After being a while in beautiful places like downtown Catemaco, the variety of restaurant breakfast choices in provincial Mexican "burgs" drives me up the wall.
Same old stuff, huevos rancheros, mexicanos, revueltos, omelette, with or without cheese, mushrooms, ham, and occasionally chorizo or longoniza, with maybe green or red sauce. Huevos Motuleños are an abnormal treat.
Damn , I would love a McDonald´s breakfast burrito or a BurgerKing croissanwich.
And I would die for a Waffle house breakfast burger scattered, smothered and covered with hashed browns.
Just before I would kill for:
two+two+two - two eggs, two pancacakes, two bacons or sausages at the IHOP
Lox, creamcheese, tomatoes, and onions on a sesame bagel at any deli
Blueberry pancakes with fresh cream at any pancake house.
Something simple like: Buttermilk Pancakes, Home style Bacon and Sausage,
Creamy Cheddar Potatoes, Country Grits, Biscuits and Butter available at any "greasy spoon".
Steak'n eggs with fried onions, mushrooms and Texas toast served at any hicktown off ramp
Eggs Benedict as served in the Shark and Tarpon Club in North Miami.
And refills! Wonderful free coffee refills!
But, how about some nice homemade tortillas, flecked with chipotle and wrapped around pig innards, or some nicely sauteed shrimp with chorizo in a quesadilla.
At least that would wake up my customary local restaurant breakfast menus which have almost no relation to what people actually seem to eat in their homes.
brrrrrrrrrr
Ok - you are what you eat, or so they say. I guess now I am a tortilla.
May 7, 2008
Catemaco breakfasts
May 1, 2008
Catemaco Puente
Catemaco lives off puentes (bridges).
Puentes are the equivalent of a US long weekend, such as when a holiday falls on a Friday, vacations begin Thursday afternoon.
Mexico adds a little quirk to that system so that when a holiday falls on a Thursday, vacationers head out the door on Wednesday noon till Monday morning. Of course this only applies to government officials above the rank of peon (low level worker), much of the upper educational infrastructure and anyone else who can afford it or get away with it.
So the Mexican federal lawmakers passed another one of their new laws in 2006. Many legal holidays that fall on a weekday are now supposed to be celebrated on the next Monday.
This has been a heaven sent gift for Catemaco, because many of those who previously abused puentes have decided to accomodate the new regulations by holding fast to the original holiday and now adding the new holiday on Mondays to their extended vacations. So now think Wednesday noon to Tuesday morning for the original one day holiday.
Naturally many of the hotels fill up in Catemaco, and of course the weasely hotel owners charge the high season tourist rates.
Did you ever wonder what the productivity statistics are in Mexico?
Apr 20, 2008
Back to the cave in Catemaco
More details: La Ostería - Enoteca y Cervecería
Apr 10, 2008
Catemaco Casa Rosa
It took two immigrants from southern Germany to finally establish a bread & breakfast inn in Catemaco, Veracruz.
Offering southern hospitality, 2 kingsize bedrooms, french toast for breakfast and a glimpse of beautiful downtown Catemaco, the couple is embarrassing most local hotel owners with their ridiculously low rate of 199 pesos per night.
Stop by and practice your German.
Feb 28, 2008
Nanciyaga owner interview
Nanciyaga is possibly the only place around Catemaco, Veracruz that retains a commercialized version of the mystery of the Los Tuxtlas magic. Founded in the early 1980’s, this small Laguna Catemaco enclave gained publicity and funds with the filming in its reserve of the movie Medicine Man with Sean Connery. Since then Nanciyaga has turned itself into an ecology reserve and a small Disney World of magic.
The owner was recently interviewed in a Mexican newspaper. Unfortunately that link has disappeared, but was stored on an older blog. Here is GOOGLE garbled translated version.
to read the original Spanish - click here.
Here are asleep to the music of the jungle.
