by Arlo – Page 3 – A Year and a Day

Pacific Mexico Food Roundup

–by Arlo

When we left home, we left our favorite taqueria, Ramiro and Sons. I have always loved Mexican food in California. AInd though Mexican food in Mexico is very different from California’s Mexican food, it is at least as tasty as California’s Mexican food, and it has much more variety than what you will find in a taqueria in the Bay Area. Here is a roundup of all the Mexican food that we ate from Ensenada to Bahia Tenacatita.

As we walked up the streets of La Cruz, I was going crazy with all of the yummy looking taco shops on the street. What you come accross most of in Pacific Mexico is tacos and quesadillas. We have eaten fish tacos (pesca), octopus tacos (pulpo), shrimp tacos (camaron), and countless more. My personal favorite was from a resturant in La Cruz, called “La Silla Roja”. Not surprisingly, it had red chairs. Their street-side tables seemed like the best place to be in the world when you sat down at 8 p.m. as the heat of the day was turning into the cooler evening. Their best dish (in my opinion), was the “quesadilla mamalona”. This tasty morsel was 8 or 10 inches long and stuffed to the brim with your choice of asada, adobada, or chorizo. I tried all three, and they were all equally delicious.

The other thing which they have quite a lot of in Mexico is seafood. In San Quintin, we had fresh clams, and in San Jose del Cabo, I tried octopus in the form of the above mentioned tacos, and decided that it was a new favorite. Shrimp are plentiful, appearing everywhere from quesadillas to el “rollo del mar,” a bacon-wrapped fish fillet stuffed with shrimp and doused in rich, creamy, almond sauce. The Mexicans use spear, net, and longline to catch fish from their pangas, or fiberglass boats. It is a common sight in pacific Mexico to see the pangueros, or fishermen, walking up from their boats to a palapa resturant on the beach, and then cleaning the fish that you ordered right there in front of the resturant.

The food just got better and better as we went south, and when we got to La Cruz, we found a paleteria, or ice cream shop that we discovered to have very good ice cream cones as well as paletas, which this shop sold as a tasty combination of chocolate and ice cream on a popsicle stick.

With this much variety in food, I invariably ended up trying some new things. Some of them I came to love, like tomatillas, which taste like a sweeter green tomato, chayote squash, and octopus. trying some of these new things led to some of the best eating experiences so far on the trip. Some of the new things that I tried, I didn’t love quite as much, like de-spined, cooked, cactus, and some odd little seedpods that roadside venders were selling, called guamachiles. We came upon these little seedpods on a road trip to the mountain town of San Sebastian in a rented car. On the way up, our curiosity got the better of us, and we bought a big bag, full to the brim. We first disliked them, then we came to think of them as half-decent, and then they fell out of favor once more. But some of the new foods I straight up disliked, for some inexplicable reason, such as mole, an unsweetened chocolate sauce often served with chicken. Looking back at my whole food experience in Mexico so far, I am more than satisfied, but I would not go as far as to say that I am satiated, and I could probably handle a couple more paletas just fine.

Small Spaces

—by Arlo

As the tallest person in the family, I thought that I would write about living in small spaces. One of the biggest differences, between life at home and life on the boat is how all of our living spaces are are so much smaller on the boat.

My sister’s and my cabin, looking foreward

The place where I notice this the most is in the cabin that Alma and I share, the forepeak, at the very front of the boat. Compared to my room at home it is very small, and the floor is only 10 feet square so only one person can do anything at at time. My sister and I have to take turns being in it, and

The same cabin, looking in the other direction

because there is no room for a dresser, all of our clothes are stored in cubbies. But small isn’t all bad—my bunk is not too small, and it is the only place on the boat besides the head (bathroom), that has some privacy. I brought my blanket from home, which is also nice.

Me with a fish that I caught and cooked, you can see the sink in the front and the two kettles in the back, one for saltwater, one for freshwater

Another place where you really notice the size difference is in the kitchen, or galley. In the galley there is a three burner gimbaled stove with an oven, a sink with salt and freshwater pumps, and meager counter space. Under the counter, there are lots of racks of baskets for storing food. Compared to our kitchen at home, it is tiny.

The head, you can see the toilet, sink, and cabinets

The head is the smallest room aboard, maybe an eighth of the size of our bathroom at home. It has a sink, two cupboards, and toilet, which you have to pump to flush. The head is pretty much just a downsized regular bathroom, without a bathtub or shower. All in all, you get used to living in these small spaces, more quickly than one might expect, although I wont be sad to have my bedroom back when we get home.

Life on a Boat

–by ARLO

We moved onto Debonair four weeks ago, and we are starting to develop and settle into the new way of life. But it is still a world away from riding my bike in Alameda. One of the biggest differences from life in Alameda has been school. School on the boat is so different from ACLC. We only have one teacher and only do an hour or so of school a day, but our education is happening all the time. Our curriculum varies in every

A pod of bottlenose dolphins swimming under our bow

way from what is taught in ACLC in every class but math, in which we just follow along in our textbooks. We also learn some stuff that is not taught at ACLC, like oceanography, in which we see stuff from the text book in all parts of our life, from kelp beds to gray whale migration patterns, to being bullied by 4,500 pound bull elephant seals, and we get extra practice on subjects like Spanish, that we can go ashore and listen to and speak.

Another big difference is getting around. To go to the grocery store, we have to get in the dinghy, row ashore, either to a dock or to the beach, and if we land on the beach, we might have to make a surf landing. When there is a lot of surf on the beach, and you need to get ashore, you have to position the dinghy just right, and wait for the smallest wave that you can find, and then time it just right so that you surf in on the back of it. Once you hit the beach, you hop out into the ankle deep water and haul the dinghy up the beach, while waves break over you and go into the dinghy. You had better hope you put your phone in a dry bag. When you return from your trip to the store on foot, you have to launch the dinghy through the surf. You put the person rowing in the boat, and then the other people wait for a the smallest wave that you’ll get, and then push the dinghy out until you are knee deep, and then jump in, and yell at the person rowing to row like hell. We also have a two person inflatable kayak that we can use for smaller expeditions.

Once we return from shore, if we wanted to make lunch, we could either use the fresh food that we just picked up at the store, or use some of the five minivans full of non-perishable food that we jammed into every nook and cranny on the boat. For breakfast, we usually have cereal, either oatmeal or cold cereal. Dinner is the meal that is most like what it was at home. My mom will make something tasty, like soups, or pizza, and occasionally we will go out for dinner. All in all, the eating is much better than one might expect on a boat.

As for sleep on the boat, that is one of the few things that is pretty much the same. I have learned to like waking up at six in the morning, to the engine running, and hearing the boat leaving port, with my parents driving the boat up on deck, and then going back to sleep for another hour or two. When you finally do come up on deck in the morning in your pajamas, looking out at the coastline 5 or 10 miles away, with you bowl of cereal in your hand, you might sit around for a while, and then have to tend the main sheet, or rig a fishing line. This is all just part of life on the boat.

One of the only downsides of life on a boat as a kid is the lack of people your age. I haven’t talked to anyone under 35 in a month! But in the end, there are many more upsides than downsides, and living on a boat for a year is definitely worth it.