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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 Exoticas 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.
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