North America

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Off to the Dentist

Whew, I had a busy weekend! Not sure what happened there with work, but I believe it was my very occasional clients requesting my services on top of all my regulars sending me stuff that threw my schedule into chaos. I was really glad to be able to take today off, but, unfortunately, I had to cancel riding because I really needed to go see a dentist and the one I chose was only available this morning or else I would have had to wait till late next week. With the tooth hurting and knowing that I would likely have to have a consultation first, then come back for the filling at a later date, I didn’t want to wait that extra week.

After much research and many testimonials, I decided to go to Doctora Susana Pedrero de la Cruz in Centro. I was warned by many people to only use her for a cleaning and basic fillings because there have been major issues with more advanced work that she has done.

My appointment was at 10:30 and I left home around 9:40 to arrive at about 10:20. I had no trouble finding her office, which is basically behind the cathedral and one block over. She was very prompt and spoke excellent English. Her office is tiny, spotless, and her equipment is modern.

After looking at my tooth, she put forth the suggestion of a crown, but I nixed that and said I just want a filling. So she will do that for me next Friday. I’ve had this tooth fixed so many times that at this point that my expectations are very low for how long the fix will last, but it will at least bide me some time and the work is super cheap. The cost was $350 today for a cleaning and exam and it will be $500 next week for the filling. Pesos!

The cleaning was the best I have ever had done. She used baking soda to ‘sandblast’ (her words) my teeth and I came out of there with them noticeably a shade lighter than when I came in!

I made an appointment for next Friday for the filling and then headed out. It wasn’t even 11:00 yet. I went to Panamá’s for a snack, then went to wait for the bus to take me to the Golden Zone to get coffee beans at Rico’s. It’s so rare that I get on at the Mercado and rather a treat to get such a long ride! For the first time, I misjudged my disembarking request and actually missed Rico’s by a full block. I usually end up getting off a block early, so I really got my money’s worth out of my bus fare today!

I actually got service in Spanish at Rico’s today. They were out of Veracruz and it was suggested I might like Chiapas, another dark blend. I was confident I would, so I got a pound of whole beans. I can’t wait to use my new grinder on them!

From Rico’s, I headed back down to Rafael Buelna, checking out restaurant menus and finally deciding to just go to Taco Loco. I got across half of Camarón Sábalo, but was stuck on the median when the menu guy for Taco Loco saw me and waved his menu at me. I’ve never seen them try to wave down Gringos before, so I was surprised, and I think he was even more surprised when I nodded enthusiastically. He jumped onto the street and held off the traffic so I could get across! And they say chivalry is dead!

I had my usual, of course, the al pastor tacos. I was going to order four (a reasonable portion), but was brought chips, so I only got two, plus a limonada. The cook must have remembered me as not being afraid of a little heat because the tacos she sent me were spicy even before I added their salsas! Looks like I graduated to ‘real’ tacos. Dang they were hot (especially with my unknowingly adding super hot salsa to already super hot food), but soooo good.

After lunch, I continued on my walk and decided to get my groceries at Mega since I needed hummus. Surprise, they not only had hummus, but a bunch of other Lebanese things, including pita and labneh (strained yoghurt)! Wow! Guess who is having a Middle Eastern spread for dinner tonight?

I got a taxi to take me to the embarcadero (still no luck getting a pulmonía) and a truck on this side because I had way too much stuff to carry.

There was a small job waiting for me when I got in, so I did that, then I headed off to see Contessa, who arrived yesterday. She had some anti-itch stuff for me that, so far, is working great. I can’t believe how bad the bugs are this year and it’s been driving me to distraction!

It was a lovely day off and, so far, the week ahead doesn’t look too bad. We shall see how long the lull lasts. 🙂

 

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My First Gorditas

After a very long work day, of which I will have two more in a row, but which was broken up by a brief wade in the ocean, I set off to find dinner. I headed ‘downtown’ and I had no sooner turned onto Calle Principal when I heard “Señora! Señora!” I know the world doesn’t revolve around me, but there was no else around, so I turned around and who do I see? Patricia, the owner of Patty’s defunct restaurant that I miss so much!

As it turns out, she had to close the restaurant because the rent was too high. 🙁 BUT she’s back in business with a smaller menu cooking right out of her house! Her hours aren’t as convenient in that she’s closed when I get off work at 2:00, but she is open for an early lunch on my days off and she’s open for an early dinner, too. Plus, she does things I actually eat for breakfast, like enchiladas. No burgers and fries, though.

