A pirate walks into a bar and orders a drink. The bartender looks down and says:

“Do you know that you have a steering wheel down your pants?”

The pirate replies: “Aye…. it’s drivin’ me nuts!”

I delivered ‘Div back to Port Isabel last Tuesday before the weather moved in Thursday morning. When the front hit, it became obvious that about the only thing to do would be to kick back and try and enjoy the Thanksgiving holidays…

On Friday we went to Las Flores, get some necessities like tortillas, cheese, avocados, a ristra de ajo, and of course, the most pressing necessity,  rhum.

My favorite store is the “Duty Free”, which is always the last stop. That’s because, they don’t allow you to purchase the alcohol and then continue to mess around in town. No, you have to buy the booze (and they have the BEST with the CHEAPEST prices), and then immediately get the hell out of Mexico pal, just keep going north back to the US…..

In fact, they even follow you outside and hand you the bottle from this little kiosk just to make sure that you really are getting the hell out of Mexico and heading back to the good ol’ Estados Unidos…

I’m not exactly sure why they do this, but they do, and like everything in Mexico, you’ve just got to play the game and go along with it.

So it’s always the last stop. It’s sort of like the icing on the cake, one never knows for sure exactly what fine medicinal compound they’ll be stocking on any particular visit, although there are always the standbys like Crown Royal and Baileys Cream among the thousand and thousands of other treats available there. A real first class store. And one of my personal favorites.

I had thought about maybe plundering a botella of 25 year old Flor de Cana, one of the finest rhums to grace the planet, but, lo and behold, on this trip they had Ron Zacapa, the same delectable 23 year old Guatemalan rhum that my friend Jim (Island Time) turned me on to just before finishing his sentence earlier this fall, before heading back down to Rio Dulce.

Merry Christmas to me.

So Saturday was spent with a good smuggled in Cuban cigar (Cohiba) and a snifter of this wonderful elixir. I spent a good many hours waxing poetic and solving the worlds problems before deciding to actually go out and face the cold and rainy day.  Around 1500 we ventured south over to Brownsville, to do a little early Christmas shopping before hooking up with the commander and his crew for some pre-Christmas humbug.

Of course I brought along my new friend Ron.

Ron Zacapa.