Not Enchilladas

February 2017 - Mazatlan Mexico

For the weekly posts I found a list of Mexican Idioms that I thought would be fun to use. I will also post the meaning.

“They’re not enchiladas!”
(¡No son enchiladas!)

This phrase is used to compare the difficulty of your actual duties with the apparent ease behind enchiladas preparation. Enchiladas are a typical dish prepared by submerging tortillas in any kind of salsa and stuffing them with chicken or cheese. “Enchilame otra,” another quirky phrase that would translate as “spice this one up for me,” is derived from the same assumption; it means something like “if it’s so easy, go ahead and do it yourself.”
Our equivalent to it's not rocket science".

Saturday we took a taxi over to Bill and Carol's RV park ad checked out their new travelling home. Then Bill drove us to El Quelite for breakfast, always a treat to visit.

Dr .Marcos Osuna built El Meson d’ Los Laureanos, a restaurant in a venerable history-rich building. An excellent host, Dr. Osuna’s kitchen serves recipes handed-down through generations and prepared with a “home cooking” touch that reflects the cuisine of southern Sinaloa.
Such a pretty restaurant! Click here for more photos.

A gordita is a small, thick tortilla. There’s not just one type of gordita, depending on what region of the country you are, a gordita could be just something made of corn dough or wheat dough, with an easy simple dough mix or a very complex dough with several ingredients. It could be savory or sweet, cooked on a griddle, fried, or baked. And it can also be stuffed with a filling or not. See, a gordita could be so many things that the only thing they have in common is their shape: a small thick tortilla.Here's a recipe.

Bill is feeding one of the peacocks.

We start with a bowl of fresh fruit, orange juice, gorditas cheese (made in the town - click here), our orders and then served custard

John's chorizo Mexicana con huevos.

We took a short stroll around town and then headed back to Mazatlan. Bill then stopped at El Cerrito where there are restaurants and shops. The fishing boats come in and supply the restaurants, so you can be sure it is fresh!

We then lounged by the pool with tequila sunrises.

Jose came by to see what we would like for dinner and that he would make his special shrimp soup for John, no flour.

Some TV, internet before dinner.

Sunday slept in, late breakfast and then we packed most of our stuff for moving tomorrow. Blogging and John caught up on his TV shows. Backed up photos, downloaded some library books.

As we were sitting, this went by.

After some pool time we were treated to this sunset.

Jose made us a special meal for our last night. He made everything in front of us,Caesar, steak and Monte Cristo coffees.

Monday is moving day. We get our safety deposit box emptied after some struggles by the desk.  Ask for a late check out - 11:30 and then have a leisurely breakfast by the pool. At 11:30 we get a cab for the five minute ride to Pueblo Bonito.

Saying good bye to Royal Villa.

Get an RCI check in and then agree to do the timeshare presentation at Emerald Bay, they will get us $200 US and free wi-fi which is worth $17 a day!!! I can suffer for a couple of hours.

We have to wait for our room so we go for a walk and then have a beer in the bar.

We are further along in the Zona Dorada at Pueblo Bonito for two weeks. This was a sudden change in plans so we were lucky to be able to get two weeks in a studio with partial kitchen.
Main lobby.

A small side lobby.

Handy deli selling essentials as well as prepared sandwiches and cakes. Outside the resort there are plenty of convenience stores and restaurants.

This restaurant serves breakfast and lunch. I have heard they make a great eggs Benedict.

We don't have any mandatory meal plan!!! They do provide an option though.

We don't bother with groceries as we are meeting Carol and Bill for dinner at Fat Fish and then drive to see the sunset. Realized I never took a photo so here's one from last year.

Then we drive up to watch the sunset at the other end of town. Was just an average one.

Tuesday was Valentine's Day and we met up with Bill and Carol for breakfast in El Quelite. Click here to see more of the town from Saturday.

More pictures from the restaurant that we were in on Saturday above.. You can't stop taking photos here.

He came down off his perch when Bill started feeding them gorditas!

The servers are so colourful! We had the local coffee, with sugar cane and cinnamon.

I decided to have the ranchero huevos and really enjoyed it. The eggs were so fresh and so good served on a tortilla.

Bill found out there was a show later so we hung around. We realized it was for a group of Americans/Canadians from one of the hotels with tour guide, bus and camera people.
No worries we tagged along as they toured the town. This tour is normally $48 US per person but today's included a Mexican show for Valentine's Day so I'm not sure what they paid.