Needless to say, my plans to troll the stands downtown for dinner were cancelled and I followed her into the front room of her house (cement bunker, essentially), where she had a few tables set up and two customers were eating. I asked her what a ‘gordita’ is and she explained that it’s a small fat tortilla topped with meat, lettuce, onion, tomato, beans, cheese, and crema, and served with caldo. Did I know what caldo is? I said yes, it’s soup juice (broth) and she burst out laughing. I agreed to have two of those and made myself comfortable watching the soap that was playing on TV! I saw a commercial for the Sin Fronteras TelCel plan and that confirmed that it includes Canada even if I can’t find any confirmation on the website yet. This is very exciting news. More on this when I have something to link to.

In between her managing the kitchen (I believe her daughter does the actual cooking or at least assembly of the food) and lighting mosquito coils, we caught up a bit. The gentleman customer left and the lady customer who was left, and who was eating a gordita (I took mental notes on her technique), suddenly opened up and started chatting with me, too. I’ll be honest and admit that I was mentally beat and wasn’t really up for company tonight or fighting another language, but this was too wonderful an opportunity to pass up to get my foot in the door of the real Mexico. I’m glad I made the effort!

My food eventually came out. I was passed a bowl of salsa and told ‘picante.’ I smiled and added a generous amount to my food. Then, I did like the lady had done, pouring the hot caldo over my gorditas, and dug in with my fingers. Dang it was messy, but so good! Last year, I rather ‘got bored’ with Mexican food because it’s basically all the same ingredients in different combinations, but I completely missed the fact that the variations and true flavour are mostly in the sauces. I told Patricia how my tastebuds have changed and I can handle the spice now, so I’m not as afraid to try new things. She said that she doesn’t like things too spicy either, but with just enough to add flavour. I think I can trust her food not to kill me, then. 😀

The gorditas were just $14 each! All her prices are very low, so, as she said, I should come and eat at her house every day. We’ll see. 🙂

For those favouring a more traditional breakfast, she does eggs as you like them with all manner of sides, like ham or chorizo, with ‘coffee’ (instant) or orange juice for just $40. She buys her food fresh every day. And she has wifi! Look for her on Calle Principal just past where the road curves towards ‘downtown’ after the basketball court. She has fluorescent green handwritten cardboard signs with her menu right by the road. That should have been my clue that she was still around!

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Hunkering Down

I have somehow managed to find myself swamped with work through the weekend. Because of this and my needing to make a withdrawal at the bank, I decided not to do any overtime today and instead go to Maz after my shift ended at 2:00, then hunker down and work for the next three days.

The nearest Scotiabank to me is the one on Ejercito Mexicano, about 1.5KM from the embarcadero. I walked there and on the way noticed several stores, even hole in the wall abarrotes, that said ‘recarga TelCel aquí’ (recharge TelCel here). I’ve been meaning to put money on my phone so I can make and receive calls, but the website has been so terribly slow that I haven’t had the patience to do so. I’d never put money on the phone from a vendor before and decided to see if that’s easier than using my credit card on the website. Is it! I gave my number to the clerk, told her I wanted to add $100 to my account, and she punched it into what I assumed is a cell phone, although it looked like a big old Nokia from 10 years ago.

After about 30 seconds, her phone dinged and I got five text messages confirming that I’d added the $100, what my rates were, special promotions, etc. Super easy! That’s all I had to do because I was going to use the money for calls and texts. If I had wanted to buy bandwidth, I would have needed to send a text message to that effect.

I just checked the text messages and one of them says that my $100 got me $100 in bonus time (saldo regalo/gift balance)!!! I can use that for calls, texts, and bandwidth at full price. Wow! I remember from last year that I pretty much spent the winter making calls on only saldo regalo, but don’t remember it being that generous.

The Amigo plan (pay-as-you-go) rates are also pretty amazing. Get this, I only pay $2 per minute… to Mexico, the U.S., and Canada. I have been staring at those numbers for the last five minutes trying to figure out what I’m reading wrong. That’s 0.16CAD per minute. There has got to be a catch. I am going to have to call someone in Canada to see if this is true! Skype is free, of course, but it’s good to know that I have the phone as a backup! I just skimmed the fine print and it looks like I can use my phone in the U.S. as though I was in Mexico, which is very interesting. I will get back to this as this plan sounds like a game changer because I could keep my TelCel account active when I’m home and use my Mexican SIM when I’m in Montana!

But I digress. From the abarrotes, I crossed the street to use the Scotiabank ATM, where I was able to take out $4,800. It came out in all $500s, plus a $200 and a $100. Ouch! I much prefer withdrawing from Santander, which gives some small bills… but I don’t miss the fee! I went into the bank and asked to change the $4,5000 worth of $500s to $100s and $50s. Not a problem. The teller ended up giving me almost all $50s! I really didn’t mind, of course, but that made for a rather impressive stack of bills!

