Muy Caliente

As we begin to experiment in the kitchen with our local produce we are bound to make a few mistakes here and there right? Nothing is labeled and everything looks beautiful, big bins of brightly colored fruits and vegetables for pennies a piece.

The other night on our way home from the beach we walked passed the veggie truck, we decided to make a salad for dinner and picked up some tomatoes, cucumbers, and at the last minute a few of the most perfect peppers we'd ever seen.

I knew that the variety was probably spicy, but I'm usually up for the challenge. I like my food covered in black pepper, I'm a big fan of hot sauces, I frequently use chilies in my cooking, but I don't think that anything can prepare you for the heat of a Habanero. After slicing and seeding them I took the tiniest piece and barely brought it to my lips before realizing I was in big trouble.

Of course I couldn't experience this alone and coaxed Alex into trying a piece as well, surely he would never believe how incredibly hot they were. Needless to say it took about an hour or more for our tongues to come back to life and probably another day before I could touch my skin with my hands and not feel it burn. The Scoville heat index of a Habanero chili can range from 150,000 to 350,000.

The moral of this story is when purchasing peppers from a truck, always ask if they are "caliente?" and when told si, just ask one more time "muy caliente?" to be sure what you are getting yourself into.

These beauties stayed out on our counter for days, untouched, making a fantastic centerpiece.

Scrounging for Phones

Kim scrounging for Wifi on our roof.


Internet connectivity, if you can get it, is pretty good. Every rental property in town claims to have Wifi, but what they really mean is there are Wifi networks in the area which you might be able to connect to if the wind is blowing in the right direction.

The problem is phone lines, there are not enough phone numbers available for the growth of the town (so we're told) and consequently a wait list for phone exists. Of course, no one gives up a phone number once they have it, so a secondary market in phone lines exists, where locals will sell their phone number to youtube-deprived gringos for a few hundred dollars.

Then there is the Pringles Cantenna solution. I don't know if the Mexicans invented this, but it is typical of Mexican innovation on an extreme budget. People claim they pick up wireless signals a mile away.

The place we're moving into has its own phone line and Wifi already in place.