Carlos Rodriguez 'Caco' environmentalist: "He lived the destruction of forests in Latin America and eventually became a pioneer of eco-tourism. Black Sheep from a family of tobacco, Carlos Rodriguez, known as Caco, 62 years old, bought a 40 to the marsh area on Lake Catemaco (Veracruz) and created the ecological reserve of Nanciyaga, park and living a kind of spa prehispánico with baths temascal (with the red volcanic rocks), mud, massage and fair brujeriles.
Its cabins are among the most coveted rooms of Mexico .Always thought that one day would have a jungle, and when I was niño. So everything was beautiful, everything was bush and jungle. Although my grandfather told me that there was so many animals as before.
Ibas by the sea and everything was jungle arroyitos crystalline, there was no garbage or plastic. Nanciyaga was a need to always, I could make tarde.-His tenacity born of a kind of youthful trauma, right?-Studied veterinary and came back. The government began to distribute land, until there was a national commission for clearance and a law that you could accuse of having vacant land if there were jungle on your ranch. Not measured the consequences. Some lands used for agriculture, for other livestock, but the minute the quality of livestock was bad and corn no longer functioned.
The land failed to survive and what was left was jungle. He saw the mountain-born mechanical… - I see that touched click invention of the chainsaw, that sawmill tátil by allowing end everything. Progress was to finish on Sunday with the last group of mountain and organize matazón of animals who had taken refuge allí.-So left the guild ganadero.-Vendí my ranchito and with that I bought this place. They had to do something productive and show that the forest serves more than topple trees and make a pasture. And the idea worked, but everyone told me I was crazy and that it was not feasible. --
Have you helped the Government?-Rather resisted accepting that this was a reserve, saying it was too chiquito. After thousand red tape was recorded as educational ecological reserve. But we are showing that there are options productive in the jungle .-
And education?-We have important environmental education. They come to discover many children in the jungle areas that I knew both jungles enormous. Now living in the midst of ill meadows, cattle bad, bad agriculture. There are many animals prinicipio feared that the man, and now we see them moving out, we are not afraid, you can portray almost tocar.-
Nanciyaga also gives trabajo.-We have recruited 60 people, a payroll frightening, particularly at this time of storms and cyclones, which we must continue gándoles jam. In holiday hire students as guides. --
What does Nanciyaga?-Welcome tourists and make them a tour of the jungle, which are reproductions of antiquities, our work. They are going to a spring of mineral water and drink a glass pocito using as a piece of the plant apiche. They made a mask of mud mineral… - has a theater inside the selva.-We have come to Mozart or Beethoven, and percussion music from Senegal or Cuba. We have also represented Cervantes. The musicians gave them fear meter instruments in the humidity of the jungle, but now everyone wants to come to play .- "If you can enter the temascal sail with the wind," writes Laura Esquivel in his novel Malinche.-is a bath steam, culture of ancient Mexico. Every house had its temascal and had a ritual, another to make decisions for the tribe… tried to approach the tradition. You can not describe, we must get into it. Yes, I can say that it is very healthy: remove toxins, cochambre one, and far, there is a growth-born espiritual. a river water-carbónica. Upon leaving the temascal, you sink into a spring of mineral water, a gift special we have here. We do not sell mineral water: we dip into ella.-
The gem is the 10-cabañas. It is incredible that people coming from Spain, or Israel, only to the cabins. The magazine Mexicana we cited as one of the 10 rooms most quoted of Mexico. And, yes, we have gotten many times in distress because, although they are more expensive than those of hotels, are always filled and reserved months in advance. Rooms are privileged because it sleeps cradled by the music of the night-selva.-chamán. They do not want problems, and our only makes a shaman swept aura with herbs from the forest. There is engaged, as Catemaco, ills loves brujerías or black. The magic is not given by witchcraft, but by the natural magnetism of the region Los Tuxtlas.
Nov 18, 2006
Catemaco UFO
A strange round object was recently sighted just south of beautiful downtown Catemaco, Veracruz near the edge of Laguna Catemaco.
Catemaco has a history of visits from outer space, which may or may not be the subject of a further blog entry; dependent on whether my abductors will allow me.
Meanwhile, check out more strange object spattered around the Catemaco landscape.
