Big Trip Winner
It has been two and a half months since I left American soil, since I flew to Mexico City and started my round-the-world trip. Two and a half months since I last saw my friends and family, last drove my car and slept in my own bed, and last flushed toilet paper away instead of putting it in a little garbage can in the bathroom. I've spent the time struggling to learn Spanish, staring open-mouthed at glorious mountain vistas and towering Mayan ruins, snorkeling in the Caribbean or surfing in the Pacific, or maybe just catching an extravagently decorated chicken bus, so named because it carries not just never-ending packed rows of passengers but also the occasional boxes of live chickens for market. In addition to all that, I've also, of course, scoured the streets for dulcerias selling the sweetest and most amazing candies.
The candy in Mexico and Guatemala is delicious. Based on such divergent flavors as goat milk, sweet potatoes, and cactus fruit, sweets are created using recipes passed down through the generations. Spanish colonial-style candy stores are lined with dulce de leche and logs of coconut, sugared fruits and bars of pumpkin seeds. Bottles of cajeta, sweetened, caramelized goat milk cooked in giant copper pots by elderly women following their grandmothers' instructions are placed near colorful camotes, formed from a paste of boiled yam. These quiet, deliberate stores are windows into the past, to an era without honking cars and speeding busses. Time moves more slowly here and each visit is a welcome break from the craziness of markets and chicken busses.
In Belize, there isn't much candy to speak of. The British colonial tradition seems to have left its candy at home, in stark contrast to the many Spanish convents in Mexico and Guatemala where nuns developed candy by combining European techniques with indigenous ingredients. Instead, in Belize I visited a cacao farm, where trees lined the hilltop, full of great yellow and scarlet red cacao pods. Here, I was taught traditional methods for making chocolate: how to crack open a cacao pod, how to remove the pulp (a delicious white fruit that tastes like a blend of honeysuckle and passion fruit), how roast the beans until the little "pop pop" sounds like popcorn are heard, and how to grind the beans so that the hot chocolate is smooth and not grainy.
So yes, it has been two and a half months of travel and treats. The snorkeling, the surfing, and the mountain climbing are amazing, but my heart lies with the candy. Learning to make cajeta or chocolate, trying new candies of sour sap, yam, cactus or even cricket that I just know I won't like, seeing little children universally enjoying sweets and ice cream, and even visiting a dentist to watch tooth after tooth be extracted from people who, like me, enjoy sweets maybe a little too much - this is what I'll most remember from the last two and a half months.