A Pilgrimage that met every hope

Today was the biggest gamble of our trip because months ago I'd found this obscure, odd festival devoting two autumn weeks solely to goats, prepared into a supposedly amazing collection of dishes. We'd heard the Mecca (so to speak)  of the whole Matanza/Huaxmole festival was a little restaurant called Mi Lupita in the small city of Tehuacán, a mystery destination for us, two hours by direct bus from Puebla. 

The trip sure didn't disappoint.  Right from leaving Puebla we could see the start of the beautiful landscape.  It's a set of high plains leading up to a final rink before the Mexican continent plunges down to the Gulf Coast.  The valleys can be dry but are now green from rain, above them a series of Mexico's tallest volcanoes which are currently each capped with a little snow from last night are topped  by high cumulus clouds.  The plains slide gradually up to chains of older mountains that divide the plans into valleys, with high bluffs.  The fields are flat, divided here and there in traditional fields, with lots of uses.  Stream beds lined with olive trees, and the variety of crops is beautiful -- fields of marigolds about to be harvested for Day of the Dead,  corn fields already harvested and stacked against the rain into leaning conical stacks, familiar from Van Gogh harvest paintings,also  onions, safflowers and many other crops.

There is lots of modernity-- it's a modern highway with the usual processing plants, clusters of tractors,  and modern greenhouses-- , sure, but there are also father-son harvesting teams, using traditional tools, also there are donkeys drawing carts, horses ridden down old trails and railways, and herds of cows and sheep spilling onto the roadside to take advantage of all the grass.Joshua trees. 

Along the way there is a spectacular surprise.  After passing the dark blue peak called La Malinche, there is the sudden classic steep volcanic beauty of Orizaba, highest peak after Denali on our North American continent. And after that the road plunges down in the direction of Oaxaca into the High Mixtec, with drier forests of oak mixed with Joshua trees and saguaro cactus. 

Craig wrote beautifully about our welcome by Mi Lupita I'll try to write more later about the charms of Tehuacan.  A few pictures:  a charming church, 

Some of the newer (1930s or 40s?) downtown

! 

Some holiday sentiment-- boo! 

And the view from Mi Lupita

Anyway, though worried we'd made a mistake going out of our way... Tehuacán was a fun, spirited, welcoming town.  It was a feast for the eyes and the senses. Very nice day!