Karaoke on the Beach

Akumal does not have that many restaurants. Because they had karaoke on wednesday nights, we stopped by La Buena Vida for dinner. It's on Half Moon Bay and there are several dining rooms. One is on the beach itself, which is where we were. There's also a bar which is covered, but also pretty much outside. There is an indoor dining area on the second floor. One of the coolest tables they have are the treetop tables. There are tables built into the top of the palm trees where they rope up the food / drink to you in a bucket. Pretty cool if you ask me. I'm not often a soda drinker, but when you're in Mexico, you really need to play it safe and only drink things out of bottles and cans. I wanted apple soda again, but like other places in Mexico which are geared towards tourists, they didn't have any. I was irked again, but settled on my second favorite choice, Fanta! Again, these are made with real sugar and not corn syrup. That makes them even sweeter than the ones we're used to. When in any restaurant in Mexico, it seems you get complimentary chips and pico de gallo. This is a custom that I could totally get used to. Everyone in the US should do this too! We went out pretty late, and I couldn't wait until we got to the restaurant, so I actually ate a real dinner at the condo. So once we got to the restaurant, I didn't have much room. That's why I just ordered the lime soup. R got a bowl too. It was basically tortilla soup but not as thick. It was a lighter broth. We both liked this a lot. R got the surf and turf. It was a giant piece of meat along with 3 huge shrimp that had been butterflied. It came with veggies and a potato with sour cream. R had asked for rice instead of the veggies, but they gave her rice along with the veggies. She wasn't eating the broccoli and cauliflower, so I gobbled them up. After a few days in mexico, and not having eaten any vegetables, my body was craving them. And since they were cooked, they were totally safe to eat! Whoo hoo! Eating on a beach with sand between your toes, while looking at stars in the pitch black sky, is rather luxurious. Oh, and the karaoke was funny too.

Dining with Dolphins

Along the yucatan peninsula on the riviera maya, there are only a few actual towns. One of them is Puerto Aventuras. It's a bit more upscale, mostly condos, has a marina, and is pretty gringo. They have one of those swim with the dolphins things in the middle of the town, and it's all open so you can watch the spectacle. It's pretty fun. Dolphins are pretty f'in cute.
We wanted a quick bite, and unlike Akumal, there's actually a good number of places to eat there. We ended up at Wahoo Sports Bar & Grill on the far end of the marina.
Sipping a mexican soda, which is actually made with sugar and not high fructose corn syrup, while watching dolphins, isn't a bad way to spend an afternoon. One annoyance is that this place is so gringo that they do not have apple soda. Grrr.... don't they know that the availability of apple soda is one of my most favorite things about mexico?
Complimentary chips and pico de gallo. Dudes, these chips were amazing. Warm, super crunchy, and too good to not be home made. And the pico was just right.
R got the chicken tacos. These were pretty bare bones. Rolled up in those flour tortillas was just plain chicken, and nothing else. And it came with a side of rice and some beans. According to R, this was her favorite meal of the entire trip. Plain ol chicken tacos.
I got the beef enchiladas. I ordered steak enchiladas but it came with ground beef. I didn't care. I also had a choice of green or red sauce, but they didn't ask me. And it just came out with red sauce. Had I been asked, I would have picked green. Again, I didn't care. However gringo this sports bar is, my mexican dish was great. It was made with love and I could tell with every bite. The beans were also very good, and that's always a good litmus test for how good mexican food is. Service was good and they were very polite to us. Since we were sitting outside and we were in mexico, there were people smoking. But luckily, it didn't bother us one bit.

Mexico Grocery Shopping

Our lovely little condo has a full kitchen, so we stopped at the Chedraui in Playa Del Carmen to stock up on some groceries. Shopping in Mexico is so much fun. It's all in spanish, first of all, and all the stuff is different. Frosted Flakes? There's no such thing, only Zucaritas! And it's mad cheap too. They're ggggreat! Svelty! Ha! It's nice to call this yogurt something that you hope it would make you. We have Wonder and Stroehmann bread, they have Bimbo bread. It's good too. What do you put on your Bimbo bread? Well, certainly not grape jelly! In this wall full of jams, preserves, and jellies, they don't have grape jelly. They have blueberry up the wazoo, but no grape jelly to speak of. It does not exist in mexico!

