Two days before we left, while we were still in Mazamitla up in the pine forests and hour from the lake, I ate something with a few bacteria in it that my immune system didn't know what to do with. That knocked me out to the point where I didn't have a lot of motivation to sit in an Internet cafe being witty or informative. About the same time I started coming down with a severe cold, which further slowed me down.
A taqueria in Mazamitla - wish we had eaten here instead of the one down the street where I piled on the bio-hazard salsa.
Sadly, my overall impression of our experience was a litle tainted by the ilnesses and the stress and fatigue that contributed to them. I didn't return home with the amount of enthusiasm I experienced after our December visit to the area.
While we were in Mazamitla, I mentioned that we stayed in a great old home that had been converted into a hotel. The fellow who checked us could have been assumed to be an employee, but when we engaged him in conversation we learned that the house had been his birthplace, and was the home of his abuela (grandmother). The hotel had been established only four years before, and about half the rooms were still in use by his family.
The kitchen of the Mazamitla hotel. You can see Pat at the right edge, fetching his coffee.
Our host, Hilario, chats with us over morning coffee in his grandmother's kitchen.
The great kitchen was really not intended for use by guests, but after we joked about coffee and meals, he set up the coffeemaker each morning for us, and even baked a big cake for breakfast.
Hilario was a commercial baker in his youth, working for his father in Mazamitla. He later worked as a laborer in Dresden before returning home to Mazamitla.
We learned that Hilario had a fourteen year old son, but was single. Just the two of them still lived in the house. Hilario once had a close friend from Switzerland. When the Swiss died, he left an inheritance to finance the boy's future education.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment