lo que comen los mexicanos

It wasn't until the day before we came home that we actually bothered to attempt a conversation with other people at the resort. In doing so, we realized that we hadn't spent much time off the reservation, and thus hadn't really had an "authentic" Mexican culinary experience (the resort's food, while great, was definitely targeted at a gringo's palette). We always enjoy sampling the local cuisine wherever we go, so we hurriedly decided to take a taxi into town to search for a good place to eat what the locals eat.

I asked our taxi driver for recommendations, and made it very clear that we wanted to eat authentic Mexican food. I even asked in Spanish in order to convey my desire for authenticity. As such, I was a bit disappointed when we found his two recommendations, as nary a Mexican was to be found anywhere but the kitchen or waiting tables in these establishment--not a good sign when you're looking to go the local route. Even worse, the prices were on par with or higher than what we'd pay for white-man Mexican food in Minnesota, and there's no way any regular Mexican could afford that. So, we decided to go off the beaten path in search of something without tourists. This is what we finally settled on:



Los Portales was a bit of a dump hole in the wall. It was not enclosed, and thus had no air conditioning. I don't know that they actually washed the dishes, as each plate was covered with a plastic bag, on top of which the ordered meal was placed. A robust, sweaty woman worked the grill, churning out tacos, tortas and fajitas (believe it or not, they actually eat this stuff). And, much to our delight, there were no tourists in the place, and no one spoke English.



We ordered some flank steak tacos and chicken fajitas, and really enjoyed everything we ate. The food was fresh, the sodas were slammin', and the service was pretty lousy, as is often the case in such eateries. The cherry on top of this joyous experience was watching the locals struggle with trying to figure out the exchange rate so they could accept my American dollars. Good times.





3 tacos + 1 plate of fajitas + 4 bottles of orange soda = 110 pesos (not quite $10)

Average price of a meal at our cab driver's recommended restaurants = 200 pesos

Yeah, I'm glad we did what we did. The food was awesome and obviously very cheap.



After lunch, we walked down the street toward the ocean. I don't think I could ever get tired of looking at the ocean in this part of Mexico:





We had arranged for our cab driver to pick us up later in the afternoon, and had a lot of time to kill after lunch, so we decided to employ one of my old HK tricks and kill time in an American (i.e., air-conditioned) establishment, which in this case was Haagen-Dazs. We ordered a bottle of water and one of their ice cream cone creations, and it ended up being more expensive than our entire lunch at the previous joint (still not as expensive as the $23 crime against humanity cone we got in Rome last year, but still...). The ice cream was good, though, even if they had to substitute apples instead of the usual strawberries in our order (apples + ice cream = weird) due to an apparent shortage. Given the price, maybe next time we'll just keep sweating and go get some Mexican popsicles. We probably could have gotten ten for the price of one Haagen-Dazs ice cream atrocity.