Tues Feb 10

The food here is so good, we haven't eaten anywhere yet that we didn't like. I actually ate a grasshopper, it is considered a delicacy here Chapulina, they are deep fried rolled in pepper and salt. It was in my tortilla soup and I ate the first half before I realized what it was and it was okay so I ate the rest. There are vendors on the street selling them as snacks. Big piles of them on a tray, we wonder where they catch so many grasshoppers, maybe they scrape the bumpers of cars.

Today we took another tour with the same company and same guide. We went to the village of El Tule a very nice village with what they claim is the largest tree in the world. It is 2000 years old, and the trunk is so massive it is hard to capture all of it in a photo. I'm not sure what kind of tree it is, I'll have to look that up. They call it a Tule tree but I think that is just a name the use.

From there we went to a weaving cooperative. It is run by one family, there are 25 members who live and work at the compound. They gave a talk on all of the natural plants that are used in the dyes, and their 800 recipes that are a guarded family secret. They start learning to weave at 6 yrs old, and the young man giving the demo was about 20 and was making an intricate pattern from memory. They use the same designs that are found on the ruins at Mitla. They are all Zapotec, and most spoke good English which they learn on their own to deal with tourists.

Our next stop was the village and ruins at Mitla. It is much different from Monte Alban as the ruins are right in the middle of the village and were used for various purposes up until 1960 when they were made a protected site. Parts of the walls with stone patterns are very well preserved, and there were numerous mounds that are pyramids that haven't been excavated. It was very hot there, the guide said it will get up to 40 degrees C next month.

All of the country we drove through looks just like the area around Helena and on to Bozeman at the end of a long hot summer except for the plants which were mostly scrub pines, sagebrush, Agave and another multi branched cactus I didn't recognize. As we went higher into the mountains there were lots of palm trees. We drove about 45 km south very high into the mountains ending up at about 7000 ft at an interesting site called Huerve El Agua. It is a mineral spring that slowly seeps out of the mountainside and over hundreds of years has formed a mineral deposit that looks like a huge waterfall. At the top are two mineral pools, some people went swimming, we just soaked our feet. The road was paved except for the last few miles, and then it turned into a dirt path, rock path and ruts. We were in a Suburban so it wasn't too bad.

On the way home we stopped at a little factory where they make Mescal, which is a big industry here. There is a big factory owned by CocaCola. This was a little family run business and after showing the processing steps they gave us samples. Most of it could be used for paint remover, but some of the longer aged stuff was a little better.

It was a long day, we got back around 7 and ate a light meal at the resturant downstair.