Nov 11, 2006
Catemaco Duck Burgers
Are you tired of the same old menus while floating around Mexico? Deep fried fish in who knows what sauces or oils, imported shrimp from environmentally destroyed Gulf coasts, meat from the deforested Tuxtlas?
Here is your alternative: DUCK BURGERS.
The Casa de Caballos restaurant in beautiful downtown Catemaco offers genuine home fed good looking ducks slaughtered for your pleasure and served on hamburger buns with all the proper condiments. These are fairly delicious morsels. And with enough condiments one can hardly taste the difference between duck or any other meat product, such as imitation turkey flavored hot dogs.
It is duck migration season in beautiful downtown Catemoo. Formerly millions swarmed here, but because of surrounding habitat destruction and hunger of neighboring communities, the number of ducks cluttering around Laguna Catemacos are diminishing yearly.
As with any wildlife, bigger or faster than a rat, most anything edible has been consumed to extinction in Los Tuxtlas.
Those duck burgers served in Catemaco come from local ducks bred for human consumption. They are guaranteed not to have USA multiple entry visas.
Oct 31, 2006
Catemaco's El Huerto Ecoclub
This is a private venture devoted to environmental education, occupying several acres on Laguna Catemaco, about a mile south from the city. It specializes in annually hauling hundreds of “poor little rich kids” from the upper classes in Mexico to Catemaco and teaches them to sail and to appreciate their environment. Although occupying beautiful grounds with facilities which would shame most Catemaco hotels, the club is intensely private and rejects any local involvement. Management is paranoid about neighbors taking photos, so here are 150 photos taken by a kid attending the ecoclub.
More photos & references: catemaco.info - Group Tourism
Oct 4, 2006
Catemaco Restaurant News
At present the move from plastic to wood is in full swing. Apparently the makers of Corona Beer plastic chairs discovered it was just as cheap to have underpaid Mexican labor make wooden chairs and tables than shipping plastic chairs from China.
Aesthetically these wooden chairs are more attractive than the plastic ones. Comfort-wise they are questionable especially after reading the article on big American butts. Mexico - Land of Little Butts.
Don Alfredo, the giant of the Catemaco hamburger business has finally opened a new locale, “Casa de los Caballos”, behind the cathedral, corner of Hidalgo. He has maintained his “bohemian atmosphere”, offers a pleasant place to snack and chat or play a mean game of chess, and is in serious competion with the church goers on weekends at 5 in the morning.
Another former hole in the wall, within the strip mall buttressing the cathedral, has changed hands. It now occupies triple the space, pays 8,000 pesos in rent, and offers Sunday buffets. So far I have not made it beyond breakfast, barely, at “La Nueva Percherona”.
The former Tanaxpi restaurant, lately known as a furniture store, has changed hands again. I hope no tonto puts in a farmacia or diaper store. It’s amazing what incompetent rich people decide to start as a business here.
Don Marcos is back attending his business at “Restaurante Melmar” below the fountain of the Catemaco plaza, after extensive surgery. His tacos de cochinita pibil are as good as ever.
The wonderful cooking lady of (”El Caracol”) who moved her mini seafood restaurant near the highway at the Catemaco hospital to a mega location behind the Hotel Playa Cristal, has lost me as a customer. Not because of her food, which is still good, but probably because it was more fun to eat with the exhaust fumes at the edge of the road than in a formal setting.
Nanciyaga almost lost me as a breakfast customer after their pastry chef experimented with a new type of cinnamon roll without cinnamon. After international complaints, he hopefully came to his senses.
“La Changada” on the malecon recently remodeled to accommodate all those people that never go there. They held an independence day party and hired one of those noisy mini-car announcers and some musicians, and filled up. Good for them! Unfortunately the place continues like a ghost town, despite being a pretty place to sit and watch the laguna across the street.
Without mention, another dozen eateries either opened in Catemaco or changed ownership. Most of them should change cities.
The owner of the chicken joint across from the Catemaco hospital, (”El Xalapeño”) is so busy and I guess so rich, possibly because he opened another joint in San Andres)), he closes whenever he feel like it, which is usually when I want his chicken. I desperately need a replacement.
