Rosi CornwellWe are here in Manuagua just for the 2 nights. Thank god for that. Even more thank god because we did originally book for 6 nights.. Including Christmas, and then realised, there is sweet FA to do here.
We have only explored a 1 mile radius so I would hate to be unfair and slate a city that I haven’t fully seen, but it feels super industrial, and when seeing something like a restraurant or hair salon it seems like a slice of civilisation and offers light relief.
We were treated to vegan food in Tulum and knew this would be a little harder. There aren’t any cooking facilties at the hotel, or our next hostel. So we go to the supermarket to stock up on supplies and remember that Hollie has bought a stove (not a gas one, a metal chamber style thing, that requires twigs and leaves). The supermarket is surprisingly expensive, more so than the one in Tulum. We did not expect this.
I realise now that I don’t want to appear like I’m moaning about everything. At this point I should just rename the blog ‘Moaning Rosi’… No it’s not like that I promise!! Infact, here’s a picture of Hollie enjoying the hotels lovely pool..
We return from shopping and have a peanut butter and jam sandwich as a light snack, we collect twigs and go and buy a lighter, which to our amusement says “there’s no we in fries”.
We attempt to light the fire with dry leaves and bits of wood we have scavenged. It takes a while, we use tissues to accelerate things. The flames go high and the fire chucks out a lot of smoke.
We blow on this fire, scavenge for more kindling, use some pages from the directory in the room and do what ever we can to make Bear Grylls proud. Oh yeah I should mention that in the pan is rice, dried red beans and carrots. We are making a chilli.
About an hour into the process, and when the rice is feeling slightly cooked, we add the tomato paste, onions, red pepper and seasoning. I asked hollie if she rinsed the rice first, and she said she never does this… and then I realise that I think you’re meant to soak dried beans to before you use them. I was so hungry and excited for our chilli that this important detail skipped my mind until now!!!
Hollie googles red beans and food poisoning whilst I blow on the fire incase we have any hope left of eating the chilli, that smells too good to waste.
We decide the best thing to do would be to pick out the red beans. So we proceed to shine our phone lights on the pot and pick out the beans one by one which takes about half an hour. No exaggeration.
I should mention that there are people who were sitting over the side of the pool, and if they weren’t already wondering why we were crouching over a bloody bonfire for the past hour, but now we are shining lights and searching around the pan.
We say ‘bon appetite’ and eat out of the pan as we discuss that hopefully the fact the beans didn’t really boil means that not many toxins left them to infect the other ingredients.
It is now the next day – 10:10am in fact, and we appear to have avoided any digestive disruption, so the red bean sieving was worth it, and we will ensure to soak the dried beans before the next chilli.
Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk on how to not be an absolute idiot abroad. Or anywhere that involves giving yourself food poisoning.
