When you’re on a two-week vacation, you need to turn to the travels guides — books, sites, apps, blog posts, social media posts and maps recommendations. But when you’re living abroad as a digital nomad, you have the time to explore, find the stuff that’s not in the guides and try them out.

In this picture, I’m in line for a dive Xochimilco pulqueria (I’m the gringo at the back of the line with the giant backpack). This bar is purely local. And, in fact, it’s unlikely to spot gringos even in the neighborhood.

We love this kind of discovery. And the reason is that once any bar, restaurant or other thing blows up in the travel guide, it changes. It’s great to experience the unchanged places, which authentically cater to locals.

The only way to discover local-only establishments at scale is to spend months and months in a place, wandering around and relying on serendipity.