My first morning in Mi Paraiso Secreto, I had breakfast at a popular café, El Girasol Bistro which is located right across the street from the zocalo and about 25 meters from the beach. I had a large fruit plate, homemade toasted bread and coffee. The fruit plate consisted of a mix of fruits in season including kiwi, grapes, mango and apples - price was about 3.25USD (35 pesos); the coffee was organic and shade grown for 1.80USD (19 pesos) but with free refills and the home made bread-toast was about 1.90USD (20 pesos). Guests have free Wi-Fi on a secured network if they are patrons of the café. Good deal! Otherwise it is 5 pesos for a ½ hour and for an hour, 10 pesos. The coffee, by the way is some of the best I’ve had in Mexico. I just thought I would mention the prices just to give you an idea of how much it costs to eat a tourist restaurant in this small beach town.

Later that night, I had dinner at the same cafe (brought my laptop with me of course) and had a vegetarian spinach salad for about 6.90USD (75 pesos) and a tortilla soup with avocado for 3.25 (35 pesos). Prices seem to be about 25% less than the states.

The proprietor of El Girasol, Davison Collins, is a very interesting fellow. Born in Wyoming, he relocated to this small beach town a couple of years ago. A leading environmentalist in the area and an avid birder, he conducts birding tours of the nearby mangroves - he has conducted this tour in the past for a number of Audubon Society Groups

I met a lot interesting people at his café; while having dinner there, a group of people from Earthwatch, an organization which deals with conservation and environmental issues, were gathered there for a briefing.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 12:54 pm and is filed under Mexico, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.