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Modelo extra and plantain chips
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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 RE: Modelo extra and plantain chips (in reply to Leñador)
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My favorite Mexican beers are Bohemia and Pacifico. In my opinion, however, Corona tastes like watered down piss. You need the silly lime slice to mask the lack of good flavor. Maybe that's why it's the favorite of college students who wouldn't know a good beer if they had one in front of them. But Bohemia and Pacifico, now those are as good as any beer, save perhaps a few German, Czech, and Belgian local beers.
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And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Nov. 8 2013 0:53:48
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Modelo extra and plantain chips (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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I, too, like the various "craft" beers one finds, in my case in Washington, DC. Nevertheless, for a consistently good tasting beer, I find it hard to beat Bohemia and Pacifico. Part of it no doubt stems from a longing to be in a favorite cantina I used to frequent on many trips to Mazatlan throughout the past 50 years or so. I haven't been to Mazatlan in several years due to the violence. The state of Sinaloa, particularly its capital Culiacan, just up the road from Mazatlan, is second only to Michoacan in narco-cartel violence. One of these days I just might say to hell with it and spend a few days, once again, in Mazatlan, drinking Pacifico while taking in the magnificent view of the sea and the three islands that lie just off the coast: Isla de Venados, Isla de Pajaros, and Isla de Chivos. Drinking good Mexican beer and eating magnificent, huge gulf shrimp is worth the trip alone!
Cheers,
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Nov. 8 2013 23:00:24
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Modelo extra and plantain chips (in reply to BarkellWH)
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I've only been to Mazatlan once, but I enjoyed it. In 1961 it occurred to me to spend the summer camping in Mexico. At first I planned to travel by motorcycle, but in the end two friends decided they wanted to go along.
We bought a pristine '55 Ford half-ton pickup, built a stout cover to be chained over the bed, loaded up camping gear and food, and set out. We paused in Monterrey to have some 5-gallon jerricans galvanized to carry water, and set off toward the west. We camped between Monterrey and Saltillo, and made it the next night to the mountains west of Durango. Some locals visited us as we cooked dinner. They surveyed our camping gear with obvious covetousness, but noting that, like everybody out in the sticks in Mexico in those days, we went armed to the teeth, they retired in good order. We saw bear sign and heard the wolves howling through the night.
The road from Durango to Mazatlan had just been finished. It is a spectacular feat of engineering, pushed through wildly mountainous terrain, with steep grades and hairpin turns. After summiting, we descended precipitously for over a hundred miles in second gear.
Rounding a corner, I noticed a row of rocks placed across the right lane. This is the usual sign of a breakdown around the bend, with no room to pull off the road. I slowed, but was puzzled on rounding the bend. No breakdown, just a double row of rocks across the right lane. As we pulled around the rocks, we saw an Indian sleeping on the road between the rocks. It was the only level space for miles around, and he had astutely observed the rock laying habits of the few truckers who had passed during the week or two the road had been open.
At Mazatlan we treated ourselves to a good hotel and a nice dinner. The waiter made a Caesar salad at table side, complete with dressing, never touching the ingredients with anything but a fork and a spoon--cracking eggs, separating the whites, the whole bit. I probably had my first bottle of Pacifico at that table.
It was a good summer. We ended up walking around in the high jungle in Yucatan and northern Guatemala for six weeks, which was one of my original objectives. The longer we camped out, the coarser our drinking habits became.
By the time we camped across the road from Chichen Itzá in Yucatan, we were passing around a bottle of Jose Cuervo "La Rojeña" tequila, at around a dollar per liter. After roughing it for weeks, it went down smooth. When that ran out we re-supplied with some locally--no doubt illegally--produced "ron de caña". Not so smooth. Far out in the jungle, the Mayans appeared not to have any alcoholic beverages, but we got along OK. When we got back to the tiny jungle village on the dirt track where we had left our truck, there was a party with beer--Montejo with ice in the glass.
That night we slept in the school house the Mexicans had built, but where the Mayans had not yet permitted them to send teachers. The windows were open for the breeze. I awoke to see a big vampire bat swooping silently about the room. We were protected by our mosquito nets. We had seen a few bat bites on our pack horse, but that was the first time I had seen one of the huge bats in person.