And why do I have to travel to San Andres Tuxtla to eat churros?
Reference: - http://www.catemaco.info/restaurant/index.html
Sep 30, 2006
Catemaco - Tepetapan
Not content with his slaughtering the inept local RV parks with 30 amp hookups, he is also in the process of converting most of his former dozen or so hotel rooms into comfortable 1 bedroom apartments and has thus exponentially increased the local gringo population by FIVE while providing an almost luxurious, security gated setting on a large landscaped property with a full depth swimming pool, intenet connectivity, and access to Laguna Catemaco's jewelled outlet, the Rio Grande.
Obviously cognizant of the memorable phrase "if you build it they will come", he has single handely created an oasis for gringos where none existed before and his units are now fully rented.
These hordes of gringos probably spend enough in Catemaco to fund the equivalent of 20 minor Mexican government sponsored projects to alleviate poverty, including the owners.
Considering the small size of the city, there is more construction occuring in Catemaco than in New York City. Much of it is shabby small commercial rental hovels. So far, except for the novel Tepetapan entrepeneur, and the political pendejo who erected a six story building without an elevator and full bathrooms, no one in Catemaco has noticed that quality apartment rental properties are in hot demand by the onslaught of gringo hordes.
Gringo hordes is here being used facetiously because of a recent riduclous article garnering lots of press in Mexico, but which had its comeuppance from an old Mexico hand here.
Aug 16, 2006
Catemaco El Teterete
Twentysome years ago The MEXFAM organization (La Fundación Mexicana para la Planeación Familiar) established a foot hold in Catemaco supported by Japanese interests. In cooperation with local interests, many health programs to serve the poor inhabitants in the hills surrounding Catemaco were developed.
Somehow, a small enclave was established in Pozolapan, Catemaco, which, many years later, still has the flavor of Japanese construction techniques.
MEXFAM of Catemaco meanwhile developed into a full fledged Catemaco medical clinic. The site in Pozolapan opened an Education Center, primarily for young people. And the the resident owner, who has been part of this effort since its inception, created a home for the snakes of Los Tuxtlas.
For several years El Teterete also served as a weekend resort for people of the Tuxtlas region, enjoying its beautiful location on the side of the Pozolapan river entering the Laguna Catemaco. But popularity fades, and its visitor restaurant closed.
A few months ago El Teterete opened again as a restaurant and “beach resort” on a weekend basis. Food is served Fridays to Sundays (limited menu) and the snake pits are available to visitors for a 10 peso donation. Boatmen are ready to explore the surrounding shore line including the “infamous” La Hoya cave for 35 pesos worth of rowing. And bird and plant watchers will find no better place to enjoy the Tuxtlas cornucopia.
Jul 10, 2006
Catemaco Memelas
Memelas are giant soft tortillas, covered with anything found in a Mexican kitchen, then doubled up - and enjoyed.
For one reason or another Los Tuxtlas are famous for their memelas. I have no idea why.
Nevertheless, if you want to eat a memela in Los Tuxtlas, you must stop at La Encantada “Restaurant”, recently relocated to the left of the end of the beautiful downtown Catemaco, Veracruz to San Andres Tuxtla highway.
Personally, aside from cheap and good, their memelas are no different from many other memelerias. But for possibly a good reason - most local folks frequent the place.
The most memorable memela that I ever partially ate was on the outskirts of Covarrubias (south of Catemaco, at Tia Mari’s), who served me a memela the size of my spare tire with a fitting beefsteak and on which I and my dog chewed for two days.
Generally Tuxtlas memelas, as opposed to Oaxaca memelas are covered with meat, -barbecued, roasted, fried, or whatever is current that particular day. The underlying double strength tortilla is naturally handmade because there are no presses to do the job that is done on most tortillas in Mexico.
The stuff on top is whatever, same as the sauces.
Aproveche!
PS . At La Encantada - try the memela barbacoa
Mar 8, 2006
La Jungla Resort - Catemaco
