New Grocery options!!

Cozumel is really getting developed in a big way. Recently we got a giant new grocery store, that has actually made shopping for food less gruesome. I can’t tell you how much I hated to go to the grocery store. I’m not a squeamish person, really! However, the other grocery store, where I used to shop, was often frightening and frustrating.

There was no consistency. Just because you had seen a particular item on your last visit is not an indicator that you will ever see that item again. I’ve coasted in there, shopping list in hand only to find out that key essential ingredients for Thursday’s pot luck were unavailable, forcing me to mentally recreate recipes in my head. “Ok, so the pasta salad is out, but perhaps I can work these beans into something nice..”

Once upon a brief time they had veggie burgers, and Oh how I loved them. I would race expectantly over to the refrigerated section searching for my beloved veggie burgers. First they were there consistently, then sometimes and then, never to be seen again. I finally asked one of the clerks, and she told me they were no longer carrying them “They were really popular, see? And we couldn’t keep them in stock all the time, so we got complaints, so, no, we’re not going to sell them anymore.”

Like I said, I’m not a super girly girl, but even the vegetable section grossed me out. There were fruit flies, and it smelled. There was half rotten produce that had been fondled by multitudes of strangers, trying to see if they could salvage enough for a meal.
Most importantly, the roof leaked. Dripping water would mix with the rotten vegetable pulp, creating a slick area of spooge. Rather than clean this spooge up, what the staff would do was place flattened cardboard boxes over them. That way you were cross the sea o spooge on your cardboard surfboard.

One particular incident stands out clearly in my mind. I was shopping and had a full cart of selections. I stopped in the veggie section, hit one of the cardboard flats just right and landed IN the spooge. I was literally covered from hip to ankle in sludge. It was probably one of the most disgusting things that had ever happened to me. Fellow shoppers looked on in both revulsion and sympathy. I stood up, wiped my hands on my pants, collected my purse and headed directly for the door, leaving the full cart. I drove directly home, with only one cheek touching the seat. I arrived home, and as I went up the stairs stripped off my clothes, in route to the sanitizing bath. I considered bleach. I mean, isn’t that where polio comes from?


This new grocery store, smells nice, and the floors aren’t slippery, and they seem to have things consistently. Looks like progress has finally hit the island.