The quaint side of Cancun

CANCUN, Mexico – The “Beer Barrel Polka” bobs through the moist heat with a tropical, jack-in-the-box flair. The trio at the busy, open-air restaurant is a marimba band, and two of the musicians hammer away on their wooden cousin to a xylophone. They wear white short-sleeve shirts and matching pants, and could pass as barbers in the States.

Because their featured instrument is the size of a park bench, they can’t stroll among the tables. They use eyes and smiles to encourage diners to place pesos in their upturned hat.

The air is also thick with the aroma of shrimp – boiled or seared, it is the local specialty – and Americanos’ attention keeps wandering to the full plates coming out of the kitchen, or the octopus-crab-shrimp cerviche appetizer on the tables.

In the maze of stalls just beyond the cafe awning, vendors wait for the chance to lure strollers to their displays.

On the plaza, a pint-size girl – a blur of pink cotton and brown pigtails – tries to herd an assembly of fat, waddling pigeons. She is much faster, but they don’t seem to care.

The cat draped around a set of chair legs at Los Jaracolos is also unimpressed; he is content to wait for a tidbit to fall from a table.

It’s a quaint slice of southern Mexico. And oddly enough, it is also Cancun.

There’s more to Cancun than high-rise resort hotels on a beautiful Caribbean beach. Unfortunately, that’s all that too many visitors see: the English-speaking spring break hotspot where you disco all night, then snooze and sunburn on a blanket the following day.

Across the causeway is mainland Cancun, the sprawling, chaotic Mexican city that has a population roughly that of San Francisco’s. Like the fabled Hotel Zone, it rose out of the bushes in the early 1970s when the federal government decided to build a seaside tourist draw.

Mainland Cancun is where construction workers camped and where restaurant and hotel workers came to live, and it continues to draw migrants from across central and southern Mexico. It is a low-slung town with paved streets but few parks or cultural venues.

What it offers, though, is fabulous food and incredible shopping bargains, a Mexican-immersion experience that’s only 6 pesos – 55 U.S. cents – by bus or about $12 by taxi from your resort room and the rowdy 2 a.m. fun-seekers the next room over.

Come here from the Hotel Zone by bus. The area transportation system is excellent, and any bus heading to Centro – downtown – will do the trick.

Once across the causeway, wait until the driver makes a right onto busy Avenida Tulum. Just get off anywhere along here.

This is the heart of Centro, and you’ll want to explore the handful of blocks immediately across the street, to the west.

And you will be largely on your own. There is little sense to how the streets run, and maps in the free tourist brochures are of marginal help if you stray from larger streets. Ask for directions any time you think you may be off course.

Knowing Spanish helps, but you can get by without it (I did).

A simple “Pard-DON-a-may. DON-day esta …” (“Excuse me. Where is …”) will get you a finger tipped in the right direction. Just complete the phrase with “PAR-kay las pa-LOP-ahs” or “mare-KAH-doe” and you’re set.

You’re in the oldest part of mainland Cancun.

Though less than 40 years old, it has a lived-in feel. Streets are narrow once you leave the busy thoroughfares; houses are tightly packed and close to the curb.

Affluent and poor often live side-by-side – the disparity can be striking – but this section of Cancun doesn’t show the dire poverty you see in towns along the U.S. border. There are highly polished roadsters in some gated driveways; a goodly amount of tropical greenery is tucked here and there.

Parque Las Palapas – “Palm Tree Park” – is a major draw, though it is permanently under construction. This fall, crews were covering the expanse in concrete and building a large stage along one side of it.

Any natural charm has been paved over, but the park will be more user-friendly when done. At night, local musicians play here, and mom-and-pop vendors bring out their wares.

A corner of the parkland remains intact, alongside a church where locals relax at tables under large trees, a small food stand at the ready.

There are also a couple of cafes on Calle (Street) Tulipanes. That’s the walkway directly linking Avenida Tulum and the park, if you’re not up for exploring the neighborhood.

Buy a soft drink if you want, but save your appetite. The streets edging Parque las Palapas have surprising offerings.

You’ll find little of the local cuisine in the Hotel Zone, but two upscale eateries facing the park specialize in Yucatan food, which is based on seafood, rice and tropical fruits and vegetables.

La Habichuela, long established in Centro, is a low-slung yet airy place with a walled courtyard in back. Inside and out, it has a tropical look that translates to the menu. It gets quite busy at night; go for lunch and you’ll have more elbow room.

If the weather cooperates, get a wrought-iron table out back. Check out the tropical plantings and Mayan-inspired artwork.

The specialty is Cocobichuela, a thick stew of curry-spiced lobster and shrimp chunks, mixed with rice and loaded into a coconut shell ($32.80). It’s rich, as are most items.

The mango shrimp ($23.30) has eight large shrimp in a sweet, thick, electric-yellow sauce, served with rice and slices of green squash.

Labna, two doors down on Avenida Margarita, is also a Yucatan restaurant of note and elegance. The look is different: high-ceilinged, almost like a mini-church.

There, the Pibal Pork has meat, seasoned with chipotle and local spices, wrapped in banana leaves ($8.60); Poc Chuch ($7.70) is grilled strips of pork with local condiments.

Take note when the server comes out with tortilla chips and sauces: One is to-die-for Mayan guacamole made of ground pumpkin seed mixed with tomato sauce and spices. It tastes like the peanut butter of the gods.

