In Between Meals on Holbox

7 / 30 / 157 / 31 / 16

It would be easy to spend most of your day lounging in a beach hammock on Holbox. But then you miss smobbin’ around in a golf cart to find the perfect popsicle.

Here are some things to do and snack on in between meals:
Sunset at El Chiringuito

To make friends on the island look no further than El Chiringuito. It’s on the corner of the beach where the hotels end and the locals gather on a washed up log to watch the sunset. The drinks are big, frozen, made one at a time in a blender and with almost too much care for a place with swings and hammocks for seats. Order whatever they have on the chalkboard, it usually involves mango or mint.

Find Saborines (or bolis)
There’s this fantastic frozen snack I’ve mentioned before on my blog only under the name of bolis, but in holbox they seem to be called saborines. I think boli also means blow job, but I’m not sure which came first. They are essentially paletas in free-form, in plastic bags. You will see signs for them. In all the tropical flavors of coco, guanabana, mamey, nance and more. I saw a handwritten sign for some a few blocks from the plaza but no one was at the front of the house, so I wandered into their patio and a mother and daughter pulled out a few from the freezer.

Take a Boat Trip

There are a few boat trips you can take from the island. The typical (and most affordable) has three stops: a bird reserve, a cenote and isla de la passion, where you can walk in shallow turquoise waters for a mile and take lots of selfies. Others will take you to see the whale sharks (usually June to September) and there’s another that will take you to the point where the Gulf and the Caribbean meet, called Cabo Catoche. That one is more pricey, but includes a meal made right on the beach and takes up most of the day. We went with the Cooperativa Turistica “Pulperos del Caribe”. When you book your tour be sure to talk to the owner Karateka, he’s got a wealth of knowledge about the island and as his side hustle does animal rescue. As I was interviewing him he got a call about a baby alligator stuck at the pier, so we hopped on bikes to go find him and help him out of the area. Note: baby alligators are scarier than I imagined.

Sip on that Paleta and Juice

“I know, let’s get some mango and coconut paletas and some passion fruit juice, and dump them all in a cup with that havana club you bought.” A good friend says yes to that. And then after buzzing around on our golf cart gathering all the supplies, plus wandering into a creepy convenience store that has two fridges of nothing but coca cola (of course, Mexico) comes up with the brilliant plan of celebrating a well-made mush of frozen drink by riding around in circles, or as we call it in the Bay, doing donuts. We found Paleteria Ancona, where they make everything right there in the morning.

Drink Cocos

All you boozers bearing your souls to your bartenders, I just found one better. His name is Jorge and he has a coconut cart. During my second Jorge encounter I found him surrounded by older women as he hacked their coconuts with his machete (that sounds way more violent than I intended it to). A young hot guy passed by, arms full of produce. “The best coconut vendor in all of Holbox!” he said, and then asked Jorge if he needed limes, and insisted on dropping off a big bag. Jorge, embarrassed that he didn’t have cash, asked if he could settle up with him later. “Me and you were born settled!” said the hot lime man. With that Jorge and the women started discussing karma. They did not leave for a while, even after drinking their coconuts. I stayed to talk, but also because I was hoping the hot lime man would come back.

Jorge comes walking down the beach usually around 1 p.m. yelling “cocooooos.” His cocos are always cold (and fresh, he gets them himself every morning) and if you bring your coco back to him he’ll chop up the meat for you with a sprinkle of lime and chile.

Chase the Murals
Just before we arrived there was an international public art festival and people from all over descended on the island to paint murals. Which means that a new piece of artwork surprises you around every corner— covering houses, empty buildings and storefronts.

Dance at Tribu
If you haven’t been to an island jam session, you haven’t had the full island experience. This hostel has a balcony bar with live music almost every night, often performed with audience participation. If you’re lucky, you might catch a rendition of “hit the road yack.”

Rent a Golf Cart (go crazy)
You can grab a golf cart almost anywhere for about $50 for four hours. It’s entirely worth it to see the various sides the island. We liked the beach near the hotel Los Nubes and the beach at Punta Coco. If you haven’t been to a Mexican cemetery, pay a (quiet and respectful) visit to this one. Graves are painted in pastel colors and tropical flowers lean over the walls. Just make sure there’s a number to call on your cart in case it breaks down.

Do Yoga with Juli
Every day at sunset that I wasn’t drinking or going out to eat (so, most days) I did yoga with Juli on the balcony of my hotel. The classes were challenging and refreshing. When I was there she was offering classes at Hotel Amaité and Casa Las Tortugas.

Talk to People

People are friendly on Holbox, don’t waste that. Plus, there are people working here who come from all over Mexico, so you’ll learn a lot about the rest of the country, as far away as it seems.