We went back to Mérida where we found a nice pension. It had decent rooms, orange trees and a swimming pool in the garden, good food, and best of all, four sweet young college girls from Kansas on a summer adventure to Mexico. We regaled them with tales of our heroic jungle exploits, took them out to dinner and to Chichen Itzá. They said the three guys they were with had been reluctant to venture out into the wilds of the countryside. We left the guys in town.
RNJ
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Date Nov. 9 2013 17:47:41
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Modelo extra and plantain chips (in reply to C. Vega)
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Since Charles Vega ("Carlos Francisco" in guitar marketing mode) has expressed interest in traveler accommodations, I will post a little about the first place we stayed in Merida, before we went off to Chichen Itza, Isla Mujeres and the jungle.
But first I will set the scene to explain why we stayed in such a lousy dump. Isla del Carmen is at the very south end of the Gulf of Mexico. Two big rivers flow into the bay behind it. Today Ciudad del Carmen is the center of the oil business in the southern Gulf. You are likely to see guys in the hotel restaurant wearing baseball caps, eating hamburgers and speaking in pure oil patch Texan. In 1961 the island was nearly deserted. There were no bridges connecting it to the mainland. The highway traffic crossed the channels on low freeboard dinky little ferries.
It was time to make camp by the time we got onto the island. The miles of deserted beaches looked inviting, so we drove off the road, through a little low brush and onto the sand. I cooked dinner--rice and beans. We went to bed and slept the sleep of the just. After breakfast the next morning there was a little rain shower. When we fired up the pickup it sank into the sand up to the rear axle. We fetched fallen palm fronds, put them under the wheels, moved two feet and sank into the sand again. This process was repeated a number of times until it got too hot to work at about 10 AM.
We waded neck deep into the Gulf to cool off. Jim went back to the truck for his fishing rod and discovered there was a school of pompano just off the beach. Good luck! One of the tastiest fish in the ocean. After sundown we set to work again, and kept at it until about 3 AM. It became clear we were going to be stuck for days if we had no outside help.
Although we had a month's supply of rice and beans, plentiful fish off the beach and about eight gallons of drinking water, we began to worry that we would run out of water if we were stuck for days. The next day we flagged down a couple of trucks. They sympathized but wouldn't risk venturing onto the sand to pull us out.
The water problem was eased a bit when Don explored the grove of coconut palms across the road. The coconuts lying on the ground were mature and didn't contain much juice, but the monkeys in the trees were annoyed at Don's trespassing. They pulled fresh coconuts off the trees and hurled them at him.
When I commented earlier on Don's expert rock throwing he explained. He was a scrawny kid--still not very tall at age 20, and skinny. To defend himself against the neighborhood bullies he became an accurate and forceful rock thrower. Chunking pebbles at the monkeys drove them into a coconut hurling frenzy. Don returned with armloads of fresh drinking coconuts.
Still it looked like a number of nights' more work to get the truck back onto the road. On one of his coconut expeditions, Don noticed the track of a small bulldozer on the highway shoulder. We convened an investigation and debated which way it had travelled. Finally it occurred to us to flag down a car and ask whether they had passed a bulldozer along the way. They said there was one apparently broken down about five miles back down the road. It was too hot to work, not time yet to fish for dinner, so we flagged down a car going the other way and bummed a ride toward the bulldozer.
The machine sat beside the road. Its operator was seated on the ground leaning against it, with his hat pushed down over his face, apparently enjoying a siesta. We approached cautiously, uttered a polite greeting, and told our sad story. The driver said the bulldozer had broken down. He was waiting for the mechanic, whose arrival time was unpredictable. I told him I would give him twenty pesos if he would pull us out of the sand.
Without further ado, the driver arose, drained about a cup full of water from the fuel tank, and fired up the bulldozer after it belched black smoke and steam for a while. We rode back to our camp in style. The truck was pulled onto the road promptly. I gave the driver the promised 20 pesos. He thanked me and asked for some water. We gave him a cup full. Instead of drinking it, he poured it into the fuel tank. The bulldozer chugged and burped to a stop. When we drove away, the driver was back in full siesta mode, waiting for the mechanic.