If you’re ending your Centro day after dark at one of these places, stroll over to Roots, a classy jazz club on Calle Tulipanes where anything from hip-hop to American jazz to flamenco is live or cued by a DJ. The look is classic Mexican, from iron gates to central courtyard.

Various districts of Centro have mercados – market squares – in their midst. The biggest and most notable is Mercado 28, to the west of the park, across busy Avenida Yaxchilan and down Avenida Sunyaxchen.

There’s no need to learn how to say those tongue-twisters. If you get turned naround, ask “Mercado?” and follow the pointed fingers. You’re not far.

Me? Traveler’s luck: I met 20-ish Cassandra Worthan after I got all turned around near the park.

The Indiana native lives in Centro but doesn’t speak Spanish. She relies on her bilingual boyfriend, Enrique Larraga, originally from Mexico City.

They showed me around Centro and provided advice and translations that helped make the most of the fabulous and strange Mercado 28, a 12-acre jumble of hundreds of stores and stalls.

It began as just another open-air market in the 1970s and grew with Centro, stoked by adventurous tourists from the burgeoning Hotel Zone.

Mercado 28 was partially rebuilt over the years and today is a mall of sorts as well as a thick maze of stalls under metal canopies.

In the States, something like this would be the Mother of All Flea Markets. Here, though, what’s sold is new: beautiful regional handicrafts, religious icons churned out on an Asian assembly line, glazed coffee mugs shaped like, well, private parts. And you’re apt to find all of the above in one small and cluttered stall.

Some deals jump out at you – such as $2 Corona T-shirts that go for $15 apiece in the Hotel Zone. Prices here are generally half of what’s posted in Zone shops.

And Mercado 28 prices are subject to haggling. All vendors are skilled at the full-court come-on, and the narrow walkways through the stalls are not for the claustrophobic.

“You can buy good food cheaply here, and occasionally some merchandise that shows Mayan culture,” Larraga says of his neighborhood.

“Most of the people come from Quintana Roo – the state that Cancun is in – and speak a dialect that’s heavily mixed with Mayan, the local Indian language.

“And there are some people from Tabasco, to the west. They moved here thinking they can make more money. And sometimes they can.”

Mercado 28 is one of the few places in Cancun where locals have direct dealings with tourists. The high-falutin’ and government-monitored Hotel Zone is out of their league.

Mexican tourists aren’t as common as you’d imagine.

“Cancun costs too much” says Larraga. “It’s more expensive than Orlando, and Acapulco is relatively cheaper than Cancun and much easier to reach.

“Getting to Cancun from Mexico City is a two-hour flight; Acapulco is just a 45-minute drive.”

Among the Mercado 28 stalls, he points out things a North American might not notice.

We stop where four stalls each offer hundreds of small, painted bowls. They are indeed mass-produced, but sold unfinished in poor neighborhoods nearby. People enamel them at home, decorating each with flowers and designs popular in their home towns. Vendors buy the now-distinct pieces and resell them here.

A woman with a small child strolls past. We noticed the mother on several occasions in various aisles. She was hard to forget – clothed in an array of shawls, her teeth individually edged in gold like tiny picture frames.

In Spanish, Larraga asks a vendor about her: “She sells braided wristbands and belts, and is from Chiapas, in southernmost Mexico. This is how they dress down there. She’ll let you take her photo if you give her 50 pesos (about $4.50).”

We swing by a two-chair barbershop, where Mister Joe sits in one of his chairs, awaiting customers. Just point to the diagram of cartoon heads, and he’ll give you that cut for $6. A shave costs the same.

Cassandra Worthan says the best deals in Mercado 28 are leather goods, including handmade purses priced at $45 but probably negotiable.

The best items are leather sandals “made by hand,” she says.

“It’s the leather bottoms that make them special – something I had a hard time believing until I bought some. They form to match your feet immediately and are incredibly comfortable.”

It’s $25 a pair for women’s sizes, $45 for men’s sizes and $15 for kids’ sizes. Negotiable, of course.

This goes on, stall after stall. Larraga asks one merchant how many businesses operate here. There are about 500 stores or stands in all, he is told.

We stop for refreshments and crowd-watching at Los Jaracolos, an eatery at one of the open plazas among the pole-barns.

When the marimba band takes a break, a guitar-violin group comes strolling among the tables. They play mariachi, the music of northern Mexico, and are conspicuous in tight, black cowboy suits.

Waiting to one side is a trio decked traditionally in loose-fitting Yucatan whites. Eyes go to the tall guy toting a glistening-white, orchestra-size harp. No time to wait and listen; we head to lunch.

The best fish in the Mercado, Larraga had been told, is an indoor/outdoor place on the far edge of the market that’s simply called by its location: 123.

A bowl of breaded and fried garlic shrimp is 95 pesos ($8.70), the same price as steamed shrimp with lime. I go for the Pescador con Limon combo, lightly fried local grouper tinged with lime, plus boiled shrimp in a thick and heavy garlic sauce. Same price.

The free cerviche and chips come first and quickly. It’s all good stuff.

My guides leave soon after. Larraga works at a Sam’s Club a few blocks and a world away.

A man at a Mercado 28 visitor information booth says I should check out Plaza las Americas, another shopping area.

It seems there’s a Sears and a J.C. Penney there, about 10 blocks down Avenida Tulum, just before I reach the Home Depot. And it’s a nice place, he says, with about 50 stores.

Sounds too foreign.

Time instead to find the guy with the harp.