Above a lush and rugged valley in Tenerife’s Rural De Teno national park, a police officer from Spain’s civil guard surveys the landscape with binoculars.
A few hundred yards below, members of the Canary’s civil defence force in orange hi-vis jackets are searching further into the valley close to where the British tourist Jay Slater disappeared five days ago.
The 19-year-old apprentice bricklayer from Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire was last heard from between 8am and 9am on Monday morning, when he had left the holiday cottage of some men he had gone back with after a music festival in the south of the island.
Slater’s last known location, according to his mobile phone, was around half a mile uphill from the cottage, on the outskirts of the village of Masca – in the opposite direction to the coastal resort where he was staying with friends.
Ofelia Medina Hernandez, the owner of the Airbnb where Slater went after the festival, said she was “very worried” about him, and added: “It’s not our fault.”
She said: “It’s dangerous walking around here, it’s easy to lose yourself. Here, people don’t get lost, there are routes everywhere. And he walked along the road when I saw him for the last time, up there … He was there alone.
“He was walking normally, though fast, a little fast.”
Hernandez said she had given all the information she had to the police, adding that Slater had asked about the bus, and she had told him that the bus leaves at 10am.
The Airbnb owner said the two men she hosted were friendly and had stayed one more night, spending the time in the house. She thought they had met Slater at the festival, but was not sure.
Friends of Slater also said he had met the men, believed to be from the south-east of England, at the festival. Some suggested police hadn’t questioned the men before they left the island, but other witnesses in Masca said officers had spoken to the men before they returned to the UK.
Police at the La Cruz de Hilda viewpoint, where the search has been concentrated, said on Friday that there were no updates.
In a statement, the Guardia Civil also said: “There is a search ongoing and the police operation is focused on the area of Masca (Tenerife). By now we cannot confirm any more information.”
Yesterday, a large group of Slater’s friends flew out to the island to help with the search. Members of his family including his mother, Debbie Duncan, have been in Tenerife since Tuesday.
“It’s just traumatic and it doesn’t feel real. It’s just awful, it’s horrendous,” she said. “He’s just a great person who everyone wanted to be with. He’s good looking, he’s a popular boy.”
Slater’s last known contact with friends was on Monday morning, when he texted his friend Lucy, who had been at the festival with him but had left before him.
He had told her he was lost, had been cut by a cactus, needed water, and that his phone battery was on 1%.
Lucy has been among those who have called for police reinforcements to be sent out from the UK to help with the search.
Friends of Slater have said more resources need to be dedicated to finding the missing teenager. “I just think they need to get as much help as they can out here,” Lucy told the Guardian.
“There are no helicopters here [now]. He’s been missing for that long now, what are they actually doing?”
Another friend said they had spent 12 hours driving “all down the coastal area”, had searched through dense undergrowth, and said “we were shouting, screaming”.
“We’ve been here since Tuesday and I’ve seen the helicopter once, we’ve seen the drones once, and I’ve seen one dog.”
Slater’s last Snapchat post was a photograph of him smoking a cigarette, believed to have been taken inside the Airbnb. Friends have been collecting cigarette butts they have found while searching in the undergrowth, in case they may come in useful as evidence later.
Yesterday the search had extended further across the valley, a considerable distance from where Slater was last seen. Personnel concentrated part of the search on a river named Barranco Madre del Agua at the bottom of a ravine, sifting through fallen dead palm trees with sticks.
On Thursday, one rescuer told the Guardian that search teams had not given up, and they believed it was possible to survive in the elements with current weather conditions.
Rescue workers told the Guardian on Friday that their search was focused on two ravines in the area and the paths around it, an area of about 30 square kilometres.
They said there were about 25 voluntary rescue workers involved, and that rescuers had spent the morning descending into the ravines to reach the bottom.
One added: “We still have hope that he’s alive, up until the last moment when the last hope is lost. The truth is that we feel a bit frustrated because we can’t find him. It’s so big [here] that it’s very difficult to search in such a steep area. But we’re doing everything we can.
“We haven’t found anything, we have combed this entire trail, we’ve been up and down but, until now, nothing.”
They said it was a “very difficult area to search”, with many areas covered in vegetation, as well as gaps and ravines.
A Facebook page dedicated to finding Slater, which had attracted more than 468,000 members, was paused after conspiracy theories about his disappearance began to spread wildly on social media profiles, including TikTok.
“It’s gone too far,” Rach Louise Harg, a friend of Slater and the Facebook page’s administrator, said in a post.
In a previous post, she said: “Struggling to find words at this time but all I can say is we are looking still and everyone is doing all they can.”
“I wish this would end now, this living nightmare,” she added. “Searches are ongoing and we remain positive.”
Separately, a fundraiser set up by Lucy to “get Jay Slater home” has received more than £23,500 in donations.
A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We are supporting the family of a British man who has been reported missing in Spain and are in contact with the local authorities.”