We got to Merida about sundown, tired, hot, hungry and salty from our days and nights at the beach. I saw a casa de huespedes sign and pulled over to the curb. We inspected the room. It was terrible. There was one big bed, with neither sheet nor blanket. The bare mattress was covered with little brown spots, a sure sign of bedbugs. The bathroom was dark, dank, moldy and overrun with swarming cockroaches. But we had our jungle hammocks with mosquito netting, and in those days all cheap hotels in the tierra caliente had stout hammock hooks in the walls. We negotiated a price of 15 pesos ($1.20) for the three of us.
We braved the cockroaches and the mold to shower, and felt much better. It was Saturday night, so we unpacked our suits and put them on. When we asked directions to the town square for the evening paseo the ill tempered old woman running the dump surveyed our suits and ties, then announced that the price was 15 pesos for each one of us, not 15 for all three. We turned without a word, returned to the room and started packing. The woman followed us, observed for a couple of minutes and relented.
On our arrival at the town square I was particularly struck by the first incident. There were four or five shoe shine artists seated on a bench at the corner. One got up, approached, greeted us politely and offered his services. I responded just as politely that we meant to walk about a little bit first. What struck me was that without further conversation, the shoe shine man said, "Gracias, jovenes, y buenas noches," and returned to the bench.
There were no tourists at all in Yucatan in those days. None. Cancun was still just sand dunes. There was one small travelers' hotel on Isla Mujeres. When we spent the day at Chichen Itza, we were the only visitors. Eleven years later my wife and I visited Yucatan. There were tourists then. We couldn't set foot in the street without being assailed by souvenir vendors, various kinds of touts, con men and kids asking for a handout. They wouldn't give up pestering us as long as we were in public. But in 1961 people still had good manners.
We patrolled the plaza. The paseo still worked as it had for centuries. The young men circulated in one direction, the young women and their chaperones strolled the opposite way. We got smiles and a few giggles, but no chaperone was going to let her charge converse with strangers, much less obvious foreigners. About midnight we went back to the dump where we planned to sleep.
It was hot. The windows had no screens, but there were no mosquitoes. Presumably Merida was being regularly sprayed with DDT, as were cities in Texas at the time. To get the most benefit from the scarcely existing breeze we hung up our jungle hammocks without the mosquito nets. Fortunately, before we dozed off a thunderstorm passed through and cooled things down. We put up the mosquito nets.
The next morning I awoke with one elbow near the mosquito net. On the net, waiting patiently for the elbow to contact it, was a bug. I had never seen a bedbug in person, but I took it to be one. Nearby were dozens of other bugs, also waiting. In a line up the hammock rope was a further contingent of bugs. We packed up and got out of there, heading east for Chichen Itza, Isla Mujeres, and eventually the high jungle of Quintana Roo and the Petén of northern Guatemala.
I hope you are sufficiently impressed by our choice of lodgings, "Carlito". We got to know not only the price gouging ways of the old bitch proprietor, but also the customs of the local bedbugs.
RNJ
I should add that I have stayed at a number of very nice inexpensive places in Mexico, and enjoyed warm hospitality. At age 17 I spent the summer in Mexico traveling by myself. I stayed at the Casa Maravilla in Uruapan, sadly long out of business. It was a good sized private house converted into a nine-room hotel. There was a tropical garden in the patio. The clean and comfortable rooms were arranged around the patio. Under the wide eaves of the roof beside each room door there was a cage with singing jilgueros (linnets in English). The owner's family ate in the dining room with papa at the head of the table. There was a pretty and slightly flirtatious Indian teenager who waited tables….
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Date Nov. 10 2013 20:29:35
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Modelo extra and plantain chips (in reply to C. Vega)
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In 2003 I visited Jorge C., our guide, translator and companion in our walkabout in the jungle. He was 67, I was 65. I was really happy to see him in good health and good spirits. He said he still worked in his cornfields 5 1/2 days a week. He had four sons and 11 grandchildren, "All of whom read and write Castilian perfectly."
