The cast includes me, my wife and two well travelled Atlantans here for a long weekend. Both visitors had been many places and the guy has a hearty adventurers soul and a good appetite for the new and different. He’s also an executive vice president of a large firm and needed a bit of destressing to take his mind off the week long meeting he had just completed.

Out of towners love to come visit us. We always go out of our way to introduce our friends and family to all that San Diego has to offer. In this case we added the wilderness of Tijuana to our itinerary.

Our plan was simple. A quick drive to the border, a taxi ride to a five star alta cocina Mexicana restaurante, a few cocktails at Plaza Fiesta then home. As soon as we got in the taxi our plans changed. What transpired is the charter tale and main motivation for this blog.

Innocently enough, our taxi driver mentioned to us that he could “introduce us” to his pharmacist friend. His friend could sell us anything we wanted. What I wanted was a taste of some of the fine Mexican wines I’d had the weekend before at Adobe Guadalupe so I pressed the driver, who had no idea where our restaurant was, to get there ASAP.

After a few trial runs at our restaurante, we finally drove into the courtyard and I got out. Our guests spent a few minutes with the driver. I guessed they were figuring out the bill and went inside.

My dreams came true as I looked around and saw labels for the the various vinos both blanco y tinto that I hoped to try. Dinner proceeded apace with the usual discussion of what each of us would have and wondering about what some of the strange words we’d never seen meant. Our waiter was most helpful if not totally fluent in Ingles.

About the time our drinks came out, our waiter had a private conversation with our male out of town guest. Our guest is fairly fluent in Spanish so he ordered an appetizer platter. I asked him what was in it, having heard part of the conversation and having understood one word (crocodillio). I was told that the platter had some croc and some other things no one had ever heard of.

Several minutes went by while we attempted to figure out what we wanted to order, what sort of party was happening in the closed off space next to us, how we might inject ourselves into that party and various other threads of conversation. Before we knew it, our appetizer plate had arrived, followed by another plate, then several more plates. In total, we ended up four plates of main items, four bowls of salsas and a basket of fresh, hot tortillas de maize. I was happy and proceeded to dig in.

My first taste was the chicken like crocodile. My second attempt was at a bowl of long, brown seed pods in a bowl. I spooned several onto my tortilla and prepared to add a dab of guacamole to the mix when I took a close look at my “seed pods”. What I saw was more than a bit disturbing. As I looked up my friend from Atlanta was figuring out the same thing. At one time our seed pods had several dozen if not more legs. We were about to eat some caterpillers.
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