With my friend Pam over for a week, i’m in tourist mode, showing her the delights of the island. Saturday was a good day, an early start on the 343 Los Cristianos to Puerto de la Cruz bus, saw us at La Paz lookout point for a swift walk down to Plaza Reyes Catolicos for the free “Noddy” train to  Loro Parque, just before midday. I had doubted my decision to go to Loro Parque on a Saturday, and expected us to have to wait for at least a couple of packed trains to go before we could get on, but a train was parked up and waiting for extra passengers, no sign of the usual queue snaking around the plaza.
Arriving at Loro Parque, we got in quick, again no queues, a worrying measure of the current tourism slump. The park was, as always, fantastic, well organised, great fun and packed with shows and animals to see. At the entrance they were giving out leaflets for Siam Park and there were adverts in the Loro Parque guide, all saying “coming soon” . Before the Orca whale show, the giant screen showed an advert for Siam Park, and it flashed up the announcement “opening on September 16” that is the day after the official inauguration. There has been no confirmation of this date for letting the public in, but dare we hope ? It would be nice.
After a great few hours at the park, we got the bus across to Santa Cruz for the evenings CD Tenerife v Natic Tarragona football match, the start of the Segunda Division (one below Real Madrid, Barcelona etc)  league campaign. The crowd was a little bit dissapointing at 10,882, considering the red hot form of CDT in the pre season friendlies, but the atmosphere, fuelled by a few pre match beers, was electric.
The first half was pretty awful, with both sides struggling to put any good moves together, but Tenerife were fortunate to get a penalty just before the half time whistle. Diop fouled Sicilia in the box and Nino stepped up to open, hopefully, another high scoring season for him. Nastic soon dampened the enthusiasm with an equaliser after the restart, Moises heading the leveller.
Worse was to come after 72 minutes as Arpon made it 2-1 for the visitors, this was not going to plan at all. We needed a hero and after 74 minutes, local lad Angel was brought on, the game was slipping away when he made it 2-2 with a well taken charge on the Nastic goal with just 5 minutes play left. The volume was cranked up and Angel had the crowd in heaven 2 minutes later, heading a winner, cue wild singing and dancing on the terraces, the phrase “get out of jail” comes to mind.
All in all, a fine day, a jolly trip back down south on the Armada Sur coach, and a few more beers, rounded off a perfect day, maybe this will be our season.