Mariscos!

This evening I wandered down to the port in search of photo ops (results later when I can upload) and found myself a real Chilean fish market... wonderful, I thought, I haven't eaten all day: I can try some local seafood! Um, bad idea. I wandered into a tiny little hole-in-the-wall lunch counter operation next to the area where dudes were gutting the fresh catch of the day... great, I thought, lots of ambience, muy auténtico, etc. The menu looked great, although I didn't know what a single word meant - all strange types of local seafood, I guess - so I asked the waitress for something small, I wasn´t very hungry... She brought out a plate of limes, a basket of bread, some hot sauce: so far so good. Then came the main course - a huge watery soup literally overflowing with the hugest mussels I've ever seen. I hate mussels. Never eat 'em. And the small ones in my bowl were the size of my fist. I stared at my hands for a while, trying to figure out how to deal with the situation and will the fork up and into the mass of shellfish sitting before me, getting cold. And then I dug in... what else could I do? Over the course of the next hour I probably ate a good 2.5 of the dozen mussels I was served, sheepishly asked for the check, and hightailed it out of there before anyone could scowl at my huge wasted portion or ask me if I wanted it wrapped up to take with me for lunch tomorrow on the bus... yum? Yuck.