Welcome to my neighborhood! As we settle into a routine here in Bucerias, we are spending more time in our own colonia, Buenos Aires. As you know, we are planning to build a house up the mountain close to La Cruz, but for now we are happy to be renting a house in this Mexican neighborhood. So for the next couple of blog posts let me take you on a tour of where we live and tell you about our daily routine.  First of course is the food!

We always start the day with our coffee in bed or on our balcony, blue sky and palm trees welcoming us to come awake. Breakfast is a vitamin fruit smoothie in the back garden and then we work for a few hours in our office. We have a great setup and as I work I look out the window at the cat on the roof next door or the giant iguana in the tree. Sometimes I take my computer outside to work.

By lunch time we’re ready to get out and explore the town. Trip Advisor tells me there are 116 restaurants in our little town and we’re determined to get to them all! Most are in walking distance – lots of them offer us a delicious lunch for less than $5. Tortas, tacos, tortilla soup, shrimp salad – those are our favorites.

Some of our favorite Mexican restaurants nearby -you can always count on being entertained by some music or shopping or chatting with a friend while you eat!  We also love the little taco stands on every corner with the Mexican abuelas (grandmas) cooking the best smelling tacos imaginable.

Afternoons are spent doing errands like paying bills – remember, only 1 errand per day – and volunteering or visiting at the orphanage. Some days we just explore – driving up and down all the streets in the town.  If we are cooking dinner, we stop at all the little shops to purchase fresh ingredients – just enough for today!  We also purchase food from the assortment of vendors who drive down our street, loudspeakers blaring.  I certainly don’t plan menus far ahead – it’s more fun to be surprised by what shows up each day!

Jicama Guy and Corn Guy stop right outside my door

Fish Market and Fruit Store right around the corner – we bought vegetables and mangos and Red Snapper and cooked up this feast. 

There’s the La Cruz market on Sundays – fish right out of the ocean, vegetables fresh from the garden and organic honey and eggs sold out of the trunk of a car…

Always great food to be had at the beach….

And of course there’s no end of weird food stuff – a grilled cheese sandwich out of a vending machine?

Our little Mini Super right across the street may look tiny but it always has just what I need – and we visit it once or twice a day to get 20 litre jugs of water ($2) or bags of sugar ($0.80) or eggs sold individually for 10 cents each.  Fresh tortillas are always warm in the red cooler.  It is open from 7:00 am to 10:00 pm every single day and the sound of its rolling door going up every morning and down every night is all the clock I need to plan my days.  There is something comforting about knowing there is always someone in those white chairs, keeping watch over the neighborhood that I was once wary of but now call home.

So that’s a food tour of my neighborhood.  Next I’ll show you some of the other sights in the streets surrounding my home.  It won’t be the same without the sounds, but you’ll get the idea!  In the meantime, I’m starving and we have at least 99 other restaurants to check out…..