Travel

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A Perfect Day For an Impromptu Beach Lunch

I was having a frustrating work day, so at 3:30 I decided to go for a late lunch/early dinner on the beach to regroup. It was a perfect day for an impromptu beach lunch because it was cold and overcast. So the beach wasn’t busy and there was service at the restaurants.

Something told me to go to El Velero, so I did. I wasn’t going to get anything heavy to eat but then conceded that the reason I wanted to go to El Velero was for the coconut shrimp with the pineapple dipping sauce. So I indulged. 🙂

My timing was perfect since I ran into friends who are heading back to Quebec tomorrow. So we and another couple had a beer together, I ate, and we gals perused the jewelry from our favourite vendor!

Last week, I found a “placeholder” pendant to tide me over until I find something more permanent to replace the scarab I lost on the beach:

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The gals have several years of experience buying jewelry on the beach here and confirmed that the $150 I bargained the pendant down to was what it’s worth. So I’m pleased with my bargaining skills. I know an octopus wouldn’t be to everyone’s taste, but it sure is to mine (literally — yum!) and I love the detail on the legs with all the suckers.

Today, I picked up a pretty ring:

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I don’t need to haggle with this vendor since he always gives me his best price, in this case $100! Again, that’s pesos folks, so just 7.70CAD for the ring.

It wound up being a longer break than I had expected, but the social time did me a world of good. Now, back to typing!

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Crap, the Revenge!

I was invited today to the Crap Grudge Match at Palapa El Mirador/Chivos Beach. I wasn’t going to miss my chance to take my revenge and possibly win the trophy! I arrived around noon and was one the last to show up, contrary to last time. Thankfully, everyone had waited to start!

Chivos Beach was pretty as a postcard.

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Here’s one of the two targets with some rocks in it, just to give you a visual on what the game looks like (go to my previous post to get more details).

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Even though I’d had three beers before my first round, I still managed to win it at the very last second and go to round two! There, I was profoundly defeated… Oh, well. 🙂

Lunch was the shrimp quesadillas, which were very tasty and came with a nice smoky salsa that wasn’t too spicy.

The tide was very low on this side when I walked home around 3:30.

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Lots of people are going home in the next few weeks, so a lot of goodbyes were said. The winter is winding down…

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Impromptu Walkabout

Work has been in an unexpected lull this week so after finishing up a small project this morning, I decided I might as well go to town for exercise and a change of scenery. Including the bit here on Isla to the embarcadero and back, it wound up being an 8KM walk:

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I decided to head to the Mercado first to get an agua fresca. I don’t think it’s a good thing that I’ve found a reliable source of something with pink guava flavour… But at least there is real fruit in there so I’m getting some fiber with all that sugar!

While coming down the giant Leandro Valle hill, I finally remembered to take a picture of this lovely passive-aggressive sign:

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It says, “We will puncture your tires for free!” Basically, we’ll slash your tires if you park here and block our entrance. I couldn’t believe what I was reading the first time I saw it and so the first time I spotted someone coming out of the parking lot, I actually asked if my understanding was correct! I phrased it along the lines of “Are you having problems with people parking here?” I learned the verb ponchar in this context in Mérida as I would frequently pass a building with a sign right above tire spikes that an entrance was not for cars and that their tires would be punctured.

From the Mercado, I meandered my way down to Olas Altas and crossed over to take the Malecón. I had had a brilliant idea on route. My riding friend Joan had suggested that I try the roasted chickens at a place I pass frequently on Gutíerrez-Nájera, but never on my home. So I decided I would walk the Malécón to Gutíerrez-Nájera and then stop at the chicken place to get a chicken for a late lunch, with leftovers for dinner.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever taken a picture of her before, but she seems to embody my spirit. I really love this statue.

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Notice that one of these condo owners put a giant roller shade/awning outside his south-facing window?

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I was surprised that no pulmonía drivers flagged me down as I walked, enjoying the sunshine and warmer wind than we had yesterday (brr!). I perused the wares of a few vendors without being harassed. It was a really lovely walk.

There are two chicken places on Gutíerrez-Nájera and the one I wanted was the second one in this direction, just before the Red Cross (Cruz Roja) building. The advertised deal is two roasted chickens for $120. I asked the price for one and it was $65. The lady confused me a little by quoting the price as “six-five,” though. Her chickens are roasted in a cage that goes around a heating element. She selected one at random, chopped it up for me, and bagged it up with a giant pile of tortillas and some hot sauce. It smelled wonderful!

It was then a short distance to the embarcadero. The captain saw me coming up to the ticket booth and waved to let me know he’d seen me and would wait. One etiquette thing I have learned is that if you board the lancha after everyone else, you need to greet everyone by saying buenos días, buenas tardes, or buenas noches, depending on the time of day. I’ll be honest and admit that I always feel silly doing it, but I always get a reply back from at least a couple of people on the lancha and more than a couple of smiles. It was another very long and choppy ride back across the channel.

