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!
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
The second to last day of our trip, we had a relaxed travel day back south with the goal of ending up somewhere near enough to Anchorage for us to turn in the RV on time the next morning. Jim did some fishing (no luck), we had a leisurely breakfast in our boondocked RV, and wondered when exactly a huge moose pooped so close to our RV during the night. Fishing by our boondocked RV We didn't have a campground reserved for the night, but knowing that Anchorage campgrounds are primarily super expensive parking lots, we decided to stop 45 mins north in Wasilla. The city might be best known as the hometown of Sarah Palin, and it was covered with Palin signs. We later learned that Alaska was holding elections this Tuesday (Palin lost). In more entertaining news, Wasilla is also home to the Iditarod Headquarters and Museum. The Iditarod is a long-distance sled dog race covering over 900 miles in 8+ days. The headquarters had dog houses but no dogs visible during our visit, so we looked ar...
I hated this bathroom so much. The drop ceiling, the vinyl wood parquet floor tiles, the plastic sheeted fake tile walls. It was very exciting to destroy it. Our original plan was to keep the sink and toilet where they were, but swap out the tub for a smaller shower in the corner. Once everything was gone, we realized we had enough room for the sink on the same back wall rather than across from the toilet. We weren't positive if we had enough room, until the shower base and sink base were delivered this week. Now, I'm thinking this is definitely the way to go. There's so much more space to move than before (it was tight when I was pregnant)! Here are some shots of the bathroom, pre-demo: The after-demo pic below is the view through the doorway (same as the shot above), with the shower and sink bases roughly in place. On the far left, the newspaper template shows the actual toilet measurements. The blue tape on the wall is where we think the beadboard will end (same height a...
