Tenerife: Black Sand, Saharan Dust, and the Art of Leaving

Our final week in the Canary Islands arrived quietly, as last weeks tend to do. The Calima rolled through early in the week: that warm, gritty wind off the Sahara that dusts everything in ochre haze and drops the air quality enough to keep windows shut and long walks on hold. While visibility dropped and the sun went pale behind a veil of suspended desert sand, we stayed close to home: gym routines, cortados at the local cafe, and a full week of work and planning. It was a reminder that the islands sit closer to Africa than to mainland Spain.

The Calima cleared after a few days, and we spent the remaining time well. We made a return trip to Puerto de la Cruz on Tenerife's northern coast, a town with a different character than La Laguna, more resort-adjacent but still rooted in something genuine. The crowds there skew toward mainland Spaniards on winter holiday, not international package tourists. It is a useful distinction. Spaniards visit the Canary Islands in winter the way some Americans go to Hawaii: familiar language, food, a warmer latitude. The southern shore is where the large international resorts overflow, where English is generally spoken in the shops and the beaches are louder. Puerto de la Cruz is still quieter, more considered.

We spent a warm afternoon at Playa Jardín, a black sand beach flanked by volcanic rock and sea spray. It was a red flag day, the waves ran high and choppy, no one entered the water, but the beach was full. What struck us was the tone of it: no amplified music, no large groups drinking. Small gatherings of two or three, spread across the sand, watching the surf. Locals seem to maintain clear separations between types of social space. Bars are for drinking, cafes are for conversation, and beaches are for rest. That informal zoning shapes the whole feeling of a place.

We closed the afternoon at a bar-cafeteria up from the water with a glass of wine, the sun lowering behind the rooftops, the bus schedule visible on a phone screen. That is what slow travel actually looks like on an ordinary afternoon.

Spending Like a Local vs. Spending Like a Tourist

We have been thinking a great deal about how money moves differently depending on how you frame your time in a place. There are at least two distinct financial approaches to travel, and they produce very different experiences.

The first is to spend like a tourist: you are on holiday, the budget loosens, restaurants replace groceries, experiences are purchased freely. This is appropriate and enjoyable for a week's vacation. The second approach is to spend like a local, meaning that your daily habits begin to resemble what they looked like at home. You cook most nights. You choose the informal cafeteria over the sit-down restaurant. You observe your own rhythms.

When slow-traveling, this distinction matters practically. There is no other home to return to, so a vacation pace is not sustainable. You adapt. The shift happens gradually: you learn which market has the best selections, which cafe is worth the walk, how to read a bus schedule. You begin to understand the neighborhood's logic.

You also learn where everyday value actually lives: not in the restaurant strip, but in markets, counters, and cafeterías built for repeat customers. The economics of a place reveal themselves most clearly where locals buy food. That is when you stop being a visitor and start, in a modest but real way, becoming a resident.

This week that looked like cooking papas arrugadas (wrinkled potatoes with mojo sauce) and espinacas con garbanzos at home, assembling a cold tapas board on a quiet evening, and finding the best cortado on Camino Largo. It also looked like choosing a €4 chicken sandwich at a cafetería over spending double for the same thing just a few streets over. Same quality, different assumption about who is eating there.

This is what living local really means. Not vacation mode. Home mode, modified to fit a new place.

La Orotava: Architecture as Continuity

La Orotava sits on a steep slope in the valley of the same name on Tenerife's northern flank, with Mount Teide rising above the ridge and the coast visible far below. The town has preserved its colonial center with unusual care: cobbled streets, whitewashed facades, and carved wooden balconies that have not been converted into boutique hotels or souvenir shops.

We started in the historic center and walked uphill, stopping first at the Hijuela del Botanico, a small lush garden annex quietly tucked away, where a large Dragon Tree anchors the space among dense plantings. We stopped for cortados at the Victoria Gardens before climbing further and stayed longer than planned. The gardens are formal and visually impressive: terraced levels with clipped hedges, cascading geraniums, sago palms, and flowering borders in full color, an ornate belvedere above framed by Italian cypress and the valley slope behind it. We sat at a small table under a shade umbrella with all of it spread before us. One of those sunny mornings that just slows things down. The cortados were good. The ambiance was better.

The Casa de los Balcones is the town's most celebrated landmark, and the six-euro entry is worth it. Built in 1632 by the finest carpenters of the era, its interior courtyard and wooden balcony are considered the most significant example of timber architecture in the entire Canary archipelago. Standing inside it, you understand why. The craftsmanship is precise and detailed; it has held for nearly four centuries.

