Month: December 2014

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Low Key New Year’s in Mazatlán

My cousin and I were planning to go to a gala for New Year’s tonight and had our outfits all ready, but a series of events made those plans fall through. I wasn’t disappointed since a late night of boozing and drinking and dancing isn’t really my thing (no, I didn’t get old, I’ve always been boring!).

Instead, we decided to meet up at their hotel and find something to do. I suggested we head down to the Plazuela Machado and see what was what. Neither one of us was particularly keen on being out to midnight, which suited me just fine because the panga home jumps from 8 pesos to 60 after midnight! I would have overnighted at the hotel had we done the gala, but that plan didn’t make sense if we were in the Olas Altas area.

So I headed out to the hotel early this afternoon. In a bid to get some exercise and to save money, I chose to walk from the embarcadero, a distance of 7.5km. If I have time, I don’t think twice about walking up to 10km in good conditions. These were ideal, a slightly cool and overcast day and I knew that I would be safe going through the bit from the embarcadero to the malecón.

Big cruise ships today!

Big cruise ships today!

The trip took me 2 hours door to door, and that included a detour to get a pastry to munch on!

Lamps shaped like seahorses.

Lamps shaped like seahorses.

Seahorse detail in a door.

Seahorse detail in a door.

Not sure what this coliseum is going to be...

Not sure what this coliseum is going to be…

My few minutes in the Golden Zone were enough to last a lifetime. That area is not for me, YUCK! It was teeming with Gringos, filled with NOB stores, and I kept getting harassed (in English, no less) to buy stuff. It was just as bad as being in a border town! Sure the downtown bit I walked through to get to Olas Altas wasn’t as shiny and pretty and there were no big name stores, but people only spoke to me to say hi, I was left to wander in peace and quiet, and the architecture was a lot more interesting!

Welcome to the Golden Zone! Don't worry, we have McDonald's!

Welcome to the Golden Zone! Don’t worry, we have McDonald’s!

Yes, that's a fully operational Blockbuster video store! LOL!!!

Yes, that’s a fully operational Blockbuster video store! LOL!!!

From the hotel, we took a pulmonía down to Plazuela Machado, 120 pesos, non-negotiable! We walked around there a bit, but it was early so restaurants were only starting to get set up. We headed back to Olas Altas, where several restaurants were already doing brisk business.

After perusing menus, we decided to try the quiet Copa de leche restaurant, which had good variety and reasonable prices. The boy had steak with a baked potato, my cousin picked a shrimp dish, I opted for enchiladas with a mole sauce, and we split an order of beef (carne asada) tacos.

Dinner was a Copa de leche, with a lovely view of the water and comfortable chairs!

Dinner was at Copa de leche, with a lovely view of the water and comfortable chairs!

I’d never had mole sauce before and had no idea what I was getting into. Turns out that it is a savoury cocoa sauce! Yes, chocolate! The enchiladas were filled with chicken, tomatoes, and onions, and absolutely smothered in the sauce. Really, there was too much sauce. So thank goodness I also got a basket of corn tortillas to mop up every last bit! 🙂 It was crazy good and I really appreciated the sprinkle of sesame seeds over top, a flavour I have been missing. My taste buds were thrilled to try something new.

The other dishes were apparently equally satisfactory. The steak plate was particularly impressive, with a huge steak topped with mushrooms, a loaded baked potato (bacon and crema), rice, and salad. The tacos were yummy, coming with avocado and a side of refried beans and fried onions.

Total bill, for the food plus two limonadas, one soda, a coffee, and a tip, about 500 pesos, or 167 per person. My meal was only 110 pesos (85 for the food and 25 for the limonada) and the steak was the most expensive item at only 120 pesos, plus 20 for the soda.

After dinner, we headed back towards Plazuela Machado. My cousin confessed that her sandals were rubbing her the wrong way and that she needed ideally both a change of shoes and a bandaid. I didn’t know what would be open at that time of night, but thought that if anything would, it would be around the mercado area.

We headed there, enjoying all the lights at the cathedral, and found an open shoe store! She found a cute and comfortable pair of slip on shoes that matched her outfit for only 79 pesos! I asked the gal at the till if she knew of a pharmacy that would still be open and was directed to one just past the Waldo’s, which I knew was in the middle of the next block.

