Sylvie's Travels Home

March 12 and 13, 2024

Pogo had decided not to go to pickleball because he had not slept well and his legs were hurting. We packed our suitcase, went to visit Mario and Josée, had breakfast at La Isla and left for San Sebastian around 11:30am.

We saw lots of police driving thru Ixtapa then as we got outside of the little towns, we saw more caballeros, more flowers, and once on top of the mountain, we saw a lot of blue agave fields. When we took the road for San Sebastian, there was a sign saying Ruta de Raicilla and in town, there were new raicilla businesses. It’s definitely growing around San Sebastian! I remember 2 years ago when we went to visit the distillery of Tesoro del Oeste, Max’s discovery, none of those businesses were around. I just read that up until 2019 when it became legal, raicilla was considered a moonshine.

We first stopped at our hotel, called Hacienda Caudillos. We were the only guests there and found out that on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, the restaurant is closed. It didn’t say on their website. It was quite disappointing as I was looking forward having breakfast in their beautiful dining room or at least having a drink at the bar before going to bed. I walked around the hacienda and took some pictures. They have a lot of beautiful antiques. It was like living in a museum. They also had a cute chapel at the top of the steep hill. Our room, called Pancho Villa, was gorgeous.

We drove around town through the really narrow cobblestoned streets, had a drink at Los Arcos de Sol and finally had an early dinner at Jardin Nebulosa. We love going there because the restaurant is like a gorgeous hidden garden. They have their own farm where they grow all their lettuce and herbs but everything else is from the region. Pogo started with a mushroom soup and I had a salad. He then had ribs and I had a boar chili. My “chili” looked nothing like a chili but was full of flavor. My description of the food is very basic but the food was not. It was a feast for the eyes and the belly. We shared a forest leaves cake.

When we got back to the hotel, through the narrow single lane road, hoping not to meet anyone else, Pogo droned for a while then took a nap, woke up for 45 minutes then went back to sleep for the night. I guess he had to really catch up on sleep. I read mostly because the WIFI was not great. It was quite chilly in the mountain but thankfully we had a nice gas fireplace in our bedroom so we were nice and toasty by the time we went to sleep.

Wednesday morning, our host made us coffee then we drove back to town to walk around before tourist tours arrived. We took a bunch of pictures. People are always willing to take pictures when we asked, especially gentlemen. We saw someone boiling the inside of pigs and he was showing us the different parts like the tongue, the penis, the intestines, etc. He said it took about 2 hours to boil. Then he would use the meat for making tacos and stuff. Yum…. The smell was pretty intense.

We left town and 30 minutes later, we stopped at Panaderia Carmen’s Bakery. We love this place. We shared a ham and pineapple empanada and a meat and cheese empanada. We both had fantastic hot chocolates. Then we shared a caramel empanada and a small apple muffin. We brought a bunch of muffins and cookies home. Carmen and Jesus were as friendly as always. They were also very busy. Tour buses kept stopping by and filling the place with customers who would eat quickly, use the bathroom, leave and another bus would arrive. Normally we don’t stop that early so not only that we had a bigger variety to chose from but also it was nice to see the place so busy.

We slowly made our way down the mountain, stopped at Panino to grab a quick sandwich for lunch. I was still full from breakfast so ate only half of it. we arrive back to the condo, Max was just arriving at our house in South Hero after traveling for almost 2 days. She went straight to bed. I’m sure she will hibernate for awhile then do some laundry, pack her suitcase for Mexico and meet us in Oaxaca in a week.

We relaxed all afternoon then went to No Soy Juan to try their barbacoa de borrego or slow roasted lamb. I didn’t realized it would be served in a broth. It looked like pulled lamb. It came with rice, garbanzo beans, onion, cilantro and tortillas. I added everything into my bowl except for the tortillas and it had a nice flavor. I probably would not have it again as I felt that the meat was a little chewy and it was getting stocked between my teeth. The margarita and pico de gallo were delicious though.

We watched the last episode of American Nightmare and really enjoyed the series.

I might have exaggerated with the pictures.

Max’s Travels Update:

As I mentioned, Max is finally back in Vermont, at least for a week, but she finally sent me a bunch of pictures of her last day discovering Bantayan. She had rented a scooter for $5 for 24 hours. Her first stop was Sugar Beach. There were lots of fishing boats, amazing palm trees and she just sat there for an hour. She was the only one there. She said the island was full of coconuts and people were picking them up and chopping them. She went to the ruins of an abandoned house on the side of a cliff. She saw lots of goats and dogs. She saw people burning leaves at night in the woods and she thought it looked really cool. She walked on a beach at very low tide and felt like she was on another planet. She went to the historic part of town but by then everything was closed. She still took a picture of the oldest church in the Philippines.