Hotel Breakfast Buffet

The condo in Akumal wasn't available until Sunday, so we were forced to find other accommodations for saturday night. That's how we ended up at the Avalon Grand Cancun for a night. It's kind of the low or mid season here, so we ended up getting a sweet oceanfront room with a balcony. Whoo hoo! Buffet breakfast was included, so we got to enjoy a nice, late, leisurely brunch on Sunday. R got an omelette, bacon, french toast. There was tons to choose from at this buffet, mostly americanized, since Cancun is a big tourist spot. I got some fried eggs over hard, and also tried the french toast and bacon. The bacon was too crunchy and the french toast was ok, but nothing exciting. Eggs were great, but then how do you screw up eggs on a big commercial griddle? I tried a couple of the hot sauces they had, and damn, they were way too friggin hot. Like habanero hot. Oye! But the best part of my brunch was the chilaquiles. So damn good!

Other observations... Juices are made with nectar, so it's a bit watered down. The yogurt here is high in artificial coloring, so everything has a dayglow brightness. The pastries look sweet, since they usually have a sugar coating, but really aren't that sweet.

Mexican Steakhouse

For our one dinner in Cancun, we decided to go out on the town. We drove round and round, and even ended up in the city center. It was a bit too sketch for us, so we headed back to the hotel area. While our first choice was seafood, after making u turn after u turn, we somehow decided on a steakhouse, of all places. La Mansion calls itself a mexican steakhouse, or the mexican steakhouse. I'm not sure what that means, even still, but they love them some meat. It's one of those pick your own meat places, where it sits in a case and you have to decide. They also roll out some meat to your table to describe it to you. It's a very nice and luxurious place. I felt like a bit of a fraud when we got there. I certainly did not belong there, but they treated us with some of the best service I've ever had. It was pretty late, but they eat their dinners late here. The waiters hung up our purses on racks that were at each of the tables. That was just the start of the too nice service. You get complimentary bread and man, it was warm and delicious. Even the little rolls of butter were delicious. They gave two hot sauces for the steaks. One was freakin hot and not possibly usable by me, and the other was more like a pico de gallo, but the veggies were cut very fine. There were seafood items available on the menu, but we would have felt silly, so we both ordered steaks. R got the porterhouse steak. She didn't ask for ketchup, but they just brought it out anyway. She also got some souffled potatoes. She thought it would be a souffle, but it ended up being long cut potato slices that were deep fried. Still good, but she just didn't expect glorified fries. I picked a tenderloin that they butterflied for me. I got mashed potatoes and they brought me some chimichurri sauce for my meat. I am usually not a steak eater. You would be hard pressed to find me at a steakhouse, or at least voluntarily. I'm not sure I would even know how to cook a steak. But damn, this meat was mmm, mmm, good. Extremely tender, flavorful, and cooked just right. In addition to the sauces, you also get a little bowl of lightly cooked onions and various peppers. I did not touch the peppers but I did eat the onions with my steak and it made it that much better. I'm usually not a dessert person either, but we both decided to splurge that night. The waiter had brought over a tray with all their desserts and basically wooed us with their beauty. R got a banana pudding type thing. We're not sure exactly what he called it, but it was a fairly thick banana pudding. He described it like a creme brulee. It was good! I love anything passion fruit related, so I got the passion fruit mousse. They called it a mousse, but it really wasn't mousse like at all in its consistency. It was a bit chewy and rubbery, as if it had a bit of gelatin in it. It would have been awesome as an actually fluffy mousse. But as it was, it was still pretty good.

Oh, and before we got our meats, the waiter placed cloth bibs on us. Not handed us bibs so we put them on, he tied them onto our necks. It was weird, even though it was supposed to be fancy. And when I went to the bathroom, I had to go down some steps, and the waiter put his hand out so he could guide me and make sure I did not fall? All this fancy and gentlemanly service was nice, but also kind of bizarre.

Off to Mexico!

I feel like such a jet setter as of late, but I'm off again! To Mexico this time. One night in Cancun (to get the silliness out of the way), then heading south to Akumal for a week of leisure. I don't expect to do anything other than snorkel, eat, sleep, and maybe get a slightly bit less pasty. Not going to miss the dreary wet weather!

Enjoy!