Cinco de Mayo en Tulum

This morning started like many other. Akilean came into our room and curled up next to me and Ruben curled up on the other side. It was quite the Rosas boy sandwich. After a little while of my not being able to move I made them both get up, although I did wait a while because we ran out of coffee the other day and there is no rush for me to get out of bed when we do not have coffee. First thing out of Ruben's mouth, "Happy Cinco de Mayo" to me.

Now first of all, I am sure everyone who reads this knows, but Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican Independence Day. That is on the 16th of September. Cinco de Mayo is a celebration from when Mexico defeated the French army is 1862. This is also important for America as Mexico kept the French, specifically Napoleon III, out of the United States who was already very busy fighting its own Civil War. Had Mexico not been successful at defeating the French, the end of the Civil War could have gone very differently.

the kids and I walked to town, stopping off to pay our water bill. Here the bills are not delivered via the post office. The are delivered by a company hired driver to drop off each bill. When you want to pay, you go to the office and pay in cash. You can also pay at the bank. This is very different then in the USA. But I really like it. Then it was off to the park.


The kids and I had a great time at the park in town. This park has become one of our all time favorites. I am so glad that something was finally done with the space. When we first moved here it was a broken down park with hardly any working equipment that was all old splintery wood and a dirt parking lot. Once the election had been won and the former head of Tulum was on his way out, this park and the road through town got transformed with lightning speed. It is now a great space. We came here to see the Governor speak at the transition of power.

After playing for well over an hour the kids and I went to go ask the nursery a question about our tomatoes and why nothing seems to be growing. The were so nice and gave me a whole can of fertilizer. These guys are always so nice. They also gave me a house plant for Kennedy and Akilean's room which made them very happy.

We were walking over to the polloria to buy our chicken, we were all the way at the other end of town and here there are many pescaderias (fish stores) I decided that since Ruben was going to be home for dinner tonight (he was asked to come in and help for an AM shift) I thought that I would make his favorite fish Red Snapper. WE are trying to buy as much of our food as possible from only the fruiteria and the polloria or pescaderia. That way we only need to stock up on the milk, brown rice, wheat pasta, yogurt and coffee at the regular super. Although I am really excited because all of a sudden our super has brown rice, wheat pasta and now even wheat flour. YEAH!!!! the guy at the pescaderia cleaned and gutted the fish for me and gave me the idea of stuffing it. I then bought a fillet of grouper for the kids.

When I was visiting my grandmother in Fresno her gardener gave me a beautiful cookbook. It is actually called Mexico, The Beautiful Cookbook. I made a corn pudding, a zucchini something or other and the fish. Recipe and details are on my other blog

I got everything all set to put in the oven and waited for Ruben. I started to get really scared because he was not home yet and I thought that maybe they had asked him to stay. We do not have a Mexican phone number so he would have no way of calling me and telling me. But soon after I started to worry, in he walks.

The kids loved every bite of dinner which was great because it had tons of veggies and good foods. With a big "Salute!" we all finished our dinners. One thing that I am just getting more used to is that with the fresher the items (usually meat) there is a lot more work involved. We are much more used to ripping the chicken off the bones and sucking on the tiny fish bones. But that is a small price to pay for fresh caught Red Snapper. To finish the evening we had a dessert of vanilla ice cream, fresh mango and cajeta sauce which is a Carmel type sauce that was made famous in Ruben's state of Guanajuato.