We crossed the street to another seventeenth-century building for a taste of local wine on hidden balcony, looking out over layered terraces and Spanish tile rooftops, Mount Teide above it all. Then wandered further through narrow alleyways until we passed a seventeenth-century gofio mill, gofio being the roasted grain flour that has been a Canarian staple since the island's indigenous Guanche people, its stone facade still intact, though we only admired it from the street. A cafeteria with outdoor seating appeared near an old church, the kind of place you find by walking rather than searching. We ordered sandwiches and sangria. Spaniards rarely drink sangria themselves, preferring tinto de verano, red wine with lemon soda, but sangria seemed right for the afternoon, and it was, made fresh with plenty of fruit. On the way back down, the views opened across the rooftops toward Puerto de la Cruz and the ocean merged with the calima sky in the distance.

Botanica Cafe and a Last Evening

We found Botanica Cafe through a referral discovered by wandering the streets of La Laguna, which is usually how the best places reveal themselves. It occupies the ground floor of Castillo de La Laguna, also called Castillo del Camino Largo, a structure that dates to the early twentieth century and carries the particular atmosphere of a building that has hosted many kinds of life. The castle was originally associated with the writer, Domingo Cabrera Cruz, who used it as a gathering space for La Laguna's artists and intellectuals. Today it is a cafe with good coffee, food, and ambiance, set inside stone archways with courtyard seating open to the morning light.

With a 6 AM Saturday departure from Tenerife South Airport, we made the practical decision to check out of La Laguna one day early and position ourselves closer to the airport for the night. No public transport runs at that hour, and a long taxi from the north wasn't worth the expense. So Friday evening will be spent in Los Abrigos, a small fishing village on the southern coast, in a budget hotel near the terminal. The plan is simple: one last round of tapas, a final beach walk, a quiet evening of work, and an unceremonious close to our first month abroad. That feels right.

Pro note for readers: In any part of Tenerife that attracts visitors, prices trend notably higher where foot traffic concentrates. For genuine value, look for the word "cafeteria", not in the American sense, but the Spanish one: a casual, informal space that serves simple lunches and local breakfasts at honest prices. A cortado and a sandwich will cost you a fraction of the same meal in the tourist center.

Last Days in the Canary Islands

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Weekly Snapshot: Final Week, La Laguna

A full week despite the Calima days. Two day trips, consistent home cooking, and an early checkout to Los Abrigos to position ourselves for the Saturday flight kept the week moving.

Groceries and home meals: €100 for the week (potatoes, garbanzos, cheese, cured meats, fish, chicken, wine, bread, olives, vegetables, etc.)

Daily cafe visits (cortados, cafe con leche): approx. €3 per day (+ an occasional pastry splurge)

Puerto de la Cruz day trip: bus fare + lunch + museum + coffee and wine: €25 total

La Orotava day trip: bus fare + museum entry + lunch + wine, coffee, and sangria: €38 total

Extended stays have a way of normalizing costs once you find your routines.

In two days we board a plane for Marrakesh. Three days, not as slow travelers but as tourists, deliberately. A riad in the Medina, good food, and a four-hour guided walk through the historic heart of the city: the Koutoubia Mosque, the Saadian Tombs, the Bahia Palace, the souks, and Jemaa el-Fnaa, where the square comes alive in the evening.

From Morocco we fly to Faro, Portugal, then west by train to Lagos to meet friends for two weeks split between the Algarve coast and Lisbon.

The Canary Islands chapter is closed. Morocco is next.

After a month, you know which café is worth the walk. Which market has the best groceries. How to move through the city without reaching for your phone. Where locals gather, and where they do not.

Spanish daily life runs on a rhythm, and La Laguna keeps it faithfully. Morning cafés full of regulars. The midday lunch rush. A quieter afternoon. Evening paseos (walks) as the light softens, aperitivos (drink and snack), and late dinners at hours that still caught us off guard. The unhurried pace is not laziness. It is a different relationship with time, and it requires unlearning before it starts to feel natural.

Language was a genuine barrier. English is not widely spoken in La Laguna, and while we learned enough Spanish to manage daily life, real conversation remained mostly out of reach. People were warm, but not particularly outgoing toward strangers, and we felt the social absence. Our second accommodation helped. A small co-living space with shared kitchens and courtyards gave us a community again. We met lovely travelers from Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands, and those conversations filled the gap.

The food stayed close to its ingredients. Pork, rabbit, goat, chicken, seafood, potatoes, gofio, bread, local cheese, and wine. Canarian cooking pays close attention to fewer things. Papas arrugadas with mojo does not need to be complicated to be exactly right.

Tenerife defies easy categorization. Tropical palms and lush valleys on one side, arid scrub on the other. Teide snowcapped above while we lounged in swimsuits on a beach. And La Laguna was, simply, safe. We walked at any hour without a second thought. That is not a small thing for anyone considering this kind of travel.

La Laguna was generous with us. We tried to be attentive in return. We leave grateful for what our first full month abroad taught us, and ready for the next kind of place.

Until next week,
S&S

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