Since the big Waldo’s is just a block or two further down the road and I needed a few things for the house, it made sense to head there next. But since I was still on the Scotiabank side, I decided to have lunch first. I knew there was a Rin Rin pizza by the big Ley (where I didn’t need anything this time), but they wanted over $30 for tiny slice with a drink. Pass! I went to the Chinese place instead and had a nice lunch for $48.

Then, I climbed up and up and up and up and up and up some more to get to the pedestrian overpass to cross Ejercito Mexicano and then came all the way back down to ground level. Whew! I still prefer that to playing frogger in front of the Scotiabank!

Waldo’s had everything on my list… and a few things that’s weren’t. For those who don’t know, Waldo’s is equivalent to a higher end dollar store in Canada and the U.S., like Dollar Tree. I especially needed some plastic containers for storing leftovers and the like since the ones I bought last year weren’t in the kitchen when I arrived.

Walking back to the embarcadero, I was struck by the fact that this was my first time walking down Gutiérrez Nájera in that direction and that everything looked so different!

There was a short wait for a lancha, but I was back on Isla in a flash.

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I made a quick stop for beer ($90 for seven, so $13 each, almost half the cost of getting a beer at a restaurant!) and then it was time to get home because I was ready to drop. It’s been a busy work week! I plan to get a bit of a later start tomorrow, which will probably mean 7:00 instead of 6:00. 😀

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My First Torta

This week is the way life is supposed to be when you’re not retired, I think, with enough work to fill the coffers but not completely crush your soul with tedium, and plenty of time to stop and enjoy your ‘island’ paradise.

Amazingly, every single one of my clients has me on deck this week, even a couple of one-offs that I never expected to hear from again. It’s long days, but since I’m not doing the same thing hour after hour and a lot of work can be done from my armchair, it’s not hard the way my old transcription marathons were.

After finishing my eight-hour proofing shift, I went for a long beach walk, enjoying how quiet it is before the tourists come. Then, I came home to start on some graphic design-type work when an email came in asking if anyone from proofing could do a job right that minute. I knew that this writer’s copy is very clean and it wouldn’t be super tedious, so I claimed it… and may have had a beer while working on it. That done, I did a bit of work on the other project, but since I have to work on the PC and I’d already put in nearly 10 hours, I didn’t have enough patience to do much more than lay out the work to do. But at least I got started on it and have an idea of how long the job will take.

It was then time to put my feet up for a bit and read. I’ve been reading a lot since I got back to Isla and I know that chair has something to do with it! I really missed having a cozy chair and living room to retire to last winter since the sofa was so useless. I really didn’t use the house to its full potential. I’m much happier in it this year. My landlady also put something in my bedroom that she told me might be useful in my office, and she was right:

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What an amazing unit for my office! I love having a drawer for my office supplies and the printer higher up than when it was on the night table I was using last year! Some may say that she should have put a desk in here for me, too, but I don’t need one. The plastic table I was using last year is exactly the right height and size.

But I digress. By now, I’m sure you’re curious about the dang torta I mentioned in my post title… I vaguely remember reading about tortas last year, but didn’t think much of them. Maybe it’s because I’ve mastered the taco, but I seem to be seeing tortas everywhere this month and so I started to get curious. They really don’t sound like anything special, just a sandwich with a lot of stuff in it, but they’re quintessential Mexican food, so I decided to try one.

My riding friend Joan told me about a Miguel-ish restaurant at the other end of Isla, near the village embarcadero, called Estanquillo Osuna (not to be confused with the Osuna restaurant on the beach), that is open most evenings. I decided to check it out tonight.

Joan likes their papas locas (crazy potatoes), but that doesn’t appeal much to me since I’m not much of a potato fan unless they are fried Quebec style. The first thing on Osuna’s menu is tortas so I decided that I would try one. My choices were ham, carne asada (steak), pierna (similar to pulled pork, I’m told), and especial. I asked the server what the latter entailed and she slowly recited that it meant ham, steak, cheese, veggies, crema, and chiles. Sign me up!

I don’t know why, but I was expecting a cold sandwich. What arrived had been pressed on a grill, like a panino. The bread was delicate and buttery and one side had a slice of yellow (American/processed cheese). The meat had also seen the grill, with the ham reminding me of the fried baloney my dad used to serve when I was a kid (and that’s not a criticism!). On top of that were bite-sized pieces of steak, some of which were bonded with browned Chihuahua cheese (mmmmmmm), but most of which were loose and reminded me of one of Roseanne Connor’s loose meat sandwiches. There was also lettuce, onions, tomatoes, crema, and chiles, and I may have added a few extra of the chiles (and I had serranos in my lunch; I really am developing a Mexican palate!).

The whole thing was ridiculously messy, way too calorific, and incredibly delicious. Tortas are apparently a lunch food, meant to satisfy the appetite of a hard worker, not be dinner for someone who sits on her butt all day. So they’re a treat I will reserve for days when I’ve done a lot of walking. I’m told there’s a restaurant at the Mercado that does amazing pierna tortas, so I’ll plan to do that one day after a long Malecón walk!