I was laughing to myself when John was petting a donkey and the photographer assumed we were part of the group and he is snapping away taking John's pic. John said they would be wondering if they lost a member of their group when they looked at the photos.

They even had a drone flying to record it. They all bunched together to watch the dancing horse and pet the donkeys while we wandered and got our photos.

. The group was taken into the restaurant and seated at tables. So Bill gets chairs and puts them down on the floor where the show will be. John and Bill sit down and Carol and I hang back and are mortified. We are getting dirty looks from the tour group. Bill sees 2 Mexican girls snugly packed into their jeans taking photos of each other and is up taking more shots of them together click here to see the girls and our boys enjoying the view..

I sit down when show begins and we have great seats. The Mexicans in the restaurant come out back and watch the show so the tourists can't really say anything. Bill's been going there for 12 years and knows the owner who is hosting the show and he is fine with us.

Just a sampling. Click here for lots more photos.

Bill buys us a Valentine treat.

Then Bill and Carol kindly take us to Mega to do some groceries. We stock up for four days, breakfast, lunch and dinner with wine. We also have to buy essentials like mustard, mayo, coffee, salad dressings. Bill and Carol come rushing over excitedly to tell us that they found a gluten free section. WOW it was amazing. AND I found gluten free corn flakes which Kellogg's have yet to release at home yet.

John needs a new suitcase as the wheel broke on his, not sure how that happened between a taxi ride from Royal Villa to Pueblo Bonito...

Anyhoo...we got a new one at Mega and it was perfect, we put the groceries in it to wheel up to our room when Bill dropped us off.

Finally, dinner in! No dressing up.

Wednesday we attended the timeshare presentation out at Emerald Bay. Carlos was our sales person and he showed us around. Here is a video. I'll post my photos separately.

It is a sister resort of where we are staying, newer and more up to date.
Gorgeous resort, great prices and well structured plan but they only own 6 resorts all in Mexico. It is a good plan if you like to vacation in the same place year after year and don't mind being somewhere remote, away from town and restaurants and grocery stores.

We were dropped back at our resort, lunched and took the bus downtown.
Click here for more photos taken last week.

Click here for lots of Carnaval photos.

We got back and relaxed until sunset when we walked down to the beach.
One of the restaurants.

This was the highlight of the sunset.

Livin' the dream!

Somebody lost their dog.

Thursday what a lazy day spent catching up on blogs and reading. Oranges, cereal and yogurt for breakfast and wraps filled with ham, cheese, Genoa salami, lettuce and cucumbers for lunch. John also worked out

Afternoon walk on the beach and a Happy Hour by the pool. That yellow building almost in the middle is Royal Villas where we stayed the first two weeks here.

Fabulous pillowy clouds between the buildings.

Forgot to go back to see the finished product.

Friday we were entertained by a band on the beach while having our coffee.
After a leisurely morning we took the bus to Mega for a few more groceries for the weekend and took a pulmonia back.
John worked out, we had lunch and then decided on some pool time.

Greenest guy I Have ever seen.

This is the adult pool, so quiet.

DINNER
We only had two nights left on the all-inclusive, Saturday and Sunday. But we will miss Jose Lus and his great hospitality. We have promised to drop by for dinner a few times over the next month.


Saturday - rib eye steaks, fried onions and baked potatoes

Sunday - Caesar salad beef medallions with peppercorn Dijon mustard sauce
Monday - Fat Fish ribs
YES we can finally eat some meals in.
Tuesday - salad with ham and cheese
Wednesday - my go to Spanish chicken thighs with chorizo
Thursday - leftover chicken wth salad
Friday - chili and salad

BOOKS
  10 finished books this year.

Finished
Elizabeth is Missing the author does an amazing job of describing an Alzheimer sufferer and the mangled thoughts in her head. I enjoyed the two parallel stories but have to say it was a little drawn out.

 The Cellar I'm a huge Minette Walters fan and she didn't disappoint, other than it was it had provided closure at the end. I felt I had missed something.

Broken Promise is an okay read, you kind of guess where the plot is going. Good enough for a mindless vacation read. The writing is rather mundane.

The Paris Librarian This book focused a lot on the American Library in Paris which I knew nothing about so I really enjoyed that aspect of the story. Again, good pool reading.



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