In 1961 the smooth 2-lane highway that now goes near X-Yatil had been a dirt and rock track, hacked through the jungle, one bulldozer blade wide. Every 2 km there was a space two bulldozer blades wide. If you met someone, the one nearer to the passing point backed up. It was absolutely not done to pass someone walking in your direction of travel along the road. You stopped and gave them a ride.
The missionary priests in Felipe Carrillo Puerto had recommended Jorge, about our own age, early 20s. His father and uncle were corn traders who ran mule trains through the jungle. They and Jorge spoke Spanish. Almost everyone else out in the woods spoke only Mayan.
In 2003 we sat in front of the village store in X-Yatil on Sunday afternoon and recited tales of our excellent adventure to the idlers who gathered.
Jorge said I was absolutely fearless, crawling through the rattlesnake cave on all fours with a pistol in my belt, the smell of snake everywhere, and the bones of its prey. I corrected him.
"Jorge, I was scared s h i t less. I was just not letting on, a skill you learn early on a Texas ranch."
One of the young guys asked, "How did you get to Guatemala if there were no roads?"
Jorge replied, "You got up off your a s s and walked."
About 80 miles as the crow flies, somewhat further the way we went. Then 30 or 40 miles into the Petén, and back to X-Yatil by a different route. We went at an easy pace, took side trips to see unmapped ruins, spent a couple of days at each village we liked.
During a trip in 2008 I visited the archaeological site at Calakmul in the middle of the big ecological reserve in Campeche. We walked close by in 1961. In 2008 the forest within the reserve looked just the same as it had in 1961. Made me really happy.
At Calakmul I told one of the Mexican archaeologists about our trip in 1961. He said the huge city of Calakmul had been discovered in the 1930s, but they had no funds to clear the jungle, investigate it and open it to the public. To discourage looters, they just kept quiet about it. They had invited Sylvanus Morley, one of the early experts on the ancient Maya, to have a look.
I told him that everywhere we went out in the jungle in Yucatan and Guatemala, as soon as people learned we were from the USA, they asked, "Oh, do you know Dr. Morley?"
The archaeologist laughed uproariously.
Apparently Morley and his wife, with a pack mule, had been everywhere in the Yucatecan and northern Guatemalan jungle in the 1920s-1930s.
RNJ
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Date Nov. 10 2013 22:19:31
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Modelo extra and plantain chips (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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All this reminiscing reminds me what a pleasure it was to spend time among the Mayans.
Having left our truck on the mainland to take the boat, we arrived at the dock on Isla Mujeres. Some young men had killed a boa constrictor that had been bothering the more agricultural south end of the island, eating chickens and small dogs, menacing children. The average Mayan man in those days was about 5 ft (152 cm) tall. They hung the dead snake over a tree branch a little higher than their heads, near the foot of the pier, to display it to returning residents and new arrivals. The snake's corpse touched the ground at both head and tail. It was about 12 ft (365 cm) long. They had killed it with their machetes.
The next morning, after arising from our hammocks slung over trees at the beach, we strolled about and around 10 AM came upon an inviting small bar. It was housed in a circular palapa. The roof was supported by peeled tree trunks and thatched with palm fronds. The sides were open to the breeze. The place sat on the sandy beach, with a full view of the crystal waters of the Caribbean. There was a polished concrete floor and a jukebox, silent for the moment. The barman was about our age, in his early twenties, with a friendly smile and an open but quiet manner.
We went in and asked for beer. The barman apologized that he had just received his daily supply, and put it into the electric cooler, but it wasn't cold yet. We settled for excellent cafe con leche made with creamy goat's milk and sweetened with local honey. The barman chipped ice from a block, washed it carefully in bottled water, and put it into the tall glasses with our coffee. He explained that the ice was made with purified water, but the transport was not always perfectly hygienic.
Soon enough other guys about our age began to show up, curious to observe the gringos. Isla Mujeres was more cosmopolitan than the jungle, even in those days everyone spoke Spanish. A quiet conversational camaraderie developed, with occasional witty sallies by our new friends. After an hour and a half or so the beer was cold, and we alternated buying rounds.