On my last day I was looking for someone who would have pity on a gringa and take me out fishing with them. Someone told me to go find an older man at the third house from the pizzeria on the right of the plaza. The house, as a lot of houses are in Yucatan, was open, with two men swinging in hammocks in the living room. The family, including a grandma, mother, brothers, and a toddler were eating ceviche and before I even stated my purpose, they invited me in. Turns out, they were a third generation holbox family. No one was going fishing that day, but they did sit with me for an hour and answer all my questions about life on holbox.

Where to Eat on Holbox, Part 2: Lunch and Dinner

6 / 25 / 157 / 31 / 16

Before there were ferries and before there was refrigeration, Holboxeños used to eat the eggs of wild birds, all kinds of fish, and on a special night, a manatee that could feed the whole town. There are other protein options now.

Keep in mind that lunch in Mexico is the big meal of the day, usually eaten around 2 p.m. Dinner is typically a smaller snack, like a taco. Or three. If you’re looking for breakfast, click here.

Lunch

Raices Beach Club

It was over a whole grilled fish at Raices, the garlic wafting from the table, our toes in the sand, sol beers at our sides, that my friend Sophie asked, “what did they listen to on tropical islands before reggae?”

Raices has a raised Jamaican flag, whole fish hanging on a line curing in the sun, and a constant playlist of reggae which never gets old on an island (well, at least not in a week). Everything is brought in that morning and prepared in the open air on the grill or frying in a cast-iron pan just behind the palapa bar. The ceviche is good, but ceviche tastes the same about anywhere on the island. The whole grilled fish (sea trout the day we were there) smothered in garlic, with tortillas on the side is where it’s at. The pricing is by person, for two it was about $15.

La Cooperativa

While he’s only been open for a few months, Chef Jose’s cooking seems to only still be a secret to tourists. Islanders are here in force enjoying the $4 daily meal which includes a soup, an entrée and a drink. Inside the bright coral fisherman’s collective building is a family-owned restaurant where Chef Jose offers a full seafood menu and displays his time cooking all over the world as a navy cook with his daily specials. Originally from Veracruz, there’s a little more umph in some of the dishes here, like the shrimp in ajillo and guajillo sauce, one of the more flavor-packed seafood dishes I had all week. Open from 1 pm- 5 pm. Near the plaza, you can ask for the cooperativa de pescadores.

Dinner

TacoQueto

As the stars come out so do the street vendors surrounding the plaza with carts and piles of carnitas, poc chuc and cochinita pibil. They’re fun to sample, but for more consistent flavor head around the corner to the island’s most popular evening taco joint. The tacos al pastor come bright red-orange from the achiote marinade, freshly cut off the trompo (a spit that cooks in front of a vertical grill) , and served with a medallion of pineapple. Check out the back of the menu for an evening read on the history of “el burro” a less grotesque version of a burrito (that is hilariously wrapped in about seven taco-sized tortillas when you ask for corn tortillas).

Antojitos el Abuelo Tom

My usual motto in Mexico is the farther from the plaza, the less touristy and the better. Holbox is so tiny that far from the plaza means more than two blocks. The only menu you’ll get here is the satellite shaped sign hanging above the rickety wood fence that advertises salbutes, panuchos and sopes. Here, Margarita and Angelica stand over an open-air comal underneath one florescent light bulb busting out various forms of masa topped with BBQ and shredded chicken. People sit in plastic chairs in the patio, inside kids are watching television. The panuchos and sopes are hand-pressed but but fall apart underneath the weight of the toppings. Still, I could have eaten full plate alone of the asado, crispy cubes of BBQ chicken.
Local prices here, about $1-2 per dish. Opens at 7 p.m.

El Hornito Argentina
There are a ton of Italians on Holbox, which is why you’ll see signs for pizza everywhere, lobster pizza in particular. I’m not typically interested in having pizza in Mexico, but El Hornito Argentina (right on the plaza) wood-fires empanadas and thin-crust pizzas. Go for the Española with jamón serrano , and grab a mojito. The owner here used to be a waiter at one of the hotels my friends used to stay at, which makes me like this place more.

Hamburguesas La Lupita

What? You didn’t pause while eating your last hamburger and think, you know what this needs? Nacho cheese, and hey, maybe some cream cheese too. Lupita is a street stall owned by a lively couple, with wood stools surrounding a 6 -person table and a hand painted sign illuminated by blue christmas lights. The thin patty comes with Oaxaca cheese and American cheese melted together, nacho cheese (ewww), cream cheese, a slice of grilled ham, pineapple, and grilled onions. While Sophie recovered from adding too much habanero to her burger half, our dining companion insisted that we look at his can of juice to note that it’s “natural y no es cerveza” (its natural, it’s not beer) as if it were some kind of evidence to counter his drunken stuper. When I asked where our hamburger vendors were from (Lupita from Veracruz, her partner from Chiapas) he broke into his favorite song from Veracruz which sounded to me like something along the lines of “tan tan tan” and Lupita quickly shut him down. “That’s from Tabasco, idiot!” Making us all crack up and giving him his cue to go home. Life is too silly to not give into a four-cheese hamburger. Opens at 6 PM.

