Chinese Elote 

Gomez Frías – Gonzalez, Tamaulipas, Mexico

Well, we mis-timed lunch once again. 

It’s a little tricky in Mexico. On the one hand, you don’t want to buy a bunch of snack food and carry it around all day. What if you come across a taco stand or a huevos or pollo place and you just ate a Cliff Bar? So lame. Such a waste of an opportunity.

On the other hand, you can end up going 20 or 30 miles without a single service. You can skip the Cliff Bars – but then you might end up hangry, in a rain storm, in a foreign country – thousands of miles from your mom and your home – with no water, with a wicked headwind, and with 30 or 40 kilometers to go before you reach your destination. 

Not that this happened today. But, theoretically, that would be the risk you might run. 

What would you do? Call an Uber? Phone a friend? Raid Diana’s always plentiful supply of hoarded food? (Try it and she’ll deny that it’s there – and then give you maybe a half a morsel only grudgingly – telling you that you should have bought stuff yourself – all hypothetical, of course). Sit down on the side of the road and cry? 

It’s a tough call. And, because I have never been in a situation like that – I really have no idea.

I can only say this . . . 

If you were, hypothetically, in this situation, and if you were to theoretically see a small hand-scrawled sign that said something like “ELOTE – 1 km” – that sign might perk you up a bit . . . Especially if, when you reached the one-kilometer mark, you saw a stand right there – ready to provide . . .

Now, of course, I was never in a situation like this. Because I’m a much better planner than that. Still, for the sake of science, when I saw an Elote stand today when we had about 30 kilometers to go, even though I wasn’t at the time the least bit hungry or thirsty, I decided to pull over. Again, purely for the sake of learning. 

What I discovered was that if you were in such a state, a freshly prepared Elote might help make you feel better. And, thinking always of science, three freshly prepared Elotes might give you super human strength to finish the ride. Especially if the Elote stand had a cooler with drinks and you were to purchase one of them . . .

Some additional thoughts on Elotes and these little stands. The Elote Master had a barrel grill going and a crude stand, pieced together with some random pieces of wood, some old tarps, and a hodge-podge table to work on. The crema, the chili stuff, the salt, the queso and the other various items on the table all looked like they wouldn’t pass a food safety inspection in the U.S., even if the inspector was Helen Keller. But whatever. The Elote was amazing.

One of the ways that you might get into such a (hypothetical) scrape is if you decided to go swimming in an inviting river earlier in the day. Of course, you would only go for a swim in an inviting river that you had been assured had no alligators. 

Such was the case this morning. After Frederico, the locquacious proprietor at the store we purchased water from told us that if there were any alligators in the river the townspeople would eat them I decided that this was the time to go.

While Diana loves to swim – she is very strict on her rule: only swim after the ride is completely done. Since we still had 70 kilometers to go, she didn’t even think about it . . .

The rest of the day . . .

This was the first time we have been rained on in any meaningful way for the last 2,000+ miles. So we can’t really complain . . . I guess . . .

Mexicans are SO generous with their time and their thoughts. And they seem to be really proud of their country. Multiple people offered suggestions of where we should go – and we’re pretty excited about the potential for some additional mountain stuff, some Aztec ruins, some Mayan ruins, and some towns with amazing old architecture. 

Mexicans LOVE Diana (but then, who doesn’t love Diana?). I mentioned the China attraction when we were back in Monterrey. Turns out that the town of Gonzalez may be the most Asian-starved city in the world (If you think about it, there are ethnically Chinese people pretty much everywhere – so it is pretty amazing when you reach a town where seeing Diana is like seeing a giraffe wandering down the street – just not a site you see every day). 

It’s Saturday night so the town had a big festival thing going on in the main square. We arrive, and within 30 seconds a cute little girl is pulling on Diana’s shirt, asking to take a picture with her. Seriously. 

And this was after all the women in the restaurant that we went to for dinner asked to have their pictures taken with Diana. (Hello? Do they not see the handsome man standing right beside her?) And then, before we could leave the scene – an apparently drunk hombre approached and was very agitated about his need to bring Diana back to his house – which was apparently close by – in order to have Diana take a picture with his wife. Or, at least that was the best I could understand. (In my defense, I don’t think the Mexican women could comprehend what he wanted either . . . Whatever he said was garbled – but he was saying it with great authority.)

The festival itself was pretty fun – starting out with a super nice Spanish version of Just the Way You Are. Which was, by the way, the best live rendition of this song that Diana and I have ever seen – despite having gone to a Billy Joel concert. That is because Mr. Joel decided not to sing the song that was the song of the decade for the 1970s at that concert. Because we would much rather hear Uptown Girl – NOT! (Don’t you think that you should get your money back in that situation? It would come in handy right about now. Might be some more Elote to purchase tomorrow . . .). 

I guess Diana doesn’t need to go changing to try to please Mexicans. They love her just the way she is . . .