A Day at the Local Bar

Wow.  Never saw this day coming – ever.

A long night of the aforementioned Day of the Dead celebration in the hostel lead to a slow moving morning the next day.  Harrison and I went for a stroll through Valladolid around noon – I was craving Mexican (as usual – the food is beyond phenomenal) and Harrison, who has been living in the Canary Islands and Italy for the past 9 months, desperately craved Domino’s no matter how touristy it was.  I stopped into a little shop, which had a few bowls of meat sitting inside an encasing and ordered three empanada’s and a taco, which she went on to prepare in her personal kitchen in the background of the photo.

We stopped in the main square with the church from my previous post as I ate my food.  In the main square they have conjoined chairs, which face eachother – they’re absolutely brilliant!

After I devoured my tacos, we wandered to Domino’s which was ridiculously expensive for a backpackers budget, and we went back to the shop that I ate at for Harrison to grab some food too.  We arrived and she told us “No tengo mas comida” (“I don’t have any more food”) – it took me a second to grasp this concept, but then I realized, she only prepares and sells a set amount of food each day – to be fair, it’s a great idea, but it was hard for me to wrap my head around the concept on only day 5 in Mexico.

This is why/when our adventure began.  We continued walking further away from the main square and heard loud music – we sarcastically said, “Sounds like a party, let’s check it out.”  I wandered in and saw nothing at first, then went around the corner and found a bar with five locals sitting at it and one bartender.  We asked him if he had food, as Harrison was starving, and he said, “No, not really.”  Regardless, we decided to split a 1.2 liter (essentially a 40oz) of beer (standard drinking size in this part of the country) and the bartender brought us over orange slices, and an unknown vegetable with chile sauce.

We decide to get a second 1.2 liter beer, each buying a “round” of….one beer, and I asked where the bathroom was….

It was simply the “backyard” to the bar…

After we finished our second beer, and had spoken to the bartender several times – a new beer showed up on our table without us ordering one, one of the locals had sent us a beer – we appreciated it and wanted to return the favor and then some.  After all, this was a really unique experience for us, but it also was for them as well – the bartender said he gets about one gringo per month who visits, so we doubled his quota for November in one day.

You’re asking how did we return the favor?

Next thing you know, after the round, I’m in the arms of one of the locals at the far end of the bar and we’re all having a great laugh.  I’m translating as much Spanish as I can for Harrison and he begins speaking Italian to them.  We had a riot.

In addition to all the fun we had, we did some networking to… the guy on the left in the photo below is Adrian, he was a life guard at the Hubiku Cenote (Mexican sink hole filled with water, below ground) and Freddy (not pictured) worked at the tequila museum at the cenote (seriously).  They said they’d hook us up if we came to visit – which we did the next day with the Swedes and they held true to their word as well.  It was a great day!

And the night ended up…as usual…with me in a dance off….enjoy!