This is the story of how I got mistaken for an Irishman about three hours before I was forced to carry a purse by a Chinese woman, and then was prevented from sleeping because of a cartoon bird. Tenerife Food isn’t just about the food, it’s about the place. And it all started with a jailbreak…

After sweating in the kitchen with Katrin these past few days, I thought it might be nice to go sweat outside as well, considering that by some accounts it’s been 31 degrees Celsius of late. We’re northwest of Adeje, about five kilometers from the coast as the crow flies. I’m very fond of long, intensive walks for exercise, so a 5K should be easy, right?

Tenerife is covered in abandoned farms

Going down the bottom slope of El Teide the volcano was rather easy. Our village is very close to the main highway that circumnavigates the entire island, so after only a brief few minutes out the door, I found myself surrounded by abandoned, terraced farmlands. These are everywhere in this part of the island. I could only assume that these used to be massive banana plantations, and they are very similar to the impressive terrace farming of the Incas.

I assumed wrongly, as it turned out. I met with a local who explained the sad, and somewhat scary, truth behind these empty terrace farms. It all has to do with water supply, the volcano, climate change, and tourism. Most of the coastal terrace farms were historically for potatoes, while at higher elevations they were for tomatoes. Other crops too of course. The explanation was that the island was largely self-sufficient, with meltwater from the snow-capped volcano filling underground aquifers, and pine trees absorbing moisture from the high-altitude clouds, further filling these reservoirs.

Overtourism, or greed, or both?

For years now, however, my friend said there hasn’t been proper snow, so the water supply has drastically reduced. What’s more, the islanders chose tourism over agriculture. Those eight million tourists a year use a lot of water. There’s nothing left for growing much food. The island is now dependent on desalination plants, but apparently there are only eight of them. One for each million tourists. The whole system is already operating in the red.

Luckily, I had brought a two-liter bottle of local water with me. After hiking for an hour through these dusty farms, and in the scorching sun, my lips were parched, my mouth dry. I tried to speak, but I could only do so with a lisp. But I wanted to find an area to rest in first, before drinking. I found an old banana plantation’s main building, and just beyond that, an ideal swimming area, with a staircase down to the water. That’s when a scuba diver climbed out, and walked toward me, removing her mask as she approached.

“Where is the something?” she asked in Spanish.

“I don’t know what the something is,” I confidently responded in Spanish.

“Is it here? Or something?” she pressed on.

I decided to switch to English, despite the lisp from my dry mouth. “Sorry, I can’t speak so well.”

She immediately switched to English as well, but spoke very slowly. Almost condescendingly so, and with a native English accent. “Oh, I think you speak just fine!”

“Thanks!” I laughed, and then added that English was my native language, too.

“Wait, you’re not Spanish? But you sounded Spanish when you spoke.”

“I’m just thirsty.”

Tenerife has lots of British diversity

We chatted for a moment, and she explained that she thought I was the person who was picking them up after their dive. Then she asked what brought me to Tenerife from Ireland. No matter how many times I said I was American, and not Irish, she refused to believe me. Her diving partner eventually emerged from the water, and joined us. She was Scottish. “I dinnae hear Irish that often in these parts,” she greeted me.

It’s an honest mistake to make though. It only means that these two women didn’t watch American TV shows very often. I make a similar blunder myself, frequently mistaking British people for Europeans.

After hiking a few more kilometers along the coast over the craggy volcanic rock, I decided it was probably time to start heading home, and I began the long hike uphill. Eventually I reached a shopping center in the western part of Adeje called China Town, with the main anchor store sharing the name. It was owned by a local family with Chinese origins. It’s a great store, too, offering an inexpensive variety of more or less anything you could need for your home, kitchen, car, or the beach.

An evening in Adeje

Katrin called as I was almost at China Town, and asked if I could pick up some starter cubes for the grill, since I was at the likeliest place to have them. No problem, I told her. As I entered the shop, the elderly Chinese lady who worked there told me in perfect Spanish that I couldn’t enter with my backpack. “Why not?” I asked, confused. She just laughed and held open a large, red purse, motioning for me to put my backpack inside. Apparently it was a security matter.

“Can I leave it here?” I pleaded.

“No, this is not my job,” she curtly replied.

Reluctantly, I placed my backpack, which I used so I could keep my hands free, inside this monster purse, which I would now have to carry with my hands. She placed a security tag on it, and I was free to walk about the shop.

I found the item I wanted, and paid, in less time than it took her to place the security tag on the purse, and later remove it. If my Spanish were better, I would have asked where I could buy one of these purses, so the next time I came I could confuse her about putting a purse inside an identical purse. Or maybe two of these purses, one inside the next. A matryoshka purse. But then I would have to explain this all in Spanish, a challenge I wholeheartedly relished. This nice Chinese lady had inspired me to learn Spanish faster! I decided then and there to read the complete works of Kafka in the original Spanish.

Tenerife bird life is dangerously funny

Walking home in the dark in Tenerife, if you’re not in a tourist area, is not something I would recommend. It’s darker than pitch black. But it is not uninteresting. I heard someone laughing a few steps away behind some rocks. I was nervous at first, but the helium quality of this kid’s laugh was contagious. Then I heard it again, and I began to laugh as well. A few seconds later, however, I got nervous again, because this time I heard it from a different direction, then again from another location. I was surrounded by Tenerife children, and they were mocking me. I did not feel safe.

Then as a car drove by, I could see the white-ish body of a bird flying overhead, as the laughing sound followed it. I started laughing out loud, not only because of the outlandishly ridiculous sound of this bird, but the mental image that popped into my mind. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, then you’ll remember when the childlike little aliens come out of the ship at the end. They stumble around helplessly, as if they’re drunk on our atmosphere’s oxygen. But they didn’t make any noise. If they had made sounds, it would have been the call of these birds.

Turns out this bird is locally famous for its call. The Cory’s shearwater, or cagarro in Spanish. When I returned home I went straight to bed, but it was too hot to keep the windows closed. These drunken alien bird sounds invaded my dreams as a result, and I could hear their laughter as I fumbled about China Town carrying my matryoshka purse, unsuccessfully telling shopkeepers that I wasn’t Irish.