So that was our next stop and I learned that you have to ask at the counter for bandaids in at least some pharmacies in Mexico! The first request didn’t go so well as we were brought tensor bandages, so I found a picture of a bandaid on my phone and that brought what we needed. I would have preferred to have been able to pick as I would have selected something bigger and sturdier, but my pleas for bigger ones fell on deaf ears and my cousin said she could make do.

She then spent a couple of minutes on a stool applying several bandaids to get the coverage and adhesion she needed. It was a rather absurd situation that we found rather funny. It’s just stuff that happens. I had a hard time with sore feet when I first got here, with the sand rubbing them raw, but my feet have thankfully hardened.

From the pharmacy, we headed across the street to a juice stand. They had strawberry and banana licuados (like a smoothie) while I opted for fresh squeezed grapefruit juice. It was incredibly filling since a small had the juice of THREE grapefruits with a little pulp, but it was very refreshing and tolerably sweet. I really enjoyed it. At just 17 pesos, I think that could be a treat when I go to mercado.

We then returned to Olas Altas to sit on the wall, listen to the waves, and make plans for the next couple of days. They were thinking of heading back to my place tomorrow, but the boy has been ill and they are both exhausted. It makes more sense for them to enjoy the resort for their last full day. I will head out to the hotel first thing Friday to meet my cousin for coffee (she found a roasting house with good coffee, so I plan to come home with some!) and then they’ll be off to the airport around 10:00.

Plans made, it was time for them to head home as they were just wiped. I got them into a pulmonía (again, a non-negotiable 120 pesos) and then walked back to Plazuela Machado to soak in a little New Year’s ambiance. It was just past nine and the partying was starting, with lots of loud music and full restaurants. Really not my scene. I was surprised that there weren’t more vendors.

I flagged down a pulmonía ready to argue that I wasn’t going to pay more than 60 pesos to get to the embarcadero and almost fainted when the driver said 40! Wow!!! I’m pretty sure that’s my cheapest ride ever from Plazuela Machado!

A panga was leaving the dock as I arrived at the embarcadero. The pilot saw me and redocked while I bought my ticket.

It was a quick ride over and then I was on Isla, which was thrumming with activity, with lots of music and some fireworks. Many ‘Feliz año’s were exchanged on my 10-minute walk home, making me glad that I took the time to Google how to say ‘happy new year’ in Spanish.

The neighbours across the street are having a loud party, so ear plugs will be in order for tonight. I just honestly don’t have a desire to be out partying, preferring small quiet gatherings.

Happy new year to all my lovely readers!

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To Market, To Market

I didn’t want to keep stocked with too many groceries this week, not certain of my cousin’s plans and also being tight budgeted because of pulmonía expenses and the whole bank fiasco.

But after two mornings of crackers and almond butter for breakfast, it was beyond time to get some tortillas! And if I was going all the way ‘downtown’, I might as well get a few things to tide me over the next few days. In other words, I needed cheese. If I have cheese, my pantry’s full. 🙂

So my first stop was the other little grocer, Felipe, I think. He stocks Chihuahua cheese, very similar to a mild white cheddar or Monterrey Jack, which melts beautifully. 24 pesos for 200g (3 pesos CHEAPER than Ley!).

Next stop was the City Deli for two potatoes and a carrot. 9 pesos. (I wish the veggie guy wasn’t so hard to catch!)

Then, the tortillería. 5 pesos.

Finally, the butcher shop for a large chicken breast. 20 pesos.

Total spent, 58 pesos (4.57CAD). I can’t buy that amount of chicken OR cheese for that price in Canada!

Now, to figure out what I’m doing with the chicken tonight (probably my usual…). It’ll be nice to have the leftovers for breakfast tomorrow!

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Dinner at Miguel’s

My cousin came over to Isla this evening so we could hang out together and have dinner. I wrote down the destination instructions for the pulmonía and she had no trouble getting to the embarcadero, although she did get a lecture from the driver, who wanted to make sure that she knew where she was going and that she wasn’t going to wander around the docks by herself. This is a gal who is a seasoned traveler and spends a lot of time in Panama so I had spared her that speech, but she got it anyway!

