Kernels of truth from Mexico

So as our trip winds down, we are sad to be leaving this beauitful country, but excited to begin the Midwest leg and happy to have come full cirlce. This last week we spent in Xalatlaco, where we experienced a Temezcal purification ceremony, lived with a Shaman, and interviewed a few more farmers. All in all it was an interesting and probably the most intense experience of the trip.



We spent the first day with the ^vegetarian^ shaman, who bought us figs and then took us to eat beef tacos.



Here is the shaman with his son, preparing the water for the temezcal.


This is the fire burning at the start of the temezcal. We were basically trapped inside a little room with 20 other half naked Mexicans, inhaling herb-infused scalding air, while chanting to the earth gods, for 2 hours. ^Our bodies are earth, our blood is water.^ We wanted it to be cleansing, but it was kind of hell and impossible to relax. We spent the two hours pretty much plastered to the cool stone floor.


The Shaman and his son, Huespali. During our time at their house Huespali killed a frog, left chicharron pig fat in our bedsheets, taught Nora the saying ^Que de Queso^ and would not let us enjoy the Michael Jackson special in peace. He was trying to convince us that MJ had been to his fathers temezcal. RIP MJ, we will see a butter sculpture of you soon.



The shaman is not really a shaman, but a Nahuatl tlatuani. He says he is not a leader, but someone with higher power and knowledge. He learned his wisdom from his mother and is also a corn farmer. Que Suerte!


The sunset from our stay with the Shaman. He said in his interview that before he plants corn he always raises his arms to the sun and asks for a good harvest.



The most beautiful sky in all of Mexico.



Eating chicharron (fried pig fat) during an intense lightning storm where we lost power.

Don Meterio is a farmer we spent a morning with. He is one of the few people we have encountered who still plant blue corn.

We had breakfast with the family around a fifteen person dinner table and drank the best tea of the trip.

We helped him and the boys weed that day.

Eating Capulines. Nora was very excited to come to the realization, after eating the fruit the entire trip, that capulines are like Mexican cherries!!! She also managed to squirt them all over her shirt.....

That afternoon we had the pleasure of joining Don Pablo and his wife Rufina on one of their twice-daily trips to extract pulque from the giant Maguey (agave) plants. It has been said that pulque is extremely nutritious, one degree away from our very own blood. It is the water of the plant, extracted by sucking on a tube, and then fermenting it for 12 hours.

We also spent a day with Don Andres. He fell off a horse four years ago and that sufficed as an explanation for his spaciness, as far as we were concerned.

He also told us many versions of a story in which he was bitten by a snake, tried to suck out the venom himself (we got a demonstration of him licking his hand), and could not hold a taco for two hours!!!! Crisis!!!

His wife. Feeding goats.