Viva Mexico - La Comida!

It happens before every trip. At least one person will express fear and trepidation about ever going to a foreign country without speaking the language. I guess I’m lucky, because I went on my first overseas trip to Japan as a teenager and had not one word of Nihongo under my belt.

But no worries I soon discovered, people who must traverse the language barrier often have more meaningful conversations than those who share their mother tongue. Why? Because we have to listen, try harder and incorporate body language, hand signals, humor, smiles and graciousness.

Everywhere we’ve ever gone, we travel as guests. We understand that it is a privilege to enter someone else’s country and do our best to quickly learn the phrases of politeness, such as Bonjour Madame before ever asking a question, or Buenos Dias, Senor before launching into any attempts at conversation.

We have discovered that with even the slightest attempt at speaking their language, most people are patient with us and are more than willing to interact. In other words, it has not been necessary to be fluent in order to travel agreeably.

And, with many phrases being used situationally, it is easy to pick up the necessary meanings or gist right away. For instance, La Comida. I’m not sure if it means the food, the lunch, the supper, or the meal, but I’m pretty sure it has to do with edibles.

And this is what today’s entry is about, one of my favorite subjects, food! I love to eat as you can see by this truth telling photograph, and while that large glass looks like it be filled with a margarita, that, my friend, contained the most delicious fresh squeezed grapefruit juice.

Groom and I think we are fairly adventurous eaters, but haven’t worked up the nerve or the appetite to try say, roadkill or anything with brains, intestines and the like. We try not to eat at chain restaurants, instead preferring to discover out of the way restaurants and immersing ourselves into the local cuisine.

We have a pretty good knack for finding great places to eat and this trip was no exception. The only thing I have to complain about is that we could not find anything spicy. Groom and I love to eat food that is muy picante and caliente. My effort at saying very spicy and hot. En fuego. On fire.

But as for having eggs and refried beans for breakfast, that was not unusual. We often have beans for breakfast including today. Oh, we’ve been known to eat spicy quesadillas for the first meal of the day at home or roasted jalapeños so we had no fear of either the food or the water. We mostly sipped the bottled stuff, but drank tap water from our room sink that had a “filter.” No problema.

We love our coffee and the stronger the better. We giggled at having found some “Legal” coffee and wondered what the illegal stuff might taste like?

These are just a few of the pictures we took of food. Don’t be surprised, later on down el camino, the road, if you don’t find some more mouth watering images posted here.

Via Con Dios!