Someday, when I have a real computer again and a fast internet connection, I’m going to dig through all the flotsam that is WordPress plugins (and blogs about WordPress plugins) to find an excellent slideshow/Flickr integration, with detailed caption capability, that doesn’t use JavaScript. The past hour has been painstakingly slow on this WiFi connection, and the iPad keeps crashing trying to keep up with all the media I’m looking at in the browser.

For now, you’ll just have to drool over more of our food pictures the old fashioned way: scrolling!

We left off somewhere in Mexico – around Cuernavaca, I think. The first post about food was confined to Mexico because, hey, Mexico is a big country and it took a while to get through it.

Since then, we’ve been through eight more countries!

But we still have the last bit of Mexico to catch up on, starting with a street taco with chorizo and blue corn tortillas from Cuernavaca. I ate almost all of it before remembering to take a picture!

Moving on to Teotihuacán. Remember the funny café con leche I ordered that was delivered as a cup of hot water with some instant stuff on the side? These are the delicious mole enchiladas that made powdered milk worth it.

Another friend you may be familiar with: my chimichurri sausage sandwich from Catemaco!

I’m not much of a coffee drinker, but we’re getting into parts of the world where a lot of coffee originates, so I make a point to try a cup or two. This cup came from Ah Cacao chocolate cafe in Cancún, accompanied by Daniel’s cup of drinking chocolate. Yes, drinking chocolate.

On to Belize, where we discovered that there are more Chinese restaurants than Belizean (or anything else). They might outstrip some Chinatowns back in the States. Who knew?

Daniel found a hamburger at an expat bar in Corozal Town, but… he ate it.

The Meatball Lady of Caye Caulker! A lot of food in Belize and further south is sold on the street from these little bicycle carts. We ordered a stew chicken plate and a meatball plate, because someone walked up and said, “Are you the lady who sells awesome meatballs?” I wish she gave me more than two, because they tasted like curry!

A Belize staple: the fry jack. A deep-fried flour tortilla. Delicious with anything, at any time of day. Usually breakfast.

Then I got an awful craving for tres leches cake. Quest time! We found some at a Mexican food shop back in Corozal, but it was only masquerading as tres leches. It was actually just an angel food cake with this weird, nutty whipped filling.

Success! I found real tres leches cake in Antigua, Guatemala. A simple cake soaked in sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, and heavy cream. Heaven on a plate. I’m determined to become a master at making tres leches when I get home to my oven. Any volunteer tasters?

Latin America runs on smoothies. Or licuados or batidos or simply jugos. You can get juice smoothies at almost any restaurant, from banana to mango to pineapple and beyond.

Campsites have diminished since Mexico, so we’re at a lot of hotels now. But don’t worry, I still cook when I get the chance! This is a new recipe: Potato Bean Feast. I should add it to the Recipes post…

Here is a delicious thing that we first discovered in Honduras: atol! They were in Nicaragua and a little beyond, too. It’s a semi-sweet corn drink, syrupy and hot. Delicious on cold days.

It also comes in flavors, like pineapple. In a coconut.

Ah yes, that was the restaurant where we had a miscommunication with the cook and accidentally ordered enough food for four people. We thought we were ordering a snack of a few pupusas (filled tortillas, a specialty of El Salvador) filled with beans and carne asada. Instead, we each got a full carne asada meal, complete with cheese, rice, beans, and salad, and a stack of pupusas. Whoops.

Now, let me introduce you to a common way to buy water down here: in bags! Everyone has them. They’re cheap, and you just bite off a corner and drink it down to quench your thirst. We simply had to try the silliest thing we’d ever seen done with water.

Then we said, “Bags? Pfft. Go big or go home!”

Now it’s time for a fried banana montage!

Fried bananas with breakfast, lunch, and dinner! In every country!

Bananas with carne asada!

They’re my new favorite side, and I’m sad when my meals don’t have bananas now.

Unless that meal is a giant loaf of bread stuffed with chicken and potatoes, like this beauty we got at a panaderíain Costa Rica for $2 to fuel our border crossing into Panama. I already ate about half of it.

In Panama, we had our first encounter with an arepa, which is a Venezuelan snack consisting of a fried corn cake stuffed with filling, usually cheese. Panama did one better and stuffed mine with chicken and avocado. Daniel’s has pork.

Here in Colombia (okay, so I’m cheating and including our first country in South America, too) arepas are everywhere, but they’re usually just with cheese. Or they come with breakfast, plain, which is… a glorified tortilla. The arepa is on the left, and that yellow thing on the right is a patacón, or a smushed and twice-fried patty of green bananas. It’s like a tough banana biscuit. It’s also borrowed and adapted from the Venezuelan original.

And finally, I bring you to our New Year’s Eve dinner: street food in a little side-of-the-highway town. It’s a chorizo kebab on a bed of cabbage. Not too bad.

So which one do you want to try?

Posted from Medellin, Antioquia, Colombia.