Usually I switch up my lunch local as much as my evening meal. Maybe not this year. At least today, Monday, my 5th lunch, I am inclined to make it 3 in a row at Surfin Burrito.
My first two meals in Cancun, dinner after arrival and lunch after the first ride have been repeats for quite a few years. Dinner is at an old Mexican classic, La Habichuela. It is downtown, right off Parque do la Palapas where the locals all take their children even on a Tuesday night. I am always placed at the same table as, when asked, I choose the restaurant instead of the garden. I always have the Chicken Molo.
Lunch is sushi at Hanaichi which is about 9K in on the Hotel Road. It does not open until 1pm so I have to dawdle a little in the square. Once it opens, I sit at the suchi bar. I am afraid this was the last year for Hanaichi. I just had a little bad feeling about the spicy tuna roll and the selection in the combo platter. I did not get sick. I am not enough of a suchi expert to be sure. I’ll try another couple Cancun suski places and they may restore my faith in Hanaichi, but as of the moment, it is off the menu.
Lunch Friday was another of my standards, Casa Tequila. It is almost next door to Hanaichi. Good simple Mexican food, good margarita, good vino de casa and an excellent line of craft beers from one Mexican brewery.
Lunch Saturday was Surfin Burrito. Very informal. They have three high top tables lined up behind each other facing the road. There are 6? stools on each side. The secret, besides great burritos and excellent high octane margarita, is this seating arrangement. Everyone is forced to sit cheek by jowl and this allows me to engage in a little conversation!
Of my three winter riding locals, Cancun, Claremont California and Lagos Portugal, Cancun offers me the least social interaction. In Claremont, I am riding with a group of very talkative seniors and staying at my daughter’s house. In Lagos I have a bar tender who is on duty every night (she owns the establishment) as well as another British bar where I usually can engage with customers or another bar keep.
But in Cancun the opportunities are limited. I have a bar with great beer and a bar keep, Barbara, but she is very busy and her english is only work related. I purposely stay at a Hostel where I might meet other guests. I have an airbnb apartment that is right in the hostel compound but meeting the other guests is just catch as catch can and so far this trip I have not caught. I usually ride with different people each day. They often have limited english and due to the fact that I am dropped from the group after 5K or so, I am breathing so hard it would be impossible for me to carry on a conversation!
Back to Surfin. I have to get this down as the memory is fading. Today, Wednesday, will be my 5th in a row at Surfin! The real kicker was Sunday. Last year I had met two young ladies from China at Surfin and followed them on for a couple hours walk. Again Sunday, I was able to speak to two young Chinese ladies. They were probably cousins, one raised in China and one outside Washington DC. The latter was a senior at Wesleyan and the younger one a Junior at Virginia Poly technique? I told them about my 3 ghosting China encounters, gave them a card, asked them to contact me so I could ask questions about China travel and of course never heard from them! I showed them a web site for the book Young China and I think they were very put off that the author was not Chinese. I asked the Wesleyan lady about what she would change at Wesleyan and she asked for greater diversity. The younger lady wanted a second blanket to keep her warm at the hostel
Next was almost better, if such is possible. This young lady with a large silver clip in her nose was Australian and I think she was 30. She had not traveled enough in college as other Australians had so now she is off for at least a year just on the move. Costa Rica was next. She had been in the far east and thought she might get to Portugal by April. I did not get up the nerve to ask about money. She said she had seen a shooting on the street at night a couple weeks ago in Cancun, 3 blocks north of Ado station. That lead her to move out of Cancun to Playa and Tulum but now she was back for a day or two. Her camera phone was dieing. I advised her to just buy a phone at Best Buy or Walmart and then get a sim card.
Same day, Sunday, I lastly talked to a couple from Florida who had come to Cancun before but never this far into winter. They said the prices were just too tempting. They loved that it was not too hot. They left their 15 year old daughter under the supervision of grandma. The daughter always loved going over to Grandmas. I told the normal stories about Elizabeth bringing O’Dulls to a party and video tape of hiding beer.
I got home at like 4:30 and decided to eat lunch at Surfin for the rest of my life. Monday was a young man from Germany. He had spent a month volunteering at a Panama? turtle rescue center. He was just arrived, not yet checked into the hostel across the street. There were some young Australian women at the turtle operation but I guess he did not meet a soul mate. He is taking a year off. Worked in the Mercedes Benz plant for 8 weeks to make enough money for the trip. He had a blue tooth ear bud in each ear. I think I need them. I talked about the young German councilor at Kawanhee who got everyone playing go but was on a track in school to be a skilled laborer. Of course I did not tell him this whole story but told him that I understood that there was a fair amount of tracking in German schools. He said that he was doing mechanical engineering but might like to do more physics, general stuff. He seemed to agree that the people taking more general courses where less social and that had put him off at first.
