Understanding mechanisms of tropical Pacific decadal variability is of high importance for separating natural climate variability from human induced climate change in a region that is home to the El Nino Southern oscillation. Here, we investigate the advection of density compensated temperature anomalies ("spiciness mechanism") as a potential contributor to recently observed tropical Pacific decadal variability. We use an ocean general circulation model along with a Lagrangian tracer simulator to backtrack spiciness anomalies of the equatorial region. Consistent with observations, we find the primary source regions of spiciness generation to be in the eastern subtropics of each hemisphere. Our results indicate that 75% of the equatorial subsurface water originates in the subtropics, of which, two thirds come from the Southern Hemisphere. We further show that for the warm spiciness peak of the early 1990s, ~90% of the spiciness anomalies are sourced from the Southern Hemisphere. As opposed to previous studies, our results suggest that the majority of these positive spiciness anomalies travel via the interior pathway and a much smaller fraction travels via the western boundary current (WBC). The relative importance of the pathways changes when following the cool spiciness anomalies of the early 2000s period. Here, the major contributor to the negative peak in equatorial temperature is the NH WBC (48%), followed by similar contributions by the SH WBC and SH interior. It is currently unclear whether the changing prominence of pathways plays a meaningful role in the generation of the spiciness anomalies.