When in Rocky Point, eat as the beach tailgaters do: Massive watermelons stuffed with cucumber, jicama, honeydew melon and more. 

On summer weekends in Rocky Point, the beach feels like a food hall: merchants pulling oysters out of their push carts, college bros licking Mexican popsicles, ladies carving mango fruits into spicy red flowers. 

Then there are the tent villages where the local families tailgate, bringing along their abuelas and lots of barbecue equipment. It's no coincidence, that this where the fruit people set up shop. Because if you wanna eat what they're selling, you're gonna need a support network. 

It takes them ten minutes to make this watermelon creation at the beachside fruit stand, Piñas Coladas Cocos y Sandias Shapis. On my visit they cut each ingredient to order: splitting a whole jicama, slicing cucumbers and honeydew melons, then stabbing it with forks and looping orange slices onto them. (If you want, they'll also squirt spicy Chamoy sauce on top, but we kept it simple with lime and Tajin powder.) 

This Sonoran beach town is stuffed to the gills with doctored fruits — boozy pineapples, seafood coconuts, etc. — but this is the biggest and most elaborate I've seen. It's a riff on the Sandia Loca, which means crazy watermelon in Spanish, and costs $10. You can get it the healthy way like I did, or the Loca way packed with peanuts and spicy tamarind candies. I found the healthy version perfectly satisfying, bright and refreshing under the raging sun.  

You can find this lime green stand Thursdays through Sundays on the beach near the Peñasco del Sol Hotel, Paseo Las Glorias #1. But honestly no matter what part of town you're in, it's probably easy to find a Sandia Loca. Just get up and walk toward the ocean! 

PS: If you can't make it to Puerto Peñasco anytime soon, I recently spotted a smaller Sandia Loca in Tucson at Rincon Tarasco A La Michoacana at 4505 S. Twelfth Ave. 


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