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-Issue Number 200	Thursday, December 1, 2005	Page 2

* SMOKERS and drinkers could be forced to pay up for spiralling health service costs in Tenerife.
Higher taxes on alcohol and tobacco, along with increased prescription charges are on the agenda for raising more revenue for the Canarian health service, which gets €57 less to spend on each patient than the rest of the country.
*ARONA is the latest municipality to pass by-laws controlling mobile phone masts. Guia de Isora has already ordered Telefonica to remove one giant antenna, and now the southern area is set for a similar battle.
* TENERIFE is being outstripped economically by its rival, Gran Canaria, according to a new report. Authors of the Strategic Plan for Santa Cruz, say the island’s capital comes in a poor second to Las Palmas, when it comes to industry, commerce, the service industry and tourism.
*THE Tenerife government is running free lessons on how to cook Canary style. The new training idea fired up last week with a course in the cultural centre in Los Cristianos.
*ONE of the south’s most revered nature reserves is to receive a €116,000 facelift.
Tenerife’s island government has earmarked Montaña Roja, in El Médano for new footpaths, shelters, signs and information panels.
*TOWN planners have invited architects from all over Europe to redesign Los Cristianos docks.
The harbour, which boasts the second highest number of passengers
in Spain, is to undergo a major overhaul in 2007 and Arona councillors are already gathering the
most modern ideas for its new

UNSHAVEN and living in a cave, Karl Smith lived off the land like Robinson Crusoe.
Cooking freshly caught barracuda and dorada on a beach fire, he survived for six months as police officers, family and friends across Europe frantically searched for him.
His disappearance became so alarming Interpol was briefed and joined the hunt for Karl – while he retreated to a small cave in south Tenerife and fished for octopus in the Atlantic Ocean.
When our reporters found Karl Smith living in a cave in a national park nature reserve – some 200m up the sheer side of a cliff – there was an overwhelming lack of surprise on his face.
His gaze was fixed in the distance and his expression was blank. What conversation he made in the first hour of contact was stilted. Karl, as he would later admit, had completely withdrawn from civilisation and society.
Cocooned from everything commercial, beneath a rock ceiling, Karl, 28, gripped a copy of The Western Sun and began to comprehend what he was reading.
Three police forces and a police agency were looking for him after he went missing in early July, following a last distressing phone call to his mother.
But as he continued, nothing he was reading seemed to shock him.
Without his passport and wallet, which were stolen when he was mugged and beaten in Las Americas, Karl was helpless and penniless – and he knew it.
His caveman existence was the only option. With no choice but survival he fashioned the simplest routines to maintain himself, and little else mattered.
“Living this way is a good life and I eat well, but it is something like being an outlaw,” he told The Tenerife Sun proudly.
And within a few seconds of staring at our page emblazoned with the headline, Have You Seen This Man? his gaze refocused and he realised the
significance of it all.
His mother, Denise, called local police after her son failed to get in touch five months ago. And Bury station then asked Interpol to throw its weight behind the search. But it was an appeal through this newspaper that drew scores of calls informing police officers on the case. After a huge response resulting from The Tenerife Sun’s appeal, reporters were able to plot Karl’s
movements. The trail led us more than 30 minutes across rugged country to his cliff refuge where he was oblivious to the panic surrounding his disappearance.
Karl said: “I came here to get my head together for a few weeks but it turned into a lot longer. “The quality of life here, compared to the rat race, is much better. It is a way to take some of the stress out of life. And it is a far cry from nine to five.”
We found Karl’s cave, between La Caleta on the edge of Las Americas and Playa Paraiso, close to a traveller and hippy commune beside the beach.
A population of almost 100 Poles, Czechs, Italians, British, Danes, Germans and South Americans live in makeshift homes along the stretch of coast. But Karl, from Whitefield near Bury in Greater Manchester, likened it to “living in the zoo”.
He said: “The people who exist there call it Babylon because it is a wild way of life. My sanity during the last month has been questionable. I’ve been hanging on by a thin thread.” Karl explained how he kept alive when he was
down to his last few cents. He said: “I eat seafood caught from the rocks by
the beach. I only have three pieces of clothing that I was given.

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