Taqueria la Beach

On my last day at work at the NMFS labs, Ole and Will arranged for us to go to lunch at Tacqueria La Cumbre, a nondescript yet authentic joint 5 minutes from work on Mission Street, serving some of the best burritos in Santa Cruz. We'd been there together last year, so tradition and the quality of the nosh dictated that we return.

At the last minute, our colleague Alec decided to join us, but only on the condition that “we do it properly".

"???????" was our collective reply.

Alec explained that the only way to eat burritos was to buy them at Taqueria La Cumbre and take them to eat on Four Mile Beach.


Four Mile Beach, it turns out, is exactly four miles from Swift Street, the turn off from Mission Street to get to the NMFS labs.

Well, what other option was there? We deferred to Alec's wisdom and seniority. Four Mile Beach it was!!


We went and grabbed our food. After Will gently pointed out that "head meat" referred directly to brains, I stuck to a beef burrito.


We had to walk a little way from the road to get to the beach:

But it was worth the walk!

We had to jump over a little rivulet to get onto the beach. Will had a slight mishap where he lost his corn chips during his spectacular leap, but there were plenty to go around.

All settled and ready to eat!

Alec and I. Alec is an amazing fisheries scientist and it was an honour to spend some time talking about my work with him.

Our burritos were DELICIOUS, and even better eaten on a stunning beach, watching the waves and the surfers. Only problem in Alec's otherwise stellar plan was, we just wanted to stay there all afternoon, instead of returning to work.


But return we did, and it was a very pretty walk back to the car:

This is one of my favourite photos from the trip so far (thank you, iPhone):

Work lunches don't get any better than this!!!