Descanso

Rest. Eleven days working at the ranch, my body didn't just hurt when I got off work, it hurt when I got out of bed :) I was very excited when Nora invited me to go along to a nursery expo in Cuautla, Morelos. The expo wasn't fantastic in comparison to say, the FarWest Show, but you'll see it was still a lot of fun to see all of the new tropical plants. Then we walked through the nursery, CONAPLOR that was hosting the expo. 10 acres of greenhouses, all retail, it was beautiful. The nursery inventory is from over 100 producers in Morelos or Guerrero. The best part--the plants are CHEAP! You can buy a pineapple tree for 25 pesos (pesos:dollar, 11:1)! and it comes WITH A PINEAPPLE! Luis and I counted the years of one of the palm trees: nearly 30 years old: 750 pesos. Impressively cheap. Plants in gallons that were 6 pesos to a dollar.

At the show, one of the nuserymen we met invited us to his nursery and house; the house was beautiful. He designed the gardens. Divino! was how Claudia, an architect friend of Nora and Luis described the place. Nature has a way of working on you: just walking through the sod paths between the nursery stock I felt settled, still, content.

Then we headed off in the monstro (the audi) to Tepotzlan. I have been dying to go visit Tepotzlan, so when Nora and Luis said we were going to meet Lorena and her boyfriend there, I was ecstatic :) I was afraid that it wouldn't live up to everything everyone had told me, but it did and more. We had an beautiful dinner at a restaurant that was open out towards the cragged mountains that surround this mystic pueblo (Tepotzlan is one of the 13 pueblos misticos in Mexico). Mariachis played in with the mountains framing them. The mountains were by far the most tremendous part of dinner. I got to sit facing them and they provided an ever changing sight. The clouds floated in and up. At one point there wasn't a crag to be seen: the mountains were completely veiled by mist. Not too many minutes passed and slowly the green covered mountains appeared again. It was a vista in motion. Think Lord of the Rings. A woman in a draping red shirt with an incredible voice joined the mariachis several times through out the evening to sing to her friends at their dinner table; we all enjoyed her. The walls of the restaurant were close to the same shade of gold as my room, and there was one particular painted wall that I'd love to duplicate :)

My dinner:
lemonada
Sopes with beans, goat cheese, lettuce, guacamole
tostadas with guacamole, champolines, and green salsa
Thick, toasted tortilla wedges with a dry sour cream
Cold avocado soup
A tower of nopales (cactus) layered with goat cheese and huitlacoche (corn smut) and bathed in a sweet mole salsa
Creme brulee and cafe

I took a walk after my cafe. The streets are full of street/market vendors and entering the stores along the sidewalks on all sides of the church/zocalo are little boutiques of artisania. Definitely a place I'd love to explore. Then there is the mountain to climb where a pyramid sits (today, it was hidden by the clouds). I did however get a good view (Nora pointed it out to me) of the Enano of Tepotz formed by the the mountain range profile. Nora translated enano to elf, but it really is closer to midget: there's politically correct Mexico for you.