Mandarina
Read my post about fine dining with your toes in the sand here.

Where to Eat on Holbox: Mandarina Beach Club

6 / 15 / 157 / 31 / 16

I didn’t want to leave Mandarina, Hotel Casa Tortuga’s restaurant. I went on my last night, after my travel companion left, and sat under the palapa, on the rooftop bar with a mezcal cocktail and read 50 Shades of Grey (nope, still don’t get the hype) by the light of hanging lanterns and the full moon. I went again the next day and sat on a plush white couch facing the ocean, and enjoyed a green juice and a salad. It was a glorious return to raw vegetables (onion and cilantro taco toppings aside) after two weeks. But dinner was the meal that really knocked my flip-flops off.

I don’t eat a lot of fancy meals in Mexico. Which doesn’t mean that I have something against Mexican food in a fine dining context like some taco-heads do. It’s just that in the Bay Area the options to eat fresh, affordable food in an unpretentious environment are few in far between, while in Mexico they are everywhere. But we were lucky to meet the team behind Mandarina over a beer on the beach, and decided we were due to comb our hair and put on real clothes anyway.

Chef Jorge Melul opened Mandarina in 2011 after selling his Italian-Argentinian restaurant in Buenos Aires for a turn at island life. The food is a blend of the chef’s upbringing in his mom’s kitchen, the hotel owner’s Italian roots, and Holbox’s seasonal ingredients. It’s mediterranean meets the Caribbean. Picture papaya jam with homemade pastries for breakfast, shrimp tacos with plantain-tortillas for lunch, ravioli stuffed with chaya (a Yucatecan green) for dinner.

Typically “fusión” in Mexico is Spanish for don’t eat at this place. Mexican food is already a fusion of old and new world ingredients. I think that by going deeper into regional cooking traditions a chef would ultimately reveal just as many interesting combinations and flavors as they would reaching outward. But if anyone can convince me that there’s room for both it might be Chef Melul, armed with his huitlacoche brioche.

The brioche, a starter on the dinner menu, was crispy on the outside and almost bread pudding-like inside, filled with huitlacoche (a corn fungus considered the Mexican truffle), mushrooms and covered with truffle sauce. I’ve never had anything like it. The pescado al pastor with a surprisingly tasty side of pineapple-mashed potatoes was another well-played medley.

Mandarina is one of the few places on the island with organic cuisine, and is currently building an organic farm for the restaurant. “What I’ve learned in my four years on the island is how to make high quality meals sourcing only from the ingredients we have here,” he said. “I’ve learned to really cook with lobster and octopus. I go buy fresh fish every morning and talk to the fishermen. Sometimes I get fish that they say no one buys, that’s ugly or there’s no market for, but I come back and cook it, and then other restaurants catch on.”

The service here, headed by Gonzalo Dayo, is top notch. Our food was paced expertly, a hard task after starting with something so rich. Dayo, originally from DF, said it would be difficult to imagine going back to work in a fine dining establishment in a city, and it’s not hard to see why. I would much rather eat truffle sauce facing the beach, served by a guy in cut-offs and flip flops.

Upstairs there’s a cold bar and terrace offering sushi, and a mezcal and tequila bar. I found the drinks upstairs to be much more interesting than downstairs. The view of the beach is spectacular from any seat.

Call or go by to make a reservation.

Hotelito Casa Las Tortugas
From outside Mexico dial:
0052-984-87-52129
From Mexico dial:
01-984-87-52129

E-mail:

Where to Eat on Holbox Part 1: Breakfast

6 / 9 / 157 / 31 / 16

At 7 AM on Holbox I woke up and walked the beach, stopping to swim in the Caribbean sea with no one else in sight but two fisherman untangling the silver fish from their nets. Towards the end of the hotel strip the sand turned into tiny unbroken white sea shells. As I walked into town with the sun coming up over the turquoise fruit stand, two men crossed the street in opposite directions, smiling and nodding their heads as they passed each other. At home I regularly do silent nods to people on my way to BART, mostly because the hipster 20-something males that have moved into my neighborhood all look the same and I can’t remember if I’ve met them or not, so I feel like a morning nod in the early hours of the day when no one wants to talk is acceptable either way. But it must be nice to actually know everyone you see in the street.

