Wednesday was the daytime highlight of the week, the Siam Water Park. The Siam Park is the biggest and brightest water park on Tenerife and has some of the biggest and best slides in Europe.
After the late night previous we were still a bit groggy as we caught the free bus from outside the neighbouring hotel to take us the 10 minute ride to Siam Park. €28 Euro’s to get in is a lot of money I suppose, but it was worth every penny – or cent !

The Giant… ride on an inflatable, tunnel down into a funnel whereupon you spiral round until you get caught by the water jets that send you down the exit tunnel forwards or backwards whichever way you happen to end up !. There are two twin rides, one you spiral clockwise, one anti clockwise. I went down three times on my own and once in a two person float with Manoj

The Giant

The Tower of Power – or Kamikaze… The longest, steepest water slide in Europe… down the big slide, through a tunnel inside the aquarium and into the exit pool… it’s a long climb up, but really not a very thrilling ride as you are in a lot of water so theres a lot of spray, you can’t see anything and it’s over very quick. I guess the first time we were all pumped up and it was okay, but we went on again later in the day and we all found that it actually hurt, cos we knew what to expect so there wasn’t the adrenalin rush and you could feel the bounce off every joint on the slide… it’s a good centrepiece attraction for the park but actually quite a dull ride

Kamikaze – The Tower of Power

Mekong Rapids… ride on a 4 man inflatable down what’s basically a toboggan track… not particularly exciting and was not worth the queueing which was the longest of the day so we only did it once

The Volcano – 4 man inflatable in what is basically an upscaled version of The Giant… but in the dark. the first tunnel is pitch black, but there is some lighting inside the funnel as you spin round. We went down three times, not a bad ride, but not as good as…

The Dragon… again a 4 man inflatable ride down a tunnel into a cone where you oscillate up and down the sides of the cone until you get to the exit tunnel which sends you out into the pool… the thing is that if you get it right you go so far up the sides of the cone that you reach the height where you drop a bit rather than slide back down. We went on it 6 or 7 times with different combinations of 3 and 4 people to see which was best, it turned out to us that the best ride was when there was as much weight as possible… so Pete, Dave, Mark and myself went down a couple of times to experience the maximum thrill. The weight limit on the ride was 365kG… now I weigh about 97kg, and Pete and Dave are bigger than me, Mark is quite a bit smaller, but I bet we were over the limit. With that much weight you are still oscillating up the sides of the exit tunnel and we entered the pool perpendicular to the water, which confused Pete as he was at the bottom and so was pulled out of the inflatable by the drag from the water and didn’t understand how he had gotten out of the float.

The Dragon, guarding its cone

The Jungle Snakes… 4 intertwined slides that you go down on individual (or dual) inflatables, one is mostly open, one of the others is half open and two are almost totally dark as the others go over the top of it… four tunnels, four rides.

The Jungle Snakes

Naga Racer… a straight slide with 6 lanes, slide on a mat to see who gets to the bottom first… thing is it depends on an even flow of water down each lane which there isn’t. So a larger person on a drier lane has a long way to walk at the bottom ! We only went down twice.

The Naga Racer

Lazy River… the gentle ride that floats you right around the park, takes an age to get round, though there is a short slide in the middle to add to the excitements and a tunnel through the aquarium, underneath the tunnel that the Kamikaze goes through, but all you can see is a pulse of water as somebody shoots through above you.

The Aquarium, with the Lazy River in a tube under the Kamikaze tube

Siam Beach Wave Palace… An artificial beach with the largest wave machine in Europe… at the front you try and bodysurf the waves, in the middle you stand and let the waves (and body surfers) crash over you, and in the shallows you can sit and let the wave pick you up and carry you further back… there are about 15 waves and then 30-40 minutes break before the next batch.

And that’s it… apart from a few details… firstly, you aren’t alowed any loose items, so I went down most of the rides with my sunglasses tucked in my baseball cap which was shoved down my shorts… I wasn’t going to not wear a hat when I could cos we were there from 10:45 to 6:00pm wearing just our swimming shorts, the park has only been open since Sept 2008 so although there are palm and banana trees growing for shade they haven’t grown enough to keep you out of the sun and no sun block is going to survive the amount of water that gets blasted on you.
Also, for the men, well, all the girls are in bikinis…

Wednesday night suffered the same problem as Tuesday, Mark watching the football meant no-one was there to tell people what to do, so we wandered down into town and split up into smaller groups, like the previous evening Alpa, Chris, Gavin and I went off by ourselves, this time to a Spanish restaurant, after a pleasant meal we went for a walk among the posher hotels and shops and spent a quarter of an hour watching the dancing fountains doing their music and light show before going back to the hotel, to find that some of the others were just finishing their karaoke session at one of the bars by the
hotel, so we had another cocktail there and went to bed… after spending all day out in the sun climbing steps to the top of slides I was knackered… 1:00am bedtime was the earliest all week. Mark and some others had gone to Linekers bar in Playa De Las Americas, he arrived back about 3:30, decidedly worse for wear !

Paul T, relaxing by the hotel pool

Tenerife Holiday – click on a day to find out what happened

Friday 11th
Saturday 12th
Sunday 13th
Monday 14th
Tuesday 15th
Wednesday 16th
Thursday 17th
Friday 18th