We decided to go to dinner at Miguel’s, the only proper sit down restaurant that is open in the evenings here. I’d heard a lot of good things about it. Contessa, Colin, Juan, and Chris were finishing up a meal as we arrived.

The menu is painted onto the wall and there are no prices listed. My cousin asked about a dish that, of course, the name escapes me now after I spent time repeating it! Dang. Oh, possibly chorreada! That’s a real word from the verb ‘to drip’ and the meal was drippy, so maybe that’s it! At any rate, the ingredients that stuck out were pork (which I know as carne de cerdo, but the cook called puerco), chihuahua cheese, and salsa fresca. My cousin ordered that. I went for a shrimp burrito.

Our meals came with just a little salad, but no other sides. We sampled each other’s dish. OMG. The burrito was a flour tortilla with sweet shrimp and cheese then fried in a pan (not deep fried). The pork dish was incredibly flavourful, with marinated meat and browned cheese over a thick corn tortilla, made even better with the addition of avocado sauce! The food was so good and we were so hungry that we ordered another round, reversing our orders!

My cousin also ordered a limonada and it was HUGE. We had brought beer, so I didn’t order anything to drink. The limonada was tasty, but too sweet for me anyway.

The total bill was absurd. Two shrimp burritos, two of the pork things, and a limonada came to 150 pesos (my treat). Let’s just say I’m no longer splurging on the very odd lunch on the beach and will instead go more often to Miguel’s in the evening! I want to work my way through the entire menu!!!

Sorry for the lack of pictures, I’ll have to go back and get some at a later date. 🙂

 

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Mexican Coffee, Strike One

I’m not a real coffee snob in that if I find a supermarket brand that is acceptable, that’s fine by me. I do prefer to get fresh grounds and grind them myself, but with my mix of itinerant and deep rural lifestyle, that’s just not realistic anymore. It’s not a problem in Canada where Nabob Full City Metropolis or Co-Op dark roast coffee never fail to brew up a satisfying cup.

I haven’t had as much luck in the US finding a good and ubiquitous grocery store brand. I usually get Starbucks, which, frankly, isn’t that great, but at least is reliable. I am now on the dregs of the back of Starbucks coffee I brought from the States.

Before going to a coffee house here to get pricey whole beans, I decided to try out supermarket coffee offerings. Ley pretty much only had instant coffee. The only ground coffee was mixed with sugar. Dale says it’s great and has been chugging it down, but I don’t like sugar in my coffee.

So at Soriana yesterday, I checked out what they had for ground coffee. It was all pretty much the same, Mexican Arabica beans in a medium roast, no dark roast or even espresso available. A 250g bag of ¡Vive café! Santa Fe coffee was the cheapest option at 45 pesos. I don’t buy into the myth that the cheapest coffee is the worst or the most expensive is the best, so I decided to try that.

I opened it up this morning to check it out even though I had some Starbucks left. I figured that if the Santa Fe wasn’t good, I could at least mix it with the Starbucks to get something relatively palatable until I get something else.

Even though the bag said the coffee is good till January of 2016 (a full year from now), it smelled stale at opening, very woody. It turned the water brown and that’s it. It already had the strike of being a medium roast against it, but I’ve had drinkable medium roasts before and this sure wasn’t one! I’ll have Dale try it and see if it passes her test. She puts so much cream and sugar in hers that she herself admits that she doesn’t taste much coffee anyway.

I’m going to give one more grocery store brand a try only if I find a dark roast. Otherwise, off to the roasting house I go!

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Delayed Flight Adventure

My cousin and her son were arriving from Monterrey (MX) today, due to arrive at 11:50. I left at 10:40 and didn’t think to check the flight status. I’m not kicking myself over that now that I know that the THREE HOUR DELAY was not announced until the flight had boarded at 11:00!

So there I was a the airport with absolutely nothing to do for three hours and no desire to pay for parking for all that time, especially since it’s a crappy airport for waiting because there is very little seating and no WiFi (I only have a little bandwidth left on my phone). The thought of making the 1.5 hour round trip journey to home on The Road to have an hour and a half there made no sense to me. The Road was actually in decent shape and I drove large chunks of it at 30KPH, but I really didn’t want to do it four times in one day!

