SOAKING UP MERIDA

Merida is really a low key city to start the experience of
Mexico and the Yucatan. We had a lovely evening at an Italian restaurant and met Lety, Martin & Ivan all from Mexico city, it was wonderful to chat to them about Mexico, their life, how things work in this country. Letty had a great sense of humour and had many laughs. 
They were on holiday for a few days in Merida and found it very hot, struggling in the heat than us, I haven’t been finding it uncomfortable at all, in fact I am loving the warm balmy evenings no need for an extra layer of clothing here, the temperatures are great. We bumped into Letty and her family Ma & Dad in the central park and her father insisted in taking us for Ice Cream it was really lovely Rod & Jouquim were like long lost friends as were Letty and I it was a beautiful encounter with total strangers people just enjoying people.


Fining dinning was a treat for us and we decided on Apaula and restaurant that had been recommended to us by a Canadian Guy we met. It was outstanding, Rod got the best picks of the day with his meal.


URBAN ADVENTURES
COOKING SCHOOL

We meet our guide/chef/leader at 1pm – 4 aussies, a frenchie, a pom and us all gathered for the intro speech on the programme. We walked through through the streets of Merida to the local market, it is New Years Eve and everywhere is really busy.    The market was packed, hot and sweaty!! The produce is packed in, vendors squashed together all trying for a sale, we gathered our produce for our feast that we were cooking. It was certainly and experience and Enrique was great and patient explaining everything to us. We tasted spices an smelt all sosrts of things.  

 Off to catch a local bus to our kitchen, the pollution was unbearable waiting for the bus, scarf over my nose and mouth I was just coping, the bus was a broken down looking thing, we got seats so thats a bonus, about a 20 minute ride and we were there.

Today we are cooking local Yucatan dishes, Cochinata Pibil, Polo Pibil, panouchos and sabutes, salsa also a tea made from leaves I can’t remember it was extremely refreshing and of course had lots of lime juice. We tried Jicama – this is a root vegetable that lime juice was squeezed onto and and then sprinkled with chilli – delicious what a surprise.  

 The pictures do the talking. It was a great time, lots of fun laughter and a hive of activity. A tasty meal was consumed the totall time was about 6 hours and then we got taxi’s back to our hotels.