You don't have to go very far to find the other side of Tenerife - the side tourists don't often see.
Only a few years ago these ruins were inhabited by banana plantation workers - their kitchens were shared between several houses and their laundry room was an outside concrete sink with built-in scrubbing board. You can still buy a version of those sinks today.
Now people live in these modern blocks, but they are constructed in much the same way. Beneath the plaster the building blocks are made of cement rather than cut from volcanic rock, but I wonder if they will still be recognizable as housing sixty years from now?
You might have seen street sweepers carrying a palm leaf on their trolleys - there is even a special slot for them! They are unbeatable for cleaning great swathes of paving in one sweep, and when they wear out there are plenty more where they came from!
This alleyway, with its unrailed stairway to an upper apartment, is across the road from where I live, and likely to remain for some time. The several families who live there refused to move when the Cabildo widened and straightened the road, which is why there's a huge bump in the middle of an otherwise even stretch of road.
You only have to go for a wa
lk to find evidence of the old ways - such as this water-channel made from hollowed-out lengths of volcanic rock, or the collapsing walls of rough brown rocks that once held back the earth in small terraced fields. Alas, the south of Tenerife no longer has the rainfall to sustain such subsistence farming.
But some people still grow their own, and this elderly woman walks a kilometer several times a week to the next village to trade her garden produce for groceries. I think she shops for several neighbours, because I have seen her carrying a huge sack of potatoes on her head and a box under each arm with apparent ease!
Next time you're out and about in Tenerife, look past the hotels and bars for the simpler things that make this island different, and go home with another aspect of Tenerife etched on your memory.