Getting Juiced at the Airport

Some of the best juices in the city of Oaxaca are actually at the small airport's cafe (food's good there, too).




These are the juices you dream of when you dream of juice. I'd say they're not too sweet, but, being fruit, they are sweet...but only in the most refreshing jungle tree-house way. These aren't sticky glassfuls. These are REFRESCOS (say it aloud, rolling your "r"s and holding out that middle "s" for extra cooling tropical refreshment). As the photos indicate, you really can't go wrong here. But savvy juicers always seek out whatever's at the top of its season, and this is the peak time for tuna.

I speak not of smelly canned fish, but, rather, of the Mexican prickly pear. "Tuna" is a linguistical "false friend". (My most memorable false friend fiasco was when performing with a singer in Spain and the band played some warm-up tunes without her, then I grabbed a microphone and announced "Quiero introducir nuestra cantanta", intending to say I'd like to introduce our singer. The audience - and band - erupted into peals of hysterical laughter, and it wasn't until after the gig that I was informed that "introducir" actually means "penetrate" in Spanish. Woops.)

Since it's nearly impossible to describe the flavor of a fruit someone hasn't tried, and I'm not working as a professional food writer here, let me gleefully cop out by inarticulately proclaiming the green tuna awesome...and let the photo convey the cool foamy luscious greenish wonderment (as always, the quantity of missing food by the time I think to grab my camera is directly proportional to the quality of said food):


Red tuna was available, too, but I had already plied myself with some papaya juice and I felt compelled to try to save some pleasure for the rest of my life.