Mexican food tends to combine a lot of different things together, and some combinations seem really odd, but I’m learning to have faith that they’ll work. I just have to avoid the mayo if at all possible. Asking for no mayo never works, even at Miguel’s, so I was really glad that the torta came with crema instead. Next thing I want to try is tostilocos!

I enjoyed eating at Osuna. It was a lot quieter than at Miguel’s (but there were still several customers), and I liked watching the lights of Maz. The price for dinner was $55 with water. A bottle of water at a restaurant is normally an outrageous $12 to $15, so I’d say the torta was probably about $40. So the prices are in line with Miguel’s, too, and it’ll be good to have that other option for a sit down restaurant now that Patty is gone (No, I’m not over it. Patty was wonderful!).

Yikes, look at the time! 7:30 is shutdown time for me since I like to be up by 4:30, 5:00 so I can hit the beach before work. You all feel sorry for me, don’t you. 😉 😉 😉

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A Perfectly Mundane Day in Paradise

I was up and at ’em this morning because I knew I was facing a very difficult transcription job, my first one since mid-October (not counting a tiny easy one I did in Nogales). I’m officially back at work full-time! Anyway, I knew this one was going to be a bear and the best way would be to chop it up into bits and give myself good breaks.

I stopped around 9:00 to get some fruits and veggies and then I headed down the street to the butcher shop to hopefully get pork chops for dinner. They only had one, so I decided to save it for lunch another day and instead do chicken tonight, since I am insane. I have no problem buying pork from that shop because it is prepackaged and frozen. Chicken gets chopped up in front of you and the less I say about the process, the better. 🙂 I plan to do like last year and get my chicken cooked for me from the Chicken Lady on weekends, but she wasn’t working this past weekend and I wanted chicken. It was $49 for two huge chicken breasts and a good sized pork chop. I didn’t take note of the price per pound, but I did the math last year and meat is way cheaper here than what I pay in Canada, even for pork, which is a decent deal back home.

I got home and got to work on the chicken. I’m used to the orange colour of the flesh, but had a hard time getting past the odour last year, the main reason I gave up buying my own. But this chicken didn’t have that smell, yay! I chopped it up and threw it in a bowl, then doused it with some Italian dressing. I happened to have an unopened bottle left when I was packing and I use it almost exclusively as an easy chicken marinade on days when I’m not feeling too creative.

Once the chicken was in the fridge, I went back to work before changing into jeans because I was going riding at 11:00! It was just my friend Joan and I today because Janet only just arrived and Sue won’t be here till the 4th of December. Well, there was a family from Chicago, too, but our groups got separated because Joan and I are way more experienced. It was fun to catch up with Daniel and, like last year, our ride doubled as conversation lessons! We also got in two canters and got a chance to see the new pathway under construction near the beach. I’d call it a boardwalk, but it’s made of sand. 🙂 I’ll hike out there another day and get pictures.

Even though we only wanted to be out an hour, we were out almost two! Time just flies when you’re on a horse, even if your creaky body is protesting. 🙂 I cannot get jaded or blasé about how amazing it is to canter down a palm tree lined beach with a glorious tropical sun beating down at me. This is the Good Life I’ve heard so much about!

My bad knee was completely locked up by the time we returned (I have to remind Daniel to get me another saddle; I had a hard time with the stirrups on this one last year, too), so it’s a wonder it didn’t collapse when I dismounted. I should learn to dismount from the other side, even if I’ll get odd looks. But it makes no sense to drop onto that leg since it’s a recipe for getting hurt. Anyway, I was pleased by how easily I was able to mount and dismount, as it showed me that I’m in better shape than I thought I was!

I was famished by this point, so I headed home to make a quick lunch and get back to work. By 3:00ish, I only had an hourish left, so I headed to the beach for a beer, chips, and salsa. I was disappointed that my pico de gallo had no peppers in it and the server offered to either have serranos added to it or to bring me another salsa that is spicy and I could mix the two. I decided to go that route and the combination was very yummy! I can’t believe food not being spicy enough is now a problem!

While I was enjoying my snack, there was a group of drummers making music with a few gals putting on a dance performance. I left them a tip, so my break cost me all of $70 for booze, entertainment, food, and tips! I love it here! 🙂

When I got in, I made the final push on work and finished at 6:00. For dinner, I sautéd a chayote with some onion. Dang, I missed chayote! I made sure to cook the chicken well past the point I would have called it done back home and it was very tasty! I added an avocado squirted with lime juice as a side. Since dinner was so reasonable, I had a small bowl of the pineapple coconut yoghurt I also missed as dessert!