This is our third day of a three week sojourn in Mexico, and tonight will be our second night at Casa Delphin in the small area near Estacahuite, which is near Puerto Angel. It's not even a village, really, more an area on a small cove with several homes and hotels, and several beach restaurants. Casa Delphin is a four apartment building a short walk above the beach. It's just the kind of place we like to stay, fairly quiet and with calm and swimmable water. The folks on the beach are mostly local, largely day trippers as far as we can tell.
The restaurants are all on the sand, with a half dozen or so tables with umbrellas. It's hard to know where one restaurant stops and the next starts. Yesterday we moved a chair over to our table and the woman came out and explained that chair belonged to the next restaurant over!
We've just eaten at that one place so far. And get this: last night we only had 350 pesos. The places don't take credit cards, and the ATM in the village was broken, not uncommon, we gather. So I explained to the woman, or thought I had, how much money we had. I had asked for a filet of fish, but then changed it to ceviche. But she brought out both. When it came time to pay, I explained again that we only had so much in pesos. I was ready to give her dollars just as a deposit until we could get more money today. But she just said we could pay her the next day. And we did, today, And we felt compelled to eat there again today, and give her a big tip. So we had ceviche again, always a favorite since our times in Peru. But it's made differently here, actually it's different everyplace. Always marinated, in lime juice. In Peru it's served with sweet potatoes and corn. Here it is with onion, tomato, avocado, And cilantro. And the fish or seafood can vary. Yesterday's was mixto, shrimp and octopus. Today we asked for just shrimp. So much shrimp!. We shared a large plate. It's served with tacos, hard flat ones, which seem popular here. Loring had them as the base for his chilequile breakfast the other day on our way here from Oaxaco city. And they're sold in packages in the grocery store.
So much, though, for my stated intention to take it easy foodwise for at least the first few days, to make sure my stomach was cooperating. And then I go and have raw fish two days in a row.
The beach restaurants close early, surprisingly. Our neighbors here at the Casa told us to be aware that they do, and sure enough, they started taking down the umbrellas at about 4pm.
Today we went to the nearby town of Pochutla where google maps said there were multiple ATMs. It's about a 20 minute drive from here. No trouble finding one, and there were at least three large supermarkets as well. So we stocked up on some items we hadn't been able to find yesterday at the more local store. Now we have yogurt, granola, bananas, grapefruit, melon, several cheeses, crackers, bread, eggs. butter. Our plan is to have breakfast at home, a large meal at one of the restaurants, and a snack or light meal either noon or evening. An interesting observation about packaged food at the supermarket: packages are labeled as high sugar or high fat when appropriate. I'm not sure how much attention people pay to that, but it's one way that Mexico seems ahead of the U.S. in food labelling.
The water has been fairly calm here, and it's been full of people, adults and kids, frolicking and staying in the water for hours, it seems.
So, so far, so good. We are settling in to a daily rythm and will be here about two weeks before heading to Oaxaca city for our last week. We hear there's a street parking ban going into effect back at home in anticipation of the next storm. Glad we'll be missing it.
