Food

Ha, the food is an interesting subject. The touristy places have everything you'd expect, with the prices to match, but at the local restaurants we've been going to there isn't a whole lot of variety. For lunch and dinner they'll usually have one or two soup choices (shrimp, chicken, fish, or beef bone; all pretty similar except for the choice of meat) and one or two meat choices for your main dish (shrimp, chicken, fish, or beef; all served with rice, beans, and plantain chips). Everything tastes great, and I especially love the plantain chips, which are much better than potato in my opinion, but there really don't seem to be any other dishes. I was talking to Gabi about it on the island, and she told me what happened when she made some Indian food one time: people just thought it was kind of weird tasting and said they preferred the more traditional things.

For snacking there are a few other choices -- cheese empanadas (You can only really find one kind of cheese here. It's pretty young and soft and a little briny tasting, but I'm starting to like it), a kind of corn-flour dough stuffed with onions and cheese and then deep-fried (its name escapes me at the moment), ceviches (cold soup made with fish and tomato and lime juice), and grilled over-ripe plantains, which are delicious.

There are plenty of bakeries around too, and you can get a big breakfast assortment for 50 cents or less.