I wanted to pick up toilet paper and paper towels, bulky items to carry on the panga since I like to buy them in bulk, and I knew that there is a Soriana about 20KM from the airport right off of Mx-15. So I headed there for my first time to actually shop in this Mexican equivalent of Walmart.

I knew that Soriana has food to eat on site, so I figured I could grab lunch there when I arrived. There was actually a little food court out front with Chinese, Mexican, Japanese, and Italian options! The sushi was too pricey for my current tight budget and pizza was really appealing. 30 pesos for a slice with a drink was expensive, but affordable.

The pizza wound up being surprisingly good! It had a very light spreading of a mild sauce very similar to what you find on New York style pizza and the cheese was also close to that. The crust was doughy, but okay. This was my first pizza since I left the US and it surpassed my expectations! The price included a drink and you couldn’t get a lower price for just a slice, so I had the gal run through the options and accepted strawberry, which I thought would be a juice. It wound up being carbonated and surprisingly refreshing and not too sweet. I still didn’t drink the whole thing, but it was very nice!

I then spent almost an hour going through the aisles at Soriana. It really is very similar to a Walmart. There were more options than at Ley, but the prices were higher. Not much, but enough for me to notice (eg. 17 pesos versus 15 for a bag of totopos (tortilla chips) and 28 pesos versus 25 for 200g of Oaxaca cheese). There was LOTS of NOB (north of the border) food, too, like Ocean Spray cranberry jelly! I’m getting a little bored of what I’ve been making, so a trip to a Soriana at some point to get some variety would be nice, but I’ve been correct in my assumption that heading to a store like that would stretch my food budget.

It was about 1:30 when I left Soriana. I thought that since the plane would land at 3:15 and my family would be off by 3:30, I could get to the airport for about 2:30 and only pay for an hour of parking there (I’d already had to pay a full hour for the 10 minutes I’d been there earlier). I was half an hour from the airport, so I decided to head back there, pull over in the shade, and do some reading on my phone.

By the time I got back to the airport, it was 2:40. A man in the parking lot saw my SK license plate and waved me down, asking if I knew how to pay for parking. I took him into the terminal and showed him how to use the parking ticket machine. He thought it’s a weird system, but I’m used to it, where you get a ticket at entry that you pay in the terminal and then insert into the exit machine. Soon as we were done, the power went out in the airport for a whole minute!

When the lights came back on, the plane was still marked as being on time for 3:15 (I’d also been monitoring the flight status on my phone). There is a coffee bar at the airport, so I decided to spring for my first cup of not-made-by-me coffee since I got to Isla. I had lots of time to peruse the menu thoroughly and settled on an espresso helado, just a shot of espresso over ice.

I was asked if I wanted ‘sencillo o doble’. I knew what she meant because you get the same question when you order ice cream, but that gave me something to do to kill time as I sipped my incredibly delicious and oh-so-worth-the-25-pesos iced espresso, Google sencillo. The translations into English made absolutely no sense, with the main equivalent popping up as ‘easy’ and then ‘simple.’ Once again, I was reminded to translate into French because, in French, ‘simple’ means one/single, at least in the context of ice cream scoops or espresso shots.

It was coming on 3:15 when a gaggle of women came by where I was sitting, muttering to themselves about the absurd lack of seating in the terminal. I stood up and offered them my seat, giving them a bench where three can squeeze in, in addition to another such free bench.

3:15 came and went and the flight status went from delayed with an ETA to delayed with no ETA. I started to get worried. It gets dark at 5:30 here and there is no way I would do The Road at night, not just because of its condition, but also because of the risk of banditos on this very isolated stretch of road. In ideal conditions, it would be about 1 to 1.5 hours from the airport back to The Road, so I would literally have to drop my family off without stopping to breathe and say hi! I decided that we would go to Isla and take a panga and pulmonía to hotel. It would only add about 20 minutes to the travel time and I could leave my truck at the embarcardero on the right side of the water.

The flight status finally got changed to landed around 3:45 and they came through the gate around 4:10. Whew! What a long day for everyone involved! My cousin is well traveled so she’s very flexible and easy going. She was glad to see me, having told herself many times that I would figure things out and, worst case, she could surely get a taxi.

