We have been eating out at least once a day, a mix of places enjoyed by the locals and more expensive touristy places. I was expecting that our food costs here would be about the same as home, and they are close, with the difference being that we're eating out at least once a day here vs. not often at home. It'd be easy to eat very cheaply here by sticking to traditional places or eating at home more, but I'd rather enjoy as many places as we can while we're here! The tourist places are a little less than US pre-pandemic prices, ~$45-50 for dinner for the 4 of us including beer or other drinks for everyone.
Local places are half that or less, breakfast ~$3 and lunch/dinner ~$5. Our best deal was probably this traditional breakfast - coffee, basket of hot tortillas, beans, scrambled eggs, cheese, sweet plantains, and watermelon, all for $2.80 (including tip):
One of Ruth's early favorite meals was at a traditional Guatemalan restaurant in the middle of the market where we ordered "something vegetarian" for me and Bill (beans/rice with a ton of local veggies and hot blue corn tortillas that we watched a woman make across the corridor) and smoothies for the girls. We watched the owner's baby play nearby while she made our food, then watched her pop up a pack-n-play for his nap. Total = $9.
Smoothies, or licuados, are everywhere here - you can order one as your drink at basically at any restaurant for about the same price as lemonade ($2-$2.50), and choose your fruit and milk or water. Ruth's fave is mora (blackberry) and Zadie's is fresa (strawberry).
Another fun traditional meal was at Comedor Konojel in San Marcos, where they had a vegetarian version of Kak'ik, a stew that usually includes turkey or chicken. The sauce tasted a lot like a non-spicy chili with potatoes, corn, and other veggies over rice. The traditional dessert in the middle of the table is platanos en mole, which was much tastier, sweeter, and more chocolatey than I expected. This meal was also fun because we were on the second floor which had a roof but no windows, and we sat on pillows at this low table.
In the picture above, the girls are eating more pupusas, their fave. They've had pupusas at four or five meals so far. They're Salvadoran but very popular here, ~$1.50/each or two + a drink for $3.25. They're similar to arepas or johnny cakes/hoe cakes, like a thick corn tortilla where you have your choice of ingredients cooked inside (girls go for cheese or cheese and beans). They're served with a slaw and a thin tomato salsa. We tried to make pupusas at home one night - yummy, but not right. Necesitamos practicar!
Another of Ruth's favorites is this beautiful coffee shop called Artista de Cafe. Fancy coffee shops are ~75% of US prices. Lots of great coffee here.
One of Zadie's favorites so far was a pizza place on a rooftop next to an old building in ruins. Quite the view! Lots of firework noise that night though, which she was less excited about. I was surprised at how popular pizza is here - there are enough places serving pizza in this small town that we could probably eat pizza every day at a different restaurant for the entire month.
The girls have also been enjoying all the great ice cream, ~ $2. There's a surprising amount of vegan ice cream and a non-surprising amount of delicious tropical flavors of ice cream. Vegan passion fruit ice cream? Me gusta.
We were also excited to check out the local produce. Squash is popular here, and we've tried a few new (to us) yummy squashes. We didn't find all the fruits we'd read about, but did find mangosteen, rambutan, and nance (yellow cherries). Rambutan was everyone's favorite of those, and also the most visually interesting:
Our favorite fruits and veg here, however, are familiar items that are just so much BETTER here: mango and avocado. Every mango and avocado we've had has been perfectly ripe. It is so nice to stop at the market or grocery store, buy avocados, and then use them immediately instead of having to wait until that magical 4 hour window when they're ripe and not rotten.
Another fave is the fresh tortillas. There are women (always) shaping and cooking tortillas over comals (big round griddles) at individual stands or inside restaurants all over town. At the end of our street, there are two women running a small tortilleria, one cooking, one selling. We've stopped there a few times on the way home from morning outings to buy piping hot tortillas for lunch. 5Q = ~$0.65 for ~20 small tortillas.
Most frequently for lunch, we'll top those tortillas with "squeezy beans", as we've nicknamed the pouches of refried black beans from the grocery store. Zadie loves her squeezy beans!
We have not yet found a vegetarian version of pepian at a restaurant, a stew considered the national dish of Guatemala, so made it at home one night using a sauce packet from the grocery store. Not the same, I'm sure, but it was tasty! It was like a Guatemalan curry, a tomato-based sauce thickened with sesame and pumpkin seeds. Food across the board here has not been spicy.
Here's a compilation video of some of our meals here. One more week of delicious food before we head home!
The original clawfoot tub now has a new faucet and a shower!, which gives us a full working bath upstairs. We first thought the tub would require professional reglazing, but it turns out that some sanding/painting on the outside and a serious cleaning on the inside was all it needed. Shower conversion kit arrived last week and Bill set about the super-fun task of removing all the old parts and hooking everything up. Boy, does he love plumbing! Old faucet and previous "shower", a short length of garden hose with a plastic sprayer on the end: New faucet (which is so bright and shiny, pic doesn't do it justice, love it): Ready for shower curtains and final touches: It did take 5 trips to Lowes and 3 trips to Home Depot IN TWO DAYS (damn those old, non-standard plumbing sizes), but it works! In other news, I think the second color on the hallway is going to work (first one = too beige), so Bill will start on trim this week. Full final before and after pics are here .
Quite the transformation with the new color scheme! Since our house is located in a historic district, the colors had to be approved by the historic district commission. Front Door After The colors and products used here are (not affiliate links): Door - Sherwin Williams Cajun Red ( link , a pretty red-orange in real life, looks slightly more brown here) Siding - Sherwin Williams Rookwood Blue Green ( link ) Trim (white) - Sherwin Williams Pure White ( link ) Trim (teal) - Sherwin Williams Still Water ( link ) Porch floor - Sherwin Williams Pewter Tankard ( link ) Brick foundation (not shown) - Sherwin Williams Rookwood Dark Brown ( link ) Mailbox - Ecco E4 in Bronze ( link , available via Amazon and elsewhere) Similar Craftsman-style Door With Dentil Shelf ( link ) Front Door Before
Today's post was written by my 7-year-old daughter, Zadie: Hi, I'm going to tell you about our trip to Costa Rica that we are going on in 12 days also I'm the youngest daughter of the person who wrote this blog so the day after school gets out we go on our trip. It will suck. I don't even get a day to relax before our trip. At least it is not like another of our trips when we had to wake up at 3 am. But we still have to get up at 6 am. When we get there, our house only has three bedrooms so I will have to sleep with my sister and I don't want that and she does not want that. But at least we get a tv and our own beds. Oh and the planes we take there are one to Charlotte which is less than an hour long and then one to Costa Rica which is 4 hours long. I don't know the activities so bye. PS - I hope you liked my writing because I cannot see half of the letters on my mom's keyboard so this was hard to type.
