You thought the leaden winter would bring you down forever
But you rode upon a steamer to the islands of the sun...
You see a girl's brown body flashing through the turquoise
Carving deep blue ripples in the tissues of your mind...
With tales of Brave Ulysses, how his naked ears were tortured
By the sirens sweetly singing
By: Cream
From: Disraeli Gears
Evidence that Eric, Jack and Ginger visited Isla Mujeres--or some place similar enough to suffice. But once in paradise, once surrounded by turquoise ripples, Homeric sun, and brown-breasted sirens, the question comes up: where can we get ice cream? (igougo, iscreamuscream)
And the epic answer is: Odyssey. Or La Odisea if you prefer, the sign is bilingual. The sign on Morelos, straight ahead from the ferry terminal, two doors on the left. Or two blocks leeward from the main plaza, if that's your orientation.
It doesn't look like much...a normal, clean ice-cream place with creamy cylinders and waffele cones. But it's actually pretty unique. All the ice cream is handmade for the owner (a big bearded Floridan) in Cancun by Italians. If you lika gelati, you'll lova this place. Some of the flavors are absolutely gelato in form and substance. (They even call the chocolate chip straccatella. The kiwi flavor for some reasons seems like just what you'd find in Palermo or wherever, though the pistaccio might seem more traditional. But they also have the creamy style flavors you love. The only drawback to the Italian preparation is that you don't get nummy, uniquely Mexican flavors like chongos or tres leches. But they're working on it. They have mango and rompope (kind of like eggnog) and cajeta (try it and decide if you want to call it "burned milk", "caramel", or "butterscotch").
The plus side of the Italian Connection is they have flavors like tiramisu. Which I would normally have thought was Japanese, but turned out to be Italian. Axis cuisine, anyway. It's just lucious, is what it is. There might be somewhere else in Latin American where you can get tiramisu icecream, but I sure haven't found it.
One aspect of the Classic bent of the Greek name and Roman ingredients I especially liked--the ongoing project of decorating the walls with scenes from Ulysses' journey. These were my stories when I was a kid: I was sucking up Greek myths and Homer while everybody else was reading the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. They jabbered about Mickey Mantle and Roy Rogers: my hero was Achilles. I couldn't believe that sissy Paris killed him just because he didn't get his damn ankle undercoated. Why, oh why, didn't he go back for a double dip? the question haunted me for years. Not to mention Odysseus his own bad self: he "of the mighty thighs", the scamster, the off-the-charts wanderer. My identification was immediate. Maybe that's why my life seems to have become an endless journey from one disaster to another. Anyway, they are gradually limning the walls of the ice creamery with Od's greatest hits: cross-eyed Nicean barks of yore cruise Circe, Scylla and Charybdis, the Cyclops. Even ice cream can be educational if you do it right. How many deadly adventures did Baskin Robbins ever have? That Robbins guy wouldn't have been able to outwit a cyclops. You think a flack that that is going to say his name is "No Man"? Hell know, he'd say "My name is Baskin," and start yammering about how many flavors he had (and no tiramisu, at that) and his ass would have been out. And as far as bending the big bow and slaughtering the greedy feasting suitors, forget it...Baskin would have tried to charge them three bucks a scoop and they'd have spitted him up like a fatted pig. They should do a chain of the places: Hector's Illiad Cones, Aenid's 34 Flavors, Beowolf's Spumoni Plus, Gilgamesh's Parlor. I'll bet I'm not the only English major with a sweet tooth.