We paid for parking (60 pesos by that point) and got the luggage to the truck. It was a tight fit, but we got everything into the back and then she took the jump seat while her son took the front seat (she’s tiny, he’s tall like a grown man). The Road seems easier with company, but still took 40 minutes. Parking at my place is a pain and we were all tired and famished, so I went straight to the panga, my first time driving to ‘downtown’ Isla!

As I expected, we soon had help at the panga to load the suitcases onto the boat. I made sure to tip the pilot on the other side.

Then, it was time to negotiate a pulmonía. I was quoted 100 and offered 80. He accepted a bit too quickly, but we had heavy luggage and were going quite far into the Golden Zone, so I was okay with the price even though I have a sneaking suspicion that we could have had the ride for 70. Anyway, I negotiated a better rate than quoted! My cousin decided to pay 90 when we got there since her luggage was so huge and heavy (she got loaded down with gifts in Monterrey and needs cold weather gear for the New York City part of her holiday).

This was my first time going so deep into the Golden Zone and let me tell you, once was enough. It looks like Gringo Land in there, not my type of place at all!

We got to the hotel around 5:30. Check in and all that took ages (all inclusive resort, so she got blasted with information). By the time they were settled in, we were all famished and we went to the first restaurant we passed in the hotel.

Their meal was included in their resort package, but the cost for me was THREE-HUNDRED FIFTY for a frankly terrible all you can eat buffet. My cousin told me she had this one because it was her choice and I can buy us all supper from a cart here on Isla tomorrow (thank you!). I’m still reeling from shock at the cost. I can eat for two weeks for that kind of money here, seriously! Most of the food was terribly over salted, but there were a few good things, like the squid and this interesting marlin turnover thingamabob that was savoury/sweet. But we were all famished and exhausted (I’ve been up since 5:00) so it was what it was.

It was time for me to head home after as it was getting on 8:00 and we were all just done in. My cousin made sure I was okay with going home alone in the dark and I truly had no issue with it. I walked down to the street and flagged down a pulmonía. The driver was not interested in taking me to the embarcadero. Same thing with the second one. The third guy said he would take me, but for 100, absolutely not negotiable, so I got in.

With my previous two rides down the malecón to the embarcadero, we took the exact same route. This time, we turned off the malecón very early and found ourselves in very quiet, almost traffic-less streets. I figured that he was trying to avoid traffic and cut some transit time, but the trip started to take quite a lot longer than I thought it should and I had no idea where I was.

I started to look for a landmark, anything to situate me on my mental map to get an idea of whether I was being taken for a ride or whether he was, in fact, just avoiding traffic. Shortly thereafter, I saw the Mega store. I’ve never been, but I knew, very roughly, where it is located, and decided to give him a couple more minutes to get to a road called Ejército Mexicano that, in part, parallels the malecón. If we wound up there, I knew exactly where we were going to end up.

Sure enough, that’s exactly what he did. At this point, I told him that this is a very different route than what I’m used to and he literally turned to gape at me, then said, “You’ve done this before?” I knew exactly what he was thinking, that I thought he had taken me for a ride. I reassured him that I knew where I was, understood the route he took, and that there was no problem. We then chatted the last couple of minutes to the embarcadero about where I’m from, the weather back home, what I do, etc.

I was glad to reach the panga because it was chilly and I was quite tired. I didn’t have to wait for a boat, so I was back on Isla in record time. It was very strange to drive home from there and a ridiculous amount of effort, truly, what with having to dodge chickens and dogs and kids and having two people with no headlights on flash their lights at me, which, I think, meant that they wanted me to turn mine off. No can do. Canadian vehicles have running lights!

Back home, I had to wrestled with the gate and the garden hose blocking the gate and I was just glad to finally get in!

My cousin and her son are coming to meet me here tomorrow around 6:30 (I’ll meet them at the panga). I’ll take them for an after dark tour of Isla, buy them a papa loca (crazy potato) or taco from a cart, and then we’ll come back here for a beer or two.

My cousin is here for vacation and wants to enjoy the resort amenities, so we won’t be spending that much time together. I am going over to the resort for New Year’s Eve to attend a gala with her and will spend the night. It’s so good to have the two of them here and we will cherish whatever time we have together!

It’s been a long day and I have three hours of work due for 9AM, so the day isn’t over yet. But what fun and, yay, they made it!