February 19, 2019 Lunch – Chicken Mole with Rice and mixed Vegetables and Papaya Salsa Fresca. Dinner – Sayulita Café

February 19, 2019 Lunch – Chicken Mole with Rice and mixed Vegetables and Papaya Salsa Fresca. Dinner – Sayulita Café

We ate papaya and raspberries in yogurt for breakfast and I made a shrimp omelet with Swiss cheese.

We are both feeling better today. No more turista, hopefully, but Suzette is not at optimum yet.  She is still having a headache and leg pain, which she blames on the bed.  But she keeps reading Under the Scarlett Sky and liking it, just as TR did.

After Breakfast at around 10:00 we went to the bank and Suzette exchanged another $100 for 1810 pesos.  Then we drove to San Pancho about 10 miles north on the national hwy.  It is the town in the next bay north.  It is different than Sayulita in several respects.  It lacks Sayulita’s flat sloped beach and it’s protected cove that is ideal for swimming and surfing.  The sharply canted beach at San Pancho creates a strong undertow that is not suitable for swimming or surfing.  This has caused San Pancho to lack the intensity of development that Sayulita has experienced and the surging real estate prices. It is still the kind of sleepy Mexican village Sayulita was twenty years ago with dogs sleeping in the street, mostly Mexican hipsters and Americans and Canadians avoiding cold winters as cheaply as possible.  The much greater spirit of community in a San Pancho is more pleasant than the raw commercialism of Sayulita.

We walked to the public market in a park set up for the market with an L shaped covered area for vendors to display their wares, a much nicer set up than Sayulita, which uses a vacant lot.

The food vendors were located under the tile roofed covered area and outside were the craft and souvenir tents with a really good trio playing music at the corner of the L.

We saw many of the same vendors we had seen at the public market days in Sayulita and La Cruz, but there were many others new to us.  A jeweler with lovely stones and fossils.  We first saw a t shirt selling couple with shirts saying “Made Tacos, Not Walls” which we could not resist.  Suzette wanted to give one to Michelle, who is now governor and has publicly criticized Trump’s call for a wall. We bought two for 350 pesos or about $10.00 each.

We then walked around the outdoor stall area and came to a vendor of brightly colored fabric handbags that we were both attracted to.  Suzette said, “I think I can sell those at the spa.” So she dickered with the vendor for a while and finally bought five handbags for 1000 pesos, just over $11.00 each.

Since we had spent most of the newly acquired pesos, and since it was noon and we were getting hungry, we decided to return to our room and make lunch.

On the way into Sayulita we stopped at a tortilleria and bought 1 pound of fresh warm tortillas for 7 pesos and at a small market that was also the dispensary for Modelo beer, two cold bottles of Modelo Especial for 30 pesos plus a 10 peso deposit.

When we arrived home we went into full cooking mode.  I finely diced a carrot, two green onions, and a squash for the mixed vegetables.  Suzette de-stemmed some snow peas and I cut them into square sections for the vegetable medley.  Suzette put the PPI Chicken Mole into a skillet to warm and began sautéing the vegetables for the mixed vegetables and fetched the prepared rice we had bought at Allas Blancas for 40 pesos.

I began making the papaya salsa by finely dicing three oz. of red onion, about ½ lb. of fresh papaya, and ¾ of a small avocado plus a handful of cilantro, into which Suzette squeezed the juice of 1 lime.

When the mixed vegetables had softened, Suzette added the rice and heated the whole affair.  She then opened the chilled beers and as soon as I finished making the papaya salsa, she plated our plates with a pile of rice and mixed vegetables covered with a generous portion of chicken mole and papaya salsa on the side.

We carried the plates of food with the beers and tortillas out to the palapa beside the terrace with the view of The cove and southern headland and ate our best meal of the trip.  We filled tortillas with mole and vegetables and rolled them to make tacos.

After we finished lunch at 1:30 we napped.  I slept until 4:30.  Then I started my new writing project, “Kerouac takes a trip to the Fifth Dimension”.  Suzette finished Under the Scarlet Sky by 6:30. We decided to walk on the beach to watch the sun set at 6:48.

After the sun set around 7:30 we walked to town stopping to walk through the carnival in the ball park that was dominated by games of chance and drink stands and some rides.

When we crossed the bridge and walked two blocks we arrived at Sayulita Café on the left.  There was an open table for two outside on the street so we took it.  We ordered a Caesar Salad for 80 pesos that was twice as good as the one at Marco’s Italian the night before at 120 pesos.  We also split a Chicken Chile Relleno Platter for 130 pesos that was ten times better than the shitty shrimp one at Allas Blancas for 189 pesos.  I felt like we had arrived at food nirvana, good well prepared food at fair prices.  The salad was served with a delicious garlic bread and the relleno with generous servings of retried beans and rice.

A pleasant young couple from San Francisco sat down next to us and we discussed Mexico.  The were interested in buying something affordable.  We suggested the beach at Higenias Blancas.

After dinner we returned to Villa del Palmar.  We wanted to sit on the raised terrace and watch the moon through the palms.  I filled a bowl with ice cream and doused it with a couple liberal splashes of brandy.  Suzette took a straight shot of brandy and we walked to the beach front terrace and sat on a lawn chair.

We spied and slurped and then returned to the room.  I made a cup of camomile tea to wash down the ice cream and we went to bed.

A lovely healthy day of activity and good food for last full day.

Bon Appetit