Type A(merican)

Los Tajibos, the hotel where we live, hosted a food festival this past weekend in which hundreds of chefs from the Americas offered samples of their regional cuisines. We were eager to indulge in something other than fried meat and yucca fries, Santa Cruz's regional cuisine, so we snuck into the festival on its night. Sadly, the rest of Santa Cruz was equally eager for some new tastes and left us with only cold dregs. We returned Saturday night as paying customers. But the experience was more stressful than fun.
Sonya and I, being intense in a way that only greedy gringos can be, worked out a strategy so we could eat as much as our stomachs would hold. We bought tickets to the festival 45 minutes in advance and sat at a bar across the street, waiting until the line looked like it was getting long before joining it.
Once inside, we grabbed plates and took turns shovelling Mexican sopes, sucking pig, Vietnamese duck, Lebanese lamb and anything else that looked good onto our plates and reporting back to the other who was guarding our seats. We ate as quickly as we could so we could return to other stands and be finished in time to have our choice of desserts.
Before long, we were full and almost sick after about 45 minutes and left without anything else to do (besides eating, ain't much to do at a food fair). At our table, I looked around at others and saw that they were slowly enjoying their food and conversation and so I began a bloated period of self-reflection.