Me like food. Food good. (Lisa)

Well, the food has been pretty amazing on this trip so far - both the local food and the "gringo food". I hadn´t really counted on the fact that a whole lot of vegetarians travel the same route we are on - therefore, there is a vast array of veggie food available. Some of my favorites have been: the Indonesian Gado Gado I mentioned earlier, German spaetzle in Antigua, mango curry in San Pedro (eaten with chopsticks, of course), a tofu burger in Panajachel, "Pepian", a local dish of veggies and rice with a sauce made from sesame, pumpkin, and cinnamon, and "espagheti Diablo" ("devil spaghetti") in Antigua (regular spaghetti, but with the addition of some pretty darned hot peppers).

The food at our family´s house in San Pedro was pretty good, too. Rosa was a good sport about cooking my food without meat (though I´m sure she was wondering why the heck someone who can afford meat would not eat it). She made us the most amazing fried plantains I´ve ever had in my life. I could (and did) eat a whole plateful of those things. (See photo for an example.) Rosa also came up with a broccoli dish that I intend to replicate when we get back home - the cooked broccoli was dipped in egg batter and fried in butter, and topped with tomatoes that she had roasted on a stick in her wood fire. Yum. We sampled some "tortilla tea" one morning, Rosa just tossed some tortillas (that woman is always making tortillas) into a pot of boiling water. That was interesting, but I have to say I prefer the coffee.

Another amazing thing about this area is the fruit that´s just lying all over the ground! We had an avocado tree in our yard, and there are just avocados lying all over the place. I started doing the math in my head: "$1.99 times ten, there´s at least twenty dollars worth of avocados lying around on the ground - not to mention the hundreds still on the tree!" Anthony picked one up this morning on the way to the boat, just lying in the middle of the street. There are also key limes everywhere, oranges, etc. all just lying around for the taking. Pretty cool. We visited a handicraft co-op in Antigua, and the employees were whacking at a tree in the back to get some fruit down - they were nice enough to let us sample it. They told us what it was, but of course we don´t remember. Whatever it was, it was amazing.

Anyway, me like food. Food good.