Tuesday was another triple, no Chinese but hay, what can you say. The first was probably a niece aunt pair from Kansas. They were just back from trying the Mexican flee market in Cancun. She said that her Kansas self had to talk to anyone who wanted to talk to her and clearly that was not the way to survive in a Cancun market. She thought she had done a good job with bargaining but when the calculator came out and the cost in $s was revealed, she felt she had failed. I encouraged her to just use the idea that 100 pesos if 5$ and do everything in Pesos so there is never a calculator involved. The daughter had just graduated in December from one of the Kansas states. I could not do my Kansas friends as I do not have their names front and center nor which was at which Kansas school.
After Kansas, I was able to turn and engage with an Indian and a couple from Japan. I tired to get the couple to agree to answer questions by email but as usual no luck. They just took the card and disappeared into Cancun life. The young man from southern Indian was working for Intel in Portland Oregon, managing a firmware group. And, my daughter who works in consulting will love this. he is on immigration forced exile. He has to just hang around outside the US while waiting on the application to get back in!! A gift from the Donald.
Wednesday was a little light. Very crowded with lots of young ladies probably form the hostel but I was not in sync with their schedule and could not sit at their table. I have been trying to come at 12:30 instead of 12 as I sometimes have to sit for a while before the pray arrive. My normal server, Humberto, was there but off for the day. He took the trouble to explain to the man, who was on duty, my preferences. A number of the workers are gay and they were decked out for a day off. I even had the impression that my margarita was VERY weak so I asked for more Tequila and they were nice enough to provide. I think it is just that I have been drinking so many that I no longer can taste and the maker today was a different person and used a slightly more lemon mix?
The couple I talked to just for a moment were German. They run ice cream stores in Hamburg? and take 4 non-ice-cream months off to travel, just close the stores. They have been up the west coast of the US. I of course gave out the card and the young lady spotted Lagos but I did not feel welcomed to hang around further.
At dinner at a Taco establishment, I did stop at another table and meet a couple vacationing in town instead of at the Hotel Road establishments. They were from Sweden. I had met another couple at my favorite bar, Estradio, earlier in the trip and she was from Sweden. They had met by chance hiking in another part of Mexico and she came to be with him. She was doing transcription for Youtube! She watches videos that have a Swedish soundtrack and then adds captions.
No Surfin today Thursady, I am off to lunch in Porto Moralas.
Now I have to reconstruct Friday, Saturday Sunday, Monday, Tuesday.
Friday, can’t remember, maybe it will come to me. Probably ate alone!!!
Saturday was Valladolid, again reported separately.
Sunday was Playa del Carmen that I will do separately
Monday was a banner “Two Fer” day, as in one gets two dishes for the price of one, or in my case 2 conversations in one lunch and in this case even 3! For the first time I talked to another Surfin socializer, another old man who came as much for the conversation as the Burrito! It was his birthday, or at least he was down from Daytona Beach Florida for his birthday. He had this year moved to Daytona from Minnesota. Had bought a condo and had the feeling that a lot of his fellow owners were running airbnbs. He rode a bike for enjoyment and exercise. Had even purchased a tall van and outfitted it with cooking and sleeping so he could stand up in the back and travel with his bike. He had made a couple trips where he road during the day at a leisurely pace and camped out at night.
His great claim to fame was that last night he had eaten dinner at surfin and then gone out for a long night of drinking with his fellow diners. I think one was a X-pro athlete thought that could have been another story. One was from the hostel and three woman, at least two of them described their work as strippers, I think in Florida. I tried to switch him to dancers but he said strippers was what they called themselves and in these anthropological studies we always allow the target to choose their own nomenclature.
There was a group of 4 Chinese behind us and I went over for my normal sales pitch. All were BU grad students who lived in mainland China. The young man was in math and the 3 ladies in project management? I of course gave out the card, the young man brought up the web site. He promised to help me and of course that was the end of it, no email!
A little later my Daytona partner and I were joined by a couple from Connecticut. At the time I did not register that he had on an Hawaiian shirt! Then he commented on my go t-shirt. Said that in his fathers? retirement home he had noticed a month ago that the chess board that had always been out had been replaced by a go board. I had to one up him and claim I had 200 Hawaiian shirts. We did at least agree that we both got them at good will. He worked on large telescope installations for Perkins Elmore and its successors. Had hoped to be able to take a retirement buyout a year ago but it did not happen. Back in the 80s? maybe he had been installing a telescope in Hawaii and had gotten stated.
His wife had some type of food allergy and had brought her own burrito wrap. I encouraged her that Humberto probably could deal with that and indeed he did but she said she would not do it again. Something about the way it was toasted. She thought she would have been happier having the burrito contents in a bowl and just eating them with her tortilla. Daytona left and finally it was time for me to close up shp at Surfin for 2020. It will be fun to see if I pick up again in 2021. If nothing else, I hopefully will have a chinese approach strategy that produces better results. Had to do worse than ZERO!
Tuesday is easy, I went to Puerto Moralos and can do that separately.