The peaceful atmosphere was rudely shattered by the speeding arrival of two Chevrolet carry-alls careening across the sand. They ploughed to a stop nearby. They bore Louisiana license plates. On the sides were the logo of Louisiana State University. A dozen or so young men and women bailed out and began attacking the beach. They turned over rocks and pieces of driftwood, firing .22 caliber revolvers, shouting and rushing about. Later we learned the revolvers were loaded with rat shot so as not to damage their quarry too much.
A boy was dispatched from the bar to observe this astonishing behavior. In a few minutes he reported back that the gringos seemed dedicated to the wholesale and indiscriminate extermination of lizards.
This was confirmed soon enough by the appearance of an older red-faced gringo at the entrance to the bar. Gesturing with his pocket dictionary, he bellowed, "LAGARTOS, LAGARTOS!"
This was met with bemused silence. Don and I had deep tans, handlebar mustaches and Mexican hats, but I was at least a foot too tall to be a Mayan. Jim had a floppy American sun hat and a bright red bushy beard. But apparently we escaped the notice of the Louisianan.
Eventually I responded in English. "What you are looking for is probably a little further up the page under lagartijas. The crocodile population has been rigorously suppressed by the locals."
"You speak English!?"
"A little."
"We are on an expedition to investigate the reptilian population here--specifically lizards. We would like you to help us."
I translated. The Mayans replied with mild sarcasm, but I pretended to translate:"How can we be of assistance?"
"Wait. Are you American?"
"100% gringo of the gringos, at your service."
"Just a minute."
He reappeared with a hefty lizard book. He spread it open on a table and pointed to pictures of the particular specimens he wanted. He enthused over the last one at some length, exclaiming over its rarity and offering a reward for its capture, dead or alive. I translated.
The Mayans calmly denied ever having seen any such creatures whatsoever, especially the one he described with such avarice. I translated. The lizardologist departed disappointed.
A couple of the Mayans strolled out onto the beach and returned in about ten minutes with an example of the super-rare reptile. One of them teased a thread from his frayed shirt cuff and tethered the lizard by a hind leg to the handle of an empty beer mug. The lizard seemed unhappy, and tried repeatedly to shake loose from the thread. The Mayans clucked in sympathy and placed a saucer of honey in front of it. The lizard was soon snacking on the flies it attracted, and calmed down considerably.
Coins were fed to the jukebox, more beer was ordered, an air of mild festivity led to guys dancing with one another. After about an hour the lizardologist returned to try again, even redder in the face and sweating more. As his eyes adjusted to the shade, he caught sight of the reptile rarity. He advanced on the table waving a wad of cash, offering a hundred pesos in a loud voice. A hundred pesos was not a negligible sum in those days.
I repeated the offer to the lizard's keepers, curious to learn their response. They replied calmly and quietly. I translated. I had a very hard time keeping a straight face. Don sat calmly and solemnly as though in church. Jim turned away, hoping to conceal his laughter, but you could see his shoulders shaking. Jim's father was the president of a prestigious state university. Though his father didn't share in it, Jim had grown up around academic self-importance.
The Mayans' reply was, "We would like to help you, but it would be impossible to sell this little creature today. You see, it is his birthday."
The lizard savant was dumfounded. He stammered in his stentorian gringo voice about the pursuit of science. He redoubled his offer of money. He rambled….
I conferred again with the proprietors of the lizard. They replied with mock solemnity.
"It is against their firmest principles to sell any creature on its birthday."
The lizardologist retired in confusion, and was seen to report to his accomplices with broad gestures of frustration. The Mayans remained quietly festive, the dancing resumed. Only after the gringos had exterminated all the lizards they wished to study and departed did the Mayans break briefly into hilarity. Then they lapsed into Mayan for a few moments. I asked the bartender if he would mind telling me what was being said.
"They are speaking of all the lizards that were killed."
But the mood soon lightened again. The enormities of the gringos were regrettable, but rare.
Now there's Cancun, and Isla Mujeres is littered with resort hotels.
RNJ
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Date Nov. 11 2013 21:19:30
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