Grocery Madness

We needed some staples for the house so we headed on down to one of the local grocery stores.  We sauntered about taking in what was available.  The produce room was of particular interest to me.  Nicely refrigerated and has the feel that someone with a machete in hand just dropped everything off.  It gave me the opportunity to learn that limes here are actually closer to a walnut in size than they are to a lemon -- fascinating.  I don't know if it is a climate thing or if it's just that we genetically modify ours, or what.

We found many variations of picante sauce but surprisingly pretty much no options in the salsa department.  Unless of course you want to count Salsa Inglés.  But that would probably be pretty disappointing with chips.  Actually, there was this jarred stuff, but understandably Nic balked and we passed on it with hopes of finding something fresher another time.  Instead we picked up some chips, avocados, onions, and tomatoes.  For future reference, the local stores keep the freshest or ripest items up by the register.  Our last unripe avocado in the trash can can attest to that.  

Hunting in the breakfast aisle Nic made and odd discovery:

But what are they?  What are they for?  All we know is we need a huge bag of them!  Checking out of the grocery store was an interesting feat.  We stood in line only later to discover that the real line appeared to be to our right.  I shifted over to that line for safe measure.  Only to discover that in this store there were no real lines.  Only collections of people that want to buy things.  A bunch of locals had been treating the checkout process much like they treat the gringos on the waves.  It's not first come first serve here -- it's first to cut the gringos in line first served.  Apparently the "system" is to slap your stuff on the counter as quickly as possible as the cashier haphazardly throws things through the scanner.  I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure some things may have been rung up twice while others not at all.  Anyways, we got out of there with our loot.

We later discovered another grocery store that had a little more sense of order to it, with like, real actual lines and stuff.