After a morning of hiking through the jungle in the heat and finding many unique birds, as decribed in a different blog entry, we make our way towards El Tuito for lunch and to relax a bit. On the way we pass the rooster farm and the nearby cemetery which looks quite impressive.
We park right in the Central Square so it is easy to start our exploration right there. We are looking for open restaurants but also want to explore the downtown area. As it is usual the Central Plaza is anchored on one side by the CIty Hall with stores and restaurants around the sides, unfortunately many of them are closed or not useful to us.
We enjoy that some sidewalks are covered and therefore we are hidden from the sun as we look at the stores and restaurants along the way. We then make our way to the nearby church we passed multiple times by car, we cannot enter it but it is nice to be able to see it up close.
El Tuito is an old town, from the 16th century, and the downtown area is quite scenic making us stop many times to take photos of the houses and streets along the way.
Some houses are quite colorful and we really enjoy our short walk, but from a commercial standpoint the area is dead so we decide to return to the central square where at least one restaurant was open.
One more interesting thing is the street art. There are both paintings and sculptures along the way that we enjoy and it is quite impressive that so many houses are part of what seems to be an open air art project.
The restaurant we choose, El Chiki’s, was recommended by our host and also was one of the very few open at lunch time. It is quite full, so other restaurants are losing out on lunch traffic for whatever reason, and after we order some non alcoholic drinks we kick back and wait for our food.
The food comes relatively fast and is quite good and plentiful. The Coconut Shrimp specifically is quite filling and very good.
We test many of the offered sauces, really quite surprising how many this small restaurant is offering. And even though we are very full we order also a celebratory desert to-go, a banana flambe, so we can eat it in the evening when we might be hungry again.
