Gambas Diavolo

If you hadn’t guessed it yet… I’m a little bit of a travel-o-holic.

Not only is my ideal job to be a travel journalist (journalism school… my new job at wCities…), but since starting this blog, I’ve lived on Long Island and in New York City, Toronto, and Cannes. Oh… and Paris. Almost forgot. 😉

So it should come as no surprise to any of you that I also love to take little trips. Nothing can beat living in a new place, but when I’m scrimping and saving, buying the half-off ham at our cheap supermarket, all I’m thinking is about the savings I can deposit to put towards a new trip. I travel cheap, staying in hostels and either buying food at local outdoor markets or cooking for myself mostly (OK… and treating myself to one or two nice meals out), so I can afford to go away pretty often thanks to my shiny, new student rail pass. Since starting in Paris this past September, I’ve been to London twice, Amiens, Amsterdam, and Toronto. Lucky me!

One of my favorite trips this year, though, was of a slightly more… expensive type. This was probably one of the last vacations I’ll take with my family, so I didn’t feel the slightest bit badly about being spoiled with a post-Christmas trip to Mexico, staying in a resort in the west (by Manzanillo, Jalisco) with my family and my cousins.

There was a swim-up bar. Heaven.

The odd thing? I almost missed my cheap backpacking adventures. And so, one morning, instead of heading straight down to the pool with my new Christmas books (three travel narrative anthologies… *squeal*!) I got myself a dollar to get onto the boat to Barra Navidad, the town near the resort.

I realized then that the thing I adore most about travel is the people. The real, true life. Yes, I love a swim-up bar, but even more, I loved getting my feet dirty walking along the dusty roads. It was nice that all of the native Mexicans working at the hotel had some ability to speak English, but it was so much more fun to break out my rusty Spanish on the streets as I bartered for a tiny Mexican hat to put on the Canadian’s three-liter bottle of Crown Royal, affectionately called Steve. The food at the resort was divine, but how can you beat an authentic Mexican taco, bought for eight cents at an outdoor stand? The mere idea makes my mouth water.

Yes, this is a food blog, not the story of my life, and this story, like most stories of my life, does have a food-related point: Gambas Diavolo. Devil’s shrimp. How odd, because to me, they tasted like heaven, served with the heads and tails on, a pile of napkins, and a basket full of fresh corn tortillas on the side.