Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Belize

Central America On The Road 2004

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Mexican cuisine is well renowned, so I do not need to tell you how amazingly tasty it is!  We enjoyed nachos with guacamole, Margaritas, enchiladas and more.  The flavours are so intense and so earthy, that you can never have enough (at least, I couldn’t!).

I will never forget our first Mexican breakfast… we went to a cafe in the residential area of Cancun that was serving “natural food”. We ordered 2 tropical juices and wholemeal pancakes… and look at their size!

We also visited a few markets in the area of San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas. One was a small market in the main square of San Juan Chamula. The food section was not very big, but the food was so nicely presented that it deserved a couple of pictures.

In the nearby village of Zinacantan we visited a local house and we got to eat some freshly made tortillas.

The interesting thing was the fact that they were a different colour than the one we are used to! We found out that there are many varieties of corn and that they are not all yellow: we saw white, dark blue and red corn! And they all taste great!

In San Cristobal we also bought some chocolate. Maybe not everyone knows or remembers this, but chocolate comes from this area of the world and was already produced and consumed by the pre Colombian civilizations. We found a small pastry shop and bought some of these famous Mexican chocolate discs.

After San Cristobal, we made our way to Guatemala.

Guatemala

On our way to Lake Atitlan from Mexico, we saw lots of different crops.  The most amazing ones were the vegetable patches grown on volcanos slopes near the Fuentes Georginas spas.  As you can clearly see, they were growing amidst sulphur emissions!

In the same area, we also saw coffee plants along the road.  I just LOVE coffee and I had never seen “raw coffee beans” before.  So it was really interesting to see what the beans look like before they are roasted.

We saw lots of small villages around Lake Atitlan and all of them had some sort of little food market and small shops along their narrow streets.

We also went to see the very famous Chichicastenango market widely considered to be the  largest market in Central America.  Twice a week, people from nearby villages come to Chichi to sell their produce and their handicrafts.  It is such a colourful and amazing experience!  Everywhere you look there are beautiful things to buy.  Here are some pictures of the Chichi market:

Another interesting thing was the amazing street food.  Here you can see 2 examples of it: an ice cream cart and a fresh juice stand.

We had the best food in Antigua.  We found a fantastic restaurant called La Fonda de la Calle Real.

The food was so delicious that we still remember what we ate.  Queso fundido (melted cheese) with chorizo, carne adobada (pork marinated with spices and herbs served with a coriander sauce), lamb stew served with rice and tamales (Wiki) (a corn based dough wrapped in a leaf) and as dessert we hadplatanitos (fried bananas with cinnamon cream)!  Yum!  And we also had a very interesting drink, called “Cucaracha”: a shot of Kahlua (Wiki) set… on fire!