Worth the Wait

truly exquisite food, is always worth the wait, isn´t it?

Tonight´s menu, at the lovely La Pigua (the crayfish) restaurant in Campeche, we have just consumed a delightful Chenin Blanc from the baja california Guadalupe Valley, having a coconut shrimp with apple chutney and a squid a la Laurencillo. Laurencillo was a famous Irish pirate who plagued Campeche so much they had to build big walls and towers to fend him off, but nowadays they seem quite proud of him.  The coconut shrimp was the lightest, most delicate coconut coating on very fresh shrimp, fried in some way that it was nearly no trace of any oil at all, just light fresh not too sweet coating,then came with a fresh half coconut filled with a spicy apple dip.  The squid was tender, delicious, dark, in a savory chile guajillo sauce, amazing.  the wine was fresh and light. we are very happy.

All in all Campeche has been so wonderful. It{s got a very pretty colonial center, all the area that was originally within the walls they had to build in the 1600s to protect themselves from English and Irish and Dutch pirates, is still colonial, the building fronts and false fronts painted with warm pastels that glow. some of the buildings are rich beyond dreams, containing collonades of Moorish style arches and fancy Belle Epoque staircases and Italian marble black and white checker square floors. This time of year, a very fresh, almost chilly breeze blows off the Gulf of Mexico. 

The food.  For lunch today, we were at a wonderful seafront restaurant with the unassuming name of La Palapa, a palapa is a thatched roof hut. But what a hut. This one was built out over the gulf, and was huge and airy, and filled with the local business folks men and women of Campeche. Everyone was greeting each other with genteel kisses.  Waiters bustled around and they brought us a huge tray of what we might have if we wished: giant crab claws, an assortment of fresh snapper and grouper and whatever. We just settled for something that seemed small: a stuffed chile local style with crab. but what a dish. it took about an hour to arrive, due to lots of busyiness making our waiter forget us we think, but, it was preceded by the most delicious savoy dip (chickpea? we don´´t even know.  And then when our stuffed chile dish arrived, it was the most flaky egg batter coating a delicious chile with the most incredible and abundant crab filling, all sitting in a warm orange tomato sauce with hints of herbs. it was great. it was SO worth the wait. the entire event was in a giant room with a palm roof and the sides were on the gulf of mexico, but shaded by white translucent shades that kept out the fresh wind. And we had this with a Bohemia beer and several diet cokes and fizzy mineral water.  

One reason we were so ready for this meal, is that we spent the day exploring Campeche.

Last night when we arrived we went to a hotel we knew of, the Hotel America, ate at a really nondescript tourist trap called La Paroquia with terrible orange tomato sauce food on good seafood, listened for a while to a new age band from the highlands of Chiapas that sang in Mayan with electric guitar and fiddle sort of like celtic soft rock bands, and crashed early.  Hotel America is $50 or $60, colonial rooms, great bathrooms but everything in dingy monotones for some reason.

We woke in the lovely darkness of our colonial room, well shielded from the street noise and the noise of the evenings tourist entertainment of nouvelle rock bands in the central square by giant wooden doors, but when you open them on the curvy iron grilled balcony, lovely soft tropical air.  We woke at dawn and walked on the malecon, the quayside walk, and took photos of the early morning sunlight on Campeche´s magical colonial churches and streets.  we went off to our new hotel, a bargain but a little low budget, the Hotel Regis, for 385 pesos a night about $35.  Our new room is huge, a warm orange hue, wrought iron balcony, but sheets that feel like painting tarps. and no bedside lamps, just dim overhead fluorescents. oh well...

We have enjoyed shopping in Campeche. there are a lot of shops with stylish young people clothes. I brought a 1960s style body hugging sheath in black linen with a central panel of white cream hand embroidered brocade that I think will be perfect for the formal New Years Eve dinner we go to every year with our godmother at Smith Ranch homes.  Craig brought a linen like cubana shirt. also, a t shirt with a great pirate skull and crossbones. I countered with a white eyelet linen nightgown to replace the one I left in our bargain hut 4 nights ago.  And now I´m looking at stylish black high heels to go with my new dress.

But mostly we have enjoyed walking Campeche. there is a nice walking tour in the lonely planet. the town has sections of its original stone walls, that you can walk on up on the ramparts.  and also you can dip into the local market area, where I bought sunglasses with rhinestones, and we got entertained in the fish market by cuban drummers, and then got more entertained by fishmongers dancing to the drumming with their enormous raw catch of the day in their arms.  Then really great, out on a park near the market are booths where many people are selling their enormous starlike Mexican Christmas pinatas, and finishing them, in front of us! giant newspaper stars getting dressed up with frilly paper, before our eyes, by cute old ladies.

Another fabulous thing about Campeche, is the museums. There are TWO small, but priceless, museums for the Mayan ruin fan. One, right in town, is the museum of Mayan architecture, it is in one of the six or eight remaining ´bastions´of the town wall, and it has the very best pieces of old buildings and old stelas (the upright stones the Mayans used to commemorate war victories or the power of their kings), and also old doorways.  And the other is the archaeology museum 2 miles south of town in one of the big forts, Fuerte San Miguel, high on a bluff over the gulf of mexico, and it has the very best in Jade funeral masks and priceless pottery painted delicately with scenes of mayan life in red orange brown and yellow, and ceramics in the forms of fabulous animals and human portraits. neither museum is very large and they are both distinct and the sites of both, in these great old stone fort buildings, are great.  And also there are other museumlets in Campeche:  nearly each one of these stone bastions is a museum of something.

A nice one, the museum of piracy, involves paying a fee, being literally locked into the fort, where you ascent to the battlements with their little towers and places to shoot arrows from and even little ancient outhouses where you could apparently poop directly over your enemy..., anyway, to get out of the museum, you have to find the bell that was wrung to warn people that the town gates were being shut for the night, so they had better get inside or else, and you have to ring it twice, to get let out! god help you if you could not remember the instructions, as was happening to some other tourists we met trapped up there in battlement hell. it was not hell, it was a great way to get up high over Campeche and see all the ornate towers of the great churches in the town.

Now we have officially ´done´ Campeche and so we have to see how this town will be to just hang in. Oh I forgot two more current attractions,a reallly wonderful special exhibit they have of the best ancient fossils from some  desert in upper Mexico, I mean actually these are great exhibits great fossils and great live animals, and in the square a huge informative but kinda sad photo exhibit of places all over the planet that are having or will have damage from climate change. Mexico is working hard to educate itself. I do see a lot less trash and more interest in recycling and supplying water without new plastic bottles, all that.

tomorrow, a new ruin, edzna, and then we may go out to another country village before on to Merida, the queen of cities. we got a foretaste of merida tonight, in the music played at La Pigua, great cuban and mexican ´vals´ favorites.