I saved the page about the food until the latter part of this series for a reason - saving the best for (almost) last! 

When it comes to a good thing like Mexican food, there is nothing like getting it from the source.  I thought I had eaten some pretty authentic Mexican food in the United States, but down in Mexico City, the tacos aren't even anything similar to what we have in the USA.  I never once saw, nor heard of, a taco with a hard, curved shell the way that we eat them.  Rather, all of the tacos there consist of a soft corn tortilla (flour tortillas are quite rare and unused), and just about anything can be put inside and the people of Mexico City will still call it a taco.  So obviously, it's the form and structure, not the contents, that make it a taco.  To see a picture of a couple of goofy guys holding some very serious tacos, see Image 1.

My group's top food destination was a restaurant called Los Bisquets, because it is good food and it is within a comfortable walking distance from the Pink House.  This was our first restaurant destination after arrival (Image 2), and when it came time to order here we had our first major experience with the language barrier.  For several nights in a row, we came to this restaurant along with a couple of other groups after the evening devotional, and due to our number, these two precious waitresses got accustomed to arranging a spare dining area outside, and there we dined each night, in the cool night air.  Many of us ordered the house special, cafe con leche, to keep warm, and we had some good times out there.  It was always a challenge to get payment of the combined bills worked out, since we rarely had small bills in Mexican money. 

But the food... The food was worth it all.  Yes!  I quickly gained a reputation within the group of being a big eater, and on various occasions I would finish my excellent order and then finish Cheree's or polish off whatever Tyler didn't have room for.  Some of the great Mexican dishes with which I became acquainted: Alambres, Pozole, Carnitas, Consome, Tacos Al Pastor... and those are just the few that come to mind at the moment!  Billy first introduced our group to Tacos Al Pastor at a little restaurant called Naranjito's, or El Naranjito.  I can't say enough about this restaurant.  You would have to be with somebody who knows (like Billy) to ever end up there, because it is tucked away in a calm neighborhood street, far from the beaten path.  In addition, it is just a little hole in the wall, with barely enough room to seat our team and the Belo Horizonte team that was with us that night.  The specialty of Naranjito's is Tacos Al Pastor - small tacos that are made quick and eaten with a smile, and that cost only a peso each.  That's the equivalent of 10 cents each!!!  The way that  I remember them, Naranjito's makes them each on a little corn tortilla, and they consist of a slice of smoked pork, a slice of pineapple (seriously!), some cheese, and some garnish.  The average person could probably be filled on about 5 to 8 of them - that's a full dinner for between 50 and 80 cents!  The only downside was that they tended to forget orders, so we had to remind them a couple of times of things we had ordered and had never come.  Paul Miller and I nearly walked away having never gotten 4 tacos al pastor that we had each ordered (just to finish off all the other food I had eaten, like a dish of alambres and 4 original tacos al pastor), but at the last minute they were rushed into our hands and we enjoyed them on our walk back to the Pink House.  My Mexico City experience would not have been optimal without that visit to Naranjito's!

The restaurant scene also gave us some good opportunities to test our ability to jump the language barrier (Image 3).  Most of us took a good run, leaped strongly, but hit face-first a few feet short of the top.  Fortunately, we had Billy there to ask what all these strange words on the menu meant and the waiters and waitresses tended to help us out as they tried to comprehend what we were saying.

I can't rave enough about the food - it was awesome.  Every restaurant was a bright, new realm of possibilities for me with all of this new food to try.  I never had the opportunity to have cow-brain tacos, though a couple of other groups did.  But I would have had no reason not to try it, since all of the other food is so good.  To my knowledge, nobody out of our 80 total who were there got sick as a result of food or water (we avoided the water).  So I must conclude that God blessed us not only with well-being but with the simple pleasure of great culinary creations.  I am certainly thankful.