Enchiladas verdes - Mexico 2005

Hurricane Wilma might be fast... as jedi drivers we´re faster. Seriously, we are still in San Cristobal, heading to Palenque tomorrow, and were literally more than 1,000 miles away. We will probably in Merida on Monday.

Today was a quiet day. We had decided to sleep in and woke up at 7 a.m., of course. Horrible, I know, but we were just awake because we went to bed early yesterday evening (like every day. LOL). No night life for us.

After breakfast (enchiladas verdes) we went SHOPPING first on the food mercado, then on the arts & crafts one. The food market so different from the ones I´m used to at home. We bought mandarines and tomatos for very little money and also encountered some very weird smells, not necessarily good. We stopped to have a snack of sweet somthings. I have no idea what it was. It tasted like apple strudel without the apples. Very sweet. Then we went to the regular market and I bought a leather painting with Mayan symboles for my aunt´s winter garden... and another scarf, made of wool this time. Silke bought a table cloth.

We stopped at a cafe for an orange juice and then continued our little shopping spree. Close to our hotel there is a jewlery store with beautiful stuff (and much cheaper than downtown). I bought a gorgeous bracelet with precious stones (tiger eye and lapis) and I´m still contemplating if I should get myself a necklace I saw there, too...

Speaking of jewlery, there is so far only one thing to be careful about and it´s corals, especially black corals, which are protected by the "endangered specis law" (I´m sure there is an official name for it).

Silke had a bit of problem withdrawing money with her bank card from her bank account. Two banks here didn´t accept the card but the third one did and she´s happy now to spend some more money.

Strolling through San Cristobal - sunshine today! - we stopped at another cafe. This one was located at the Zocolo - the big "piazza" every town has. Two jugos de naranja (orange juice) and after a while I thought about order a slice of cake which I had seen a picture of on the menu. I smiled at the mesero (waiter) and asked for a "torta". He asked what kind and started naming various kinds of fruits (or so I thought). He pointed at the menu saying "torta de la casa" with all fruits available (or so I thought). Imagine my surprise when he returned with my order and placed a big sandwhich in front of me, complete with ketchup and fries. Only then I remembered that I had read just yesterday that "torta" means sandwhich and "tarta" is cake. LOL. Silke and I laughed so hard and, of course, nobody else around us understood why.

Tomorrow we´ll start early to drive to Palenque (about 4 hours drive) and we will stay there for three nights.