Some or most easily state: This is a first-rate “hole in the wall”.
Some may argue. Let’s see, for no arguments sake, traditional desert landscape dirt floor; check; open air and real wood fire, rustic as in no propane used for cooking wood fire; double-check.
Wood now smoldering like in the kind of wood fires that easily flow from a charcoal grill straight to anything you are wearing and will need a good washing later.
What’s that red spot on your ……….not to worry, it’s tabasco like hot sauce.
Need to go now, should’ve thought about it earlier and gone. No, no restrooms here.
For a must or need to go restroom, at this hole in the wall, you can dash across the four-way intersection that is constantly heavily laden with full size semi truck traffic.
Purpose of the dash is really to buy more beer. The OXXO is now your input and output source. For some there is no need to explain that last line.
Meanwhile back at the “hole in the wall”.
You show up with your six-pack of beer already ice-cold and now packed in an additional ice bag.
The desert air is warming perhaps to the eighties today. Close enough to lunch time at 10:30 a.m.
This particular hole in the wall place stays open from 10 to 6 p.m. daily. The enterprising Korean Mexican business owner has five of these scattered about La Paz.
The cost for a dozen chocolate clams is 100 pesos. The stuffed clams taste smoky like with what appears to be clams, ham, cheese and maybe some other mystery meat, but, I don’t ask.
I am told that every OXXO keeps an open supply of free ice, for customer use, for such occasions.
Our hole in the wall today is open air but, it does possess a water source and cleaning station with lots of ice to keep the seafood cold.
Some germs are good germs and we need them. Perhaps the chocolate clams deliciously flowing down your system with a dab or two of that Mexican red sauce will wreak havoc or perhaps it will fix or repair what ails you.
Imagine you growing old and never letting your feet come in contact with the earth, sand or beach water?
Imagine keeping those feet always wrapped up in shoes. If your hands and feet are your access point to feeling your environment all around you then you are simply cutting off 50% of your senses. Perhaps that’s what happens when people get older. They stop feeling the ground they walk on and only feel the inside of their shoes.
Now imagine all the home cooks and “hole in the walls” all around.
Why eat here? If not for the delicious chocolate clams, shrimp or clam ceviches or other seafood then why?
Can you possibly see taking yourself so seriously at a place like this? If you feel the need to start living life on the wild side or if “I’m the boss or big businessman or too uptight with life” starts getting in the way of life then take a road trip, find a “hole in the wall” and eat.
Weak stomachs need not apply.
Someone once said that cars are about the destination and motorcycles are about the journey; then what are boats all about?
Boats are about getting one-off their “ass” and getting you to start living life.
Living a little. Too harsh? After all, why are we here, at this point in our lives?
“The future is not what it used to be!”
– Paul Valery
Is the boating life starting to feel like the comfort of my normal?
Trawlercat
LaPaz Baja Circa 2015
Trawlercat Blog Dispatches 