Holbox is an island off the Yucatan Peninsula with 3,000 people, 26 miles long and one mile wide. It’s three hours from Cancun, and untouched by spring breakers and tall hotels. I’ve been here four times now, but the first visits were ten years ago when I lived nearby. It has changed, the kind of changes that mean the hotel that used to be $20 is now $200 (I didn’t stay at that one). But it’s still easy to find a virgin beach, there are no vehicles allowed, and people like to talk to each other. It only took a few days of bouncing around to map out exactly where to eat.

Here are a few places to start your day.

La Chaya

I am convinced that in small towns (or on small islands) one solid breakfast place is all you need, and perhaps all there really is. For me on Holbox that place was La Chaya. I first noticed the corner cafe on my way back from a morning beach walk, when a woman with a liter sized plastic bottle of bright carrot and orange juice stood at the counter chatting with the restaurant workers while they blended papayas, oranges and vegetables. She came every morning to get her juice, and so did we to get our eggs. Whether rancheros, montuleños (a tower of tostadas, ham, beans, eggs, and a sprinkling of green peas) or chilaquiles, the salsas were always mild and fresh which in the land of fiery habanero is welcomed. I got most of my vegetables for the trip from a green juice with pineapple, nopal, celery, chaya (a local green), and orange. Eggs are roughly $3-$4, juices are about $2.

Open all day.

Le Jardin

As you may know, I have a thing for caffeinated and sugary, ice-cold beverages when in tropical places. I blame Mexico, where you are easily tempted to start your morning with juice, cafe de la olla, champurrado or hot cholocate. I got my iced frothy sweet cappuccino thing that I craved so badly here at Le Jardin. It’s an airy café with comfy booths surrounded by a wall of tropical greenery. It’s French-owned, if you couldn’t tell from the morning croissants and badly written English and Spanish signs. I hail from land of Tartine, so these baked good were nothing extraordinary but they were good, the croissant unexpectedly sweet and chewy.

Open until 12:30 pm.

For a morning juice head to Restaurant Mirian, where there are bottles of freshly made beet, orange, passion fruit, and green juices on the sidewalk.

We stayed at Hotel Amaite, which with some help from Expedia was an affordable hotel right on the beach. Among other things we liked, the breakfast included with your stay was a delightful first breakfast. Homemade multigrain bread, a different jam every day, and a tropical fruit plate.

To find these places just ask, they are all within a few blocks from the plaza.

Where to Drink in Merida: La Negrita, An Exceptionally Pretty Cantina

5 / 24 / 157 / 31 / 16

La Negrita was just a regular cantina when I lived here, which means it was the kind of place my university friends and I would go to after finishing afternoon class and spend the remainder of the day drinking cheap beer. They always insisted on walking me to the bathroom, and occasionally had to do so while stretching their palms out guarding the backs of wasted men always on the tip of falling off their chairs.

A few years ago it was remodeled, and while I have nothing against a typical cantina, the remodel is cool, without being pretentious. Typical cantinas are day drinking places, with cheap beers and free snacks. All those elements are there, it just feels a little more curated now. I’ve heard that some people love the remodel (mostly people who didn’t go before) and old regulars hate it, which is pretty much how it goes across the universe when dive bars are remodeled.

Flower-patterned oil clothes cover the tables, the old hand painted tiles line the floor, and art— a black and white mural of some kind of tribal queen, a scientific diagram of the body with parts labeled in Maya, and vintage mirrors—hang on the walls. There are party streamers over the doorways that lead into various rooms and out into the large patio. The light green saloon swinging doors are illuminated by the sun beating down on the centro. Old school Mexican romance ballads fill the room. It feels like the beginning of a party.

They have a number of craft beers on the menu, in addition to the regular suite of Mexican beers. There’s a small selection of mezcal (but larger than your typical bar in Mexico) and cocktails are nothing fancy, but made well and strong in pint-sized glasses. Daiquiris, mojitos, and cuba libres are two for one during the day, and happy hour is from 5-8 pm when most drinks cost $19 pesos, which is awesome and scary.

I ordered a beer and with it came a number of botanas: black beans, sikil pak (pumpkin seed dip, which is typical in Yucatan), cucumber and jicama in lime and chile, and pigs ears stewed with tomatoes and onions.

They have live music on some weekend nights, but are typically closed by 10 pm. Hopefully you’ve reached your two for one limit by then.

https://www.facebook.com/LaNegritaMerida
Calle 62 x 49, Centro
12-10 pm

Also, a friend mentioned that his friend just opened Cantina El Cardenal, so it’s worth a look!