10am Sunday morning, one of the mescal vendors at the Tlacalula Market latched onto Maria and I with a dozen sample cups of mescal..from Mango Crema to the rare Tuvala Agave…after which we made an imperative beeline to the food section. At a long communal table we scarfed barrega (lamb) soup while visiting with a friendly old compesino from the mountains.

We bought a bag of chivo (the prized goat meat BBQ’d in the ground) to take to Mica and Bardo’s in Huayapam…and of course a liter pop bottle full of barrel mescal.

On the way back we stopped in Teotitlan where Maria, overwhelmed by the selection of rugs, ended up not choosing any. We will have to make a return trip while she shops around and thinks on it. Before leaving, The Zapotec Gonzalez family demonstrated their natural dye process and demonstrated the weaving of some very complicated designs.

I took a picture of a forest fire in the distance. The pine forests fall victim to the dry season this time of year. I asked Gerardo, my landlord who happened to be there working on a tourism project, how they fight fires here. “No water,” he said…”just chopping the forest around the fire. We have no helicopters.” “Oh yes,” I said, “you can get helicopters from the Governor!” He didn’t think that was very funny. If you remember there were plenty of helicopters available to tear-gas the people in the Centro a few times.

In Huayapam, Mica fixed us, and Bardo’s sister, Pilar, a delicious chicken in coloradito sauce and rice with clams brought by a friend from the coast. Bardo showed us turtle eggs (illegal) but we reneged. Bardo and Mica had worked all day roasting, sorting and bagging coffee…so noticing their yawns, we exited early. But not before their architect friend, Renaldo, showed up with digital images of a house to be built on land adjacent to Bardo’s new house he is building for himself high on a hill overlooking Huayapam. Before we left, we tried to call friend Gerardo, working in Puerto Escondido now, but as usual no tiempo aero (air time) on his phone.

After getting back from Hierve el Agua last Sunday, I holed up in my apartment for two days. It has gotten really cold and windy. There is no heat in the apartment so I turn on the oven and open the oven door.

A couple nights ago, three friends and I went to a restaurant/cantina for great seafood soup with crab and shrimp and a beer. Then we sat on some bar stools in Max’s favorite bar next to the restaurant for an ultima (last one for the road) mescal where he had had an interesting “conversation” with a Mexican deaf-mute the night before…neither one knowing what the other one was intending. Max’s account was hilarious. I was the only woman there besides the female bar maid…and was introduced all around to the regulars…working class middle aged men…unlike the other cantinas I had been to where the patrons were hard-drinking young machismos.

Yesterday Sharon and I went to the Tlacalula Sunday Market…busy and full of brightly dressed indigenous people as usual. I bought some small carved coconut half-shells to serve my mescal and we both bought a petata…a large woven mat that people sleep on in the villages…from a tiny old woman with really rought hands from San Leandro…a town near Hierve de Agua. I will use it for a floor cover. We stopped in Huayapam on the way back to see Charlie and Bardo. Mica had gone to a movie.

Saturday I will go to a mountain village,San Pedro de Cajonos, (be careful how you pronounce Cajonos) to visit a family that carves Alebrijes…small painted fanciful animals. Thursday is Thanksgiving in the States.