Some highlights:
Our wonderful hotel, Ma Petite Maison and Luis, our host.
Food. Our favorite restaurants: antojitos Mayre, in the market, with the huaraches of mushrooms, the Aztec/vegetarian food stall with amazing huitlacoche quesadillas, the only thing we liked at the upscale La Ciruela was the tower of nopal and cuitlacoche, and of course Los Colorines with excellent mole poblano, excellent chiles en Nogada and a good broccoli version of a chile rellleno. Ice cream from tepoznieves and pay de queso, cheesecake
Music all the time. It's not yet seven am and I hear the tuba of an oompapa comparza band.... We saw kids doing the rhythm to capoeira.... And we've had a full day of Mexican dance and music for dia de todos santos. Also the opener band, Sitting in the churchyard hearing Javier Rivera y su Orquesta warm up their horns, for some danzon, while watching local kids in their dance costumes getting ready for their performances. Since this town tends towards supporting New Age themes you can also hear meditation music and even Indian ragas at times.
Side trips to cool towns - San Juan Tlacotenco. Amatlan. Today we might go to Ocotitlan.
Day of the dead with children out getting candy while walking past hot bonfires... Beautiful lit calaveritas....
Woke last night at 2 or 3 am long after the fireworks singing and laughing crowd noises had died down, to long peals of church bells! Sounded like from every chapel in town. My goodness this is a serious holiday here! Today now is day of the dead for real, (November 1 was dia de Todos Santos, all saints, now is all souls, dia de Muertos) - all the adult souls have arrived here gotten here by the scent of the food and flowers, and tonight candles placed or processed to the graveyards will help them find their way back to the land of the dead. And I imagine church bells will ring again tonight. And then, we fly home tomorrow! Such a great experience here. And the six am bells have begun the roosters are crowing a few dogs are barking and I hear a far off music bass line. Dawn is coming...
Now I'm writing this after breakfast. sitting just off the beautiful trail up to the Tepozteco, the beautiful pyramid way above town, sitting against the trunk of a massive tree listening to soft bird trills and chirps. Craig is hiking up again. We went to the market for our breakfast, had chocolate champurrado, a drink made of either rice or corn, and then we had quesadillas on freshly made blue corn tortillas, with a filling of huitlacoche and zeta mushrooms - sort of like oyster mushrooms- and white cheese, with an assortment of savory chile sauces to put on, with some cafe de Lola, cowboy coffee. Then back to our tiny hotel for some fruit and real coffee. In the impromptu market, all the day of the dead supplies are gone, instead it looked like a French market, pristine market tall stacks of perfect vegetables and a butchers stall with big loops of longaniza sausage and stacks of the local specialty a type of cured meat called ????
No comments:
Post a Comment