last weeks record storms and rain fall made all the major media outlets around the world, a friend told me her daughter phoned from Australia to check on her, after reading about the deluge. If you read my previous post about Santa Cruz, you will know that within hours the emergency workers and council cleaners were on the case, a simliar response was also made down here in the south.

I was back swimming in calm seas at Las Vista beach, Los Cristianos within days, the beach did take a bit of a pounding but that has now being addressed. Inevitably the torrents of rain water rushed down to the coast, carrying debris from trees, rocks, and rubbish, when it hit the beach it carved its way through the sand to the shoreline. Forewarned, the beach workers stripped back most of the wooden decking for the sunbeds and disabled areas, but some was still covered in the avalanche. Most of the shoreline debris was quickly scooped up, but there was an unexpected treasure trove as thousands of small shells washed up, great for any collectors. Yesterday there seemed to be a lot of broken bamboo coming in, hopefully we wont get a wave of Giant Pandas to follow.

The big boys moved in and JCB’s set about levelling the piles of sand, ready to re-lay all the decking. All this was done without distrubing those worshipping the returning bright, hot sunshine, and the movement of tides and sand, gave plenty of encouragement to the scavenging seagulls. So just a few days after the downpour, you would hardly notice that the beach was churning with the power and fury of the storm. It was good to see that even the beach volleyball courts were soon back in action, I lingered a while to check that the young female players were settling back in nicely.

If you want to see some stunning photos of the storm in and around Santa Cruz, at it’s height, check out the selection on the Tenerife Magazine Flickr account.