Day 57 – Another long driving day
We awoke this morning to a terrifying sight. Our car was covered in ice. There were icicles hanging down from the body of the car. The side mirrors were unuseable. But most importantly, we we very worried as to whether we had broken the engine due to using water instead of antifreeze as our coolant (water freezes, antifreeze doesn’t).
Distracting ourselves with breakfast, I dashed over to the tamale man in sandals, getting some rather strange looks. Fortunately, after having our tamales, we successfully started the car. It was then a short drive to the top of the mountain pass before we could descend away from the national park to warmer territories.
It was rather foggy and miserable today, not much to note except that we bought two gallons of antifreeze along route. At the end of the day we pulled into a Pemex gas station where they happened to have an extractor system that sucked out all the water from our radiator and replaced it with the antifreeze. It was a relief, especially as the low is one degree this evening.
We decided to stay at the gas station overnight as there is a cafe and a nice taco place. We showered, Viki finished her book and I did expenses.
Day 58 – Jerez
After a few hours driving, we arrived in Jerez, another Pueblo Magico. Jerez is described in the Lonely Planet as being “about as Mexican as a tortilla” and it lived up to expectations. We began by having a speciality of the town for lunch, Asado de Boda, which was a thick rich sauce, rather like mole, served with pieces of beef. It was delicious. We also tried the pomelo that we picked off a tree back in Puebla. That was not so delicious (see Andrew’s face in the photos).
We went through the local market where we bought some delicious caramelized nuts called garapiñados and some local chocolate. We walked through the park, which was filled with locals sporting cowboy hats, and saw several pretty churches. Andrew got a haircut for 50 pesos ($2.50) which, according to Viki, sadly did not include a beard trim.
Once we had fully explored, we went to a small local cafe that ended up being superb. We could choose between six different brewing methods and six different coffee bean varieties. After smelling all the beans, we opted for one from Oaxaca called Pluma Hidalgo that had flavour notes of chocolate and caramel. The beans were ground and then brewed using the siphon method, which involved a tiny bunsen burner lit on our table. We spent a couple of hours in the cafe reading and doing expenses (expenses tonight involved writing some Javascript which Viki was excited to help with).
Finally, we ended the evening with a cob of corn each and some tacos at a very local joint which we were told was open until 4am! Andrew tried “tacos de cabeza” (head tacos) which were pretty gross and slimy – would not recommend.
