My plate of sliced pineapple, mango and papaya accompanied by thick mango juice and hot dark coffee hits the spot. The decision to take it at an outside table loses its charm when almost immediately a municipal drain clearing machine parks itself a metre way and begins sucking goop noisily from a manhole.Nobody else seems to mind. And I am far from alone. By now the outside tables are packed with the Policía Especializada, puffing away on cheap cigarettes, swigging coffee – in one case at least accompanied by a tot of white rum – and joking boisterously with one another, not least because some of the female officers have difficulty maintaining a modicum of decency crossing their legs in those ridiculously short skirts. The black fishnets, it seems, are regulation issue in almost every government position. Breakfast has a hot course too. One I am to discover is absolutely standard everywhere I go, not least because it relies on the one form of intensive farming that works: eggs. The choice does not automatically include a boiled egg.
