April 12, 2017 Brunch – Pelicans. Dinner. - La Lanterna

April 12, 2017 Brunch – Pelicans. Dinner. -  La Lanterna

We slept in until 9:30 this morning , got dressed and walked back to the end of Pizaleta  beach development and ordered Machaca with eggs and a large juice at El Pelicano.  We like El Pelicanso for several reasons, the lack of development has left intact a grove of coconut palms next to the restaurant and since there are no disco type restaurants next door , there is no loud pulsing techno music of the style so popular along much of the beach.  The double benefit is you can eat in quite with the only sound being the wind rustle the palm fronds.

The Machaca was a pleasant surprise.  The real deal.  Dried beef jerky that had been softened, diced, and then fried into scrambled eggs, served with blistering hot red sauce and a basket  of lovely soft flour tortillas for 45 pesos each.

Another nice surprise at Pelicano was their commitment to healthy juices.  They had a heavy duty juicer and produced beautifully fresh fruit juices served in 48 oz. mugs for 50 pesos.  Suzette got orange juice and I ordered a carrot and orange juice.  To give you an idea of relative cost liter bottles which are 16 oz. usually cost 25 pesos at a restaurant.

We noticed beach chairs in front of the restaurant, so went and sat in them until about noon when the heat made us sweat and we returned to our hotel for a cooling dip in the swimming pool and a bit of reading in lounge chairs.  About 2:00 in the afternoon we began hearing shouting from the two sports bars that are on the street across from the beach and remembered seeing a sign for Bayern v. Real Madrid.  I waited a few more minutes and then suggested to Suzette that I wanted to watch the game. So we got dressed and walked the ½ block to the beach and found a seat next to a fellow at a table in the corner of the restaurant with two empty chairs.  It turned out that he was from Berlin and was on a month’s holiday from Germany.  He was very knowledgeable, so it was fun having his comments in English during the game. It was a sad game for Bayern with a missed penalty kick that would have tied the score and a red card that left Bayern short a man for the last thirty minutes.  Renoldo was the star, scoring both of Real Madrid’s goals.

After the game we walked another block down the beach to La Lanterna restaurant where've had eaten breakfast several times.  Suzette wanted a hamburger and Lanterna advertised hamburgers.  We ordered a hamburger with fries and a tuna carpaccio.  The restaurant advertises its commitment toGenovese style Italian cuisine.  The tuna carpaccio was excellent. Slabs of thinly sliced raw albacore tuna served with an olive oil dressing with squeezed fresh garlic and minced parsley and rosemary.  The platter of carpaccio was served with six toasted slices of Italian bread covered with chopped tomatoes and herbs, bruschetta.  We lay the tuna on the bruschetta and sipped glasses of Montepolliciano d Abruzzo red wine.  Then our hamburger was served and we split it  also.  The fried potatoes were terrible, soggy, saturated with oil, so  we pushed them away.  We had asked for substitution of spaghetti but the kitchen refused our request.

We enjoyed the delicious tuna carpaccio and the hamburger was delicious with a scoop of seasoned guacamole laid on the burger inside the bun.

I was reminded of the summer of 1969, when I clerked for a law firm in L.A. and enjoyed going to a restaurant near Sunset named Hamburger Haven, where I would order an Acapulco burger with guacamole laid on the burger inside the bun.  How odd that 48 years later I would be eating a similar hamburger 200 miles from Acapulco in Mexico.

After dinner we went back to the hotel and rested until 7:30 when we went to the tour office near our hotel.  After much waiting and what appeared to be disorganization, we were driven about twenty miles to the Manialtepec Lagoon and then taken in a ponga to an area far out in the lagoon to experience the bioluminescent water created by plankton of an algae that becomes luminescent when disturbed as a defensive mechanism.  The algae comes up the river into the lagoon.  The effect is fantastic.  As you move your hand or body through the water the water lights up.  I chose to not get in but several folks did swim which lighted the water they disrupted.

We returned to the hotel at 10:00 and went to sleep.

Bon Appetit