Choco Bananos

A lot of people in Puerto Baquerizo Moreno run businesses out of their homes. The family I live with has a law office in their living room, with clients waiting patiently after dinner until we have our dessert. In a restaurant by the university our “usual” table sits under a family’s carport, with the children at play nearby.

But our obsession is a small backyard ice cream shop down the road. Every afternoon about midday we yell over the fence to flush the proprietor and her dog out of the house. From the small shack in back, she sells a handful of creams and ices, but her signature dish is the Choco Banano, a frozen banana covered in chocolate. It sets you back only 50 cents, or a dollar if, like me, you generally have two.

At first only a few of us dropped by, but word spread the way it does among a flock of birds when a school of fish is sighted, and now our entire group migrates there daily.