On this side, I remembered to take a picture of the City Deli’s new paint job. Wow! It makes it look so fresh! The inside has gotten a bit of a spruce up, too, with better produce, coolers with more beverage options (I can get a cold Electrolit now), and even a freezer with some frozen foods (I think I saw fries). I don’t think they carry beer anymore, though. I know there was a problem with their liquor license and maybe they’ve decided not bother with alcohol anymore. Anyway, I can get beer much closer to home!

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I came in and tried the chicken. I disagree that it is better than the weekend chicken lady here on Isla, but I’ve gotten good at timing when to get the best chickens from her to avoid the not sufficiently marinated and possibly not cooked enough ones. The Maz ones would be a lot more consistent since they are commercially prepared. I found the chicken a bit salty and dry in parts, but still very good. I pay $55 for half of a scrawny chicken here and I paid $65 for a decent sized full chicken from the Maz lady, so just for that, it’ll be worth making the trip over the next time I want chicken, and I’ll probably get two. Needless to say, I have way more leftovers than I expected. But, hey, I got all those tortillas, so I’ll go get a can of salsa verde Saturday to make enchiladas.

Not tomorrow? No, tomorrow I am going to get my revenge…

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News From Home

Just got this from my friend and neighbour Caroline at Haven:

Hi Rae,

I know how you love food so I thought that I’d tempt your taste buds by telling you about my latest experiment.  Montreal Smoked Meat.  I love the stuff and can’t buy it here very often (almost never).  On Smoking Meat Forums, I requested a recipe and received several – one that swears that its as good as Schwartz’s or Smoke Meat Pete’s. I paid $50.00 CND for the brisket at Mitch’s Meats and then go totally hosed at Co-op for the 125 grams of coriander ($25.86). Put the rub on the meat and flipped it twice a day for 10 days. Washed it, soaked it for 3 hours, patted it dry, put on another rub of coriander and coarse black pepper for 24 hours. Today it is in the smoker.  Maple smoke at 250F for 4 hours, then in the oven for another 5 hours.  Tomorrow, I will steam it for 3 hours and serve it on fresh rye bread with mustard.

All of my previous experiments have turned out well.  The cured & smoked pork chops are heavenly.

I don’t know if you check our weather here, but we have had a silly mild winter.  Its headed into the teens again today and I fear that the plum tree will bloom and be frosted again, hence no fruit.

We started our summer supply of wine, have 180 bottles in various stages of fermentation.

If you wish, you can share this with your blog readers,  some may be interested in Haven.

Miss you

Love Charles & Caroline

Is anyone else drooling? Caroline is am amazing cook and she makes everything from scratch. Charles hunts and butchers a lot of their meat and most of the rest comes from Mitch’s Meats, a butcher with high quality products, not the crap you get at supermarkets. She didn’t say it in the email, but I’m pretty sure she made the rye bread herself because you can’t get decent rye bread out west. Being a Montreal gal, I’m drooling. You just can’t get decent smoked meat outside of Montreal, although I did have some that passable enough for a desperate person right here in Mazatlán last year!

The news on the weather is really good. I am going to keep monitoring as it means I may be able to get home early this year. With the impending trip to Europe, I just don’t want to spend a lot of money in the U.S. this spring and made be willing to do a cannonball run north similar to the one I did going south so I can land and make some money ahead of jetting off.

As for wine, I imagine I’ll have time for a few nights of rolling down the street to home quite tipsy after a delicious dinner! 😀

I love these updates as I find that they ground me. No matter how much I’m planning to be on the move, they remind me that when I get tired, I have a place to land.

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Mercuriality

It was incredibly windy yesterday, with huge waves breaking on the beach and a storm warning for today. It made for a very dramatic ride.

I woke up really early this morning and when the sun finally rose, it wasn’t sure what it was doing. It would shine for a moment and then be blocked out by heavy grey clouds that would spit angrily. This went on all day.

Because I had worried about losing power if there was a storm, I only had a very light load of work that I was able to complete by about 10:00 this morning, and that included an unexpected proofing project that had dropped into my inbox around 7:00. I puttered all through the rest of the morning and into afternoon, then decided to go out.

Even though there was more blue sky than cloud cover, it was still spitting and quite cool as I reached the nearly deserted beach. Semana Santa is coming up fast, so I might as well savour these quiet beach days while I have them. No restaurants had seating set up on the beach and some were cleaning up palmas from their palapas. So the beach saw some action that I missed in the last 26 hours.

I came off the beach at the Goat Island causeway and headed towards home. The empanada guy was coming out of someone’s yard as I did so and I called him over to see what he had left. It’s a good thing I don’t run into him often because I cannot resist his fruity flaky treats! His empanadas are basically a folded over circle of pie crust with a jammy filling. Today, I went for strawberry. They taste best with a cold beer, so I stopped off at the Mercado Isla de la Piedra, a tiny shop kitty corner from the butcher shop, to get a few Tecate Light. They don’t carry Pacifico, but otherwise have a good selection of beers for such a small shop, including XX in cans.

Here’s a map of my world (and my walk today — click to embiggen):

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