It was a gray day when we left Charly’s Restaurant. The clouds had rolled in and the light was flat and felt oppressive.
We stopped in the village when Layne saw a roast chicken stand. They are her favorite fast food when driving across Mexico.
Cook’s night off! It came with roast onions rice and salad. Packed in the van we have dinner and left overs for quick meals on the road.
This is agave country, the pale gray cactus that thrives in this arid land. We have been educated a little on the mezcal that is distilled from this plant and I keep thinking of 22 pounds of cooked cactus essentially boiled down to one liter of mezcal. I never knew tequila is a distillation of mezcal fermented slightly differently. It’s all mezcal technically, I was told.
The countryside in central Michoacán is hilly and dry looking and filled with agriculture oddly.
We saw gravel pits and what looked like cement plants but we saw hillsides covered in ghat distinctive blue m-gray agave.
Oh and cheese. Charly told us of a first rate cheesemaker tucked away, rather absurdly in the hills far off the path beaten by tourists!
It was the devil’s own job finding the place as there is not one sign. We persisted and on Google maps I saw a photo of Quesart’s front gate in bright blue. That was enough and we had them figured despite their coyness. We spent thirty bucks and got a free Camembert.
Queso means cheese in Spanish so Queso and Art produces the company name: Quesart. You can look them up on Google Maps if you like!
Michoacán looms large in the gringo imagination as cartel country but there was no excitement to be had on our drive. Except for the sugarcane lady.
We drove by, made eye contact and I made a u-turn.
Pop a cube of her neatly cleaned cane and chew to taste the fresh sweet vanilla like flavor burst in your mouth. Chew until the fibers are dry and spit them out. A dollar bought us more than we could handle.
We followed the blue line more or less.
The road surface varied wildly. Some of it as torn up and tough as dirt tracks holding us down to 15 mph. Some of it was brand new and smooth but I never trusted it as I never knew when it would revert to lumpy potholed crap.
The topes, speed bumps, were far too frequent but we got a bag of pistachios from this young lad. I hate seeing people who want to work able to do only this kind of street selling to make a buck. Mexico should do better by them.
And then in the apparent middle of nowhere, there was Walmart!
I love driving and exploring new countryside. I always have and I feel old I am a child of the golden age of internal combustion. On days like these I feel like the most privileged of travelers.
The road is wide open and all mine. 40 miles per hour may not seem fast in a world filled with certainty but around here we roll through villages and dusty roadside attractions like time travelers. Yes there’s Walmart but there is also a world driven by horse and cart.
We kept passing expensive villas dotting the hillsides so of course you could see I’ll gotten gains as the source of money. Or emigrants sending home dollars or farming inheritances building family homes. Who knows?
The countryside is burnt brown and rainy season won’t start until sometime in June. The trees are spindly and thorny. I love looking out at it all as we press on wrapped in our own little world. We have our home with us, a tiny cocoon of normal slip streaming through the alien and strange and different.
We can lay audiobooks and my favorites are Michael Connelly’s devote to e novels but at the moment we have a Longmire story from the library on Laynes phone playing through GANNET2’s speakers.
We look out and see strawberries for sale.
And do we have the berries and apricots to add to the days haul. No drugs, no crazy people in cars with guns, no drama.
The freeway reappears all newly black and smooth and easy. For a short while.
And then the city, the birthday lace of general Morelos. Our problem is where to sleep?
