Cold Fish Guts

The day starts off with Isi and I visiting the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. Nothing much note worthy there except a large empty pitch black room with several stone / copper tablets lit up under individual spot lights at the far end. It was eerie as walking towards them you couldn't gauge distance nor see anything else in the echoy room. It was akin to approaching lost treasure in an Indiana Jones film! It was great! If I could read Spanish then I might even be able to tell you what it was all about. But tough, I don't so I can't! Then there were also some paintings of, essentially, rude female genitalia but kaleidoscoped to make pretty flower shapes! Um, interesting.

For dinner we went to the Central Market. It's a mass of fresh fish stalls interwoven with cafes and restaurants specialising in... fish! Each place has at least one man outside whose job it is to harass passersby in an effort to entice them in. We were after a quiet meal so we picked one which looked like it could deliver the goods and sat upstairs - giving us views of the manic market below. Isi ordered fried fish, I a shrimp pie and a bowl of XXX Frio - a local speciality that Isi had heard a lot about. It sounded like a cold fish stew. It turned up. It was cold slimy fish gut spew. The bowl contained random, nondescript bits of sea creatures, dripping with goo and with the strongest, nastiest, fishiest taste I've ever had to endure. And it was fridge cold fresh. For all I know, it was probably even raw! Even the bits of Sea Urchin I spotted.

Then as we were sampling the fishy delights a man and his guitar struck up by the table behind us at volume. Nice. All in all it was just the quiet, tasty meal we wanted! Given time he stopped, the cold fishy slop was taken away and replaced with a hot shrimp pie. The pie was made of soft crumble but the sauce was still extremely strong fishy tasting. I could only suffer small bites at a time. Then a karaoke opera singer started up at the same table behind us (they were celebrating something). He gave it as much gusto and heart felt emotion as he could muster. Given the circumstances and his serious contorted face, both Isi and I couldn't look at him without bursting into laughter. I tipped him on the way out for he was good and as a means to apologise for our behaviour. It just wasn't what we wanted. We went back to a cafe in Barrio Bellas Artes to Isi could sample another hot chocolate and I so could fill up on chocolate cake!

Posted by Steve Eynon