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Published: October 2nd 2013
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Yesterday Roger and I decided to try and walk to the base of the volcano, Santa Maria. According to google maps, it would be about a 10k walk there (obviously 10k back too) and all together probably take 4 and a half hours. Since we like sleeping in, we got a late start and decided to just walk as far as we wanted to on the same route. We were gone total for 2 hours and 18 minutes so we assume we went about half way. I'm putting up pictures from the walk there. It was so nice being out of the city for a little bit. We were surrounded by corn farms and mud! There were lots of animals too, like cows, chickens/roosters, a goat thing (we were too far away to tell if it really was a goat or not), a turkey and baby turkeys...and roof dogs. I have no idea why, but there were dogs on so many roofs! I'm not even lying. If I was a funny person I'd make some pun about dogs "roofing" --- I don't know. We didn't get any pictures of dogs on roofs, but we did take one of an adorable guy
just chillin' in front of his house. He's got a smirk and a wink going on in the pic! Or he only has one eye, I'm not too sure. The clouds looked so cool going in between mountains, so we got some photos (las fotas) of those too.
When we got back, we were pretty wiped so we didn't feel like cooking or anything and decided to treat ourselves to a restaurant. We went to a place called "Taste of Asiatica." Asian food - one man operation! He opened the door, seated us, turned on music, took our orders, cooked it, brought it out to us, gave us our bill and opened the door when we left. The food was amazing. We ordered dumplings that were pretty much to kill for. Roger got pad thai (different from home, but still yummy) and I got a Thai Wrap (nothing too special). Then we were wiped so we bought some ice cream and headed home to watch "Ace Ventura"... with Spanish subtitles, of course.
I can't remember if I wrote about Sunday night or not - I probably didn't. We spent all day in the house,
cleaning and watching the vikes (Thanks Chooch for the website!!). By dark we were both pretty antsy so we decided to go for a walk (and maybe pick up some vino). We head to Parque Central, and there was a carnival/fair type of thing going on! There were people dancing with fire and a million stands selling all types of food. It really took us by surprise because A) we had no idea it was happening and B) it was SUNDAY! It was cool though, a lot of excitement in the air. We also totally got beer and wine...and ice cream cones. Throw in the MN win, and it was a pretty rad Sunday.
Today we went to a new market, really close to our apartment. We discovered it accidentally on our Volcano hike. It's a lot smaller than the one we normally go to, but it's also less crowded and we think it might be less expensive as well. It also has the world's largest carrots, I'm pretty sure. The produce was fresher, for the most part, than a lot of what we get. We bought 2 lbs of steak to make dinner today (more about that
in a moment). We seriously asked for "dos libras" of steak... she turned around to a huge slab of animal and cut it off, took off as much fat/skin stuff as possible, weighed it and we bought it. It was definitely a new sight for me.
ON TO DINNER! We're cooking it right now, but I'll wait until after it's done to publish the blog so we can have pictures of it completed as well. It's called Hilachas, and the recipe calls it a "popular Guatemalan dish made of cooked and shredded beef that is simmered in a mildly spicy tomatillo-tomato sauce." We're cooking the meat now; it has to simmer for 1.5 hours so we can shred it easily. Photos and updates when it finishes 😊
Besos mis amigos!!
UPDATE: I don't think we made Hilachas exactly the way the recipe calls for, because we ate ours more like a stew but it was still very good. Roger kept saying it tasted like tortilla soup (his favorite) -- he even sliced up and fried some fresh corn tortillas and threw them on top 😊 Oh! He also bought a VERY nice and expensive (for
Xela) knife, so of course I included a picture of that bad boy. And right now it's currently storming, but still beautiful so I threw in what downtown Xela looks like during a storm. The building all lit up is the Municipal Teatro - we haven't seen anything there yet but it is a beautiful, and very old, building.
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Aunt Paulette
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Really enjoying your blog. Stay safe.