Mexicowoods—An Expatriate Life

The Knife Grinder

Thirty years ago an itinerant knife grinder drove his tiny truck down the Cupertino street where I then lived. Impulsively I sent one of my kids out with my beautiful set of Wusthof knives. They had become dull (the knives, not the kids) and as a single parent working in Silicon Valley, I'd not had the time to properly sharpen them.

Vague misgivings stirred just below the level of consciousness, but I had too much else to worry about. That evening I had yet to feed the kids, check their homework, put them to bed, and review the briefcase full of specifications I had brought home with me.

Samantha brought the knives back. To my horror, those beautiful German edges had been reduced to tatters on a coarse grinding wheel better suited to sharpening shovels. My precious knives would never slice another tomato.

—§—

In Mexico, knife grinders walk the streets, announcing their presence by blowing an odd tune on pan pipes. I've always ignored them, having been put off ever allowing one of those guys to touch my tools and implements.

The other day, I heard "Toodledoodle." Laura leapt up and said, "The knife grinder is here." She grabbed a beautiful pair of kitchen shears and ran out the front door.

Outside, a taciturn man unshipped his grinder from his shoulder and set about carefully edging the shears.

He cranked his grinder by hand. The machine must be fifty years old, but the emery wheel mounted on it might well have been bought yesterday at Don Pedro's hardware store.

He charged $50 pesos for about five minutes' work—a little high I thought. Perhaps he'd sized Laura up and charged her the Gringa rate—her fluency in Spanish notwithstanding.

I inspected the finished work. The shears could now cut paper. Before, they could barely cut butter.

Today I have a couple of good knives. I guard them carefully. I wash and put them away after each use. I do my own sharpening and I won't let the housekeeper touch them. Could I entrust them to the knife grinder?

The toolmarks he left on the kitchen shears convinced me otherwise. Like razors, good chef's knives should have mirror-like edges. The edges on these shears don't. I won't give him my knives, but I'll be out there with my garden tools the next time he's here.

And I'll negotiate the price beforehand.

Mona's Eyes

Walking to the gym the other day, this tiendita caught my eye.

Such a romantic name for a place that sells pork rinds and orange soda.

County Fair

Our county fair opened last week: an opportunity to eat unhealthy food and throw up on whirling, jolting rides. My kind of event. Monday evening we drove out to the fairgrounds behind the new presidencia, just off the Dr. Mora road.

The fair is the best entertainment deal in town. Parking costs $10 pesos; admission is $25. All the rides are free.

The machines can be charitably described well-used. The rides shake and judder. Bearings howl. Holes in seats dig into your butt. What do you want for free? We ride them anyway. They're just too much fun.

Electricity powering the rides runs through cables laid on the ground. We try not to trip over the 220 volt lines leading to the Ferris wheel.

Check out the rat's nest leading from the breaker box. The entire network was made by twisting bunches of wires together and wrapping a layer of electrical tape around the joins.

The rides are reminiscent of those I rode as a teenager at Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey. Everything is kind of loose, leading to an unpredictable, lurching, thrilling experience.

Lines for the roller coaster are long. There's only one car—just four people can ride at a time.

We may choose between two levels of bumper cars—one for kiddies, and a pro driver version. The aggressive look of this driver signals the presence of a born killer. Best to wait til he's gone.

Faulty contacts beneath the cars emit sparks and a reek of ozone.

Laura and I ride the Hurricane. I hold a Nikon SLR in my hand, hoping to get some nice blurry shots of carnival lights. As the ride revs up, centrifugal force threatens to tear the camera out of my hand. When we return to Earth, my arm aches from hanging on to it.

Weak personal liability laws mean Mexican kids get better rides—like hanging from a trolley that rolls along a taut cable. No adults allowed on this one.

Nor are adults allowed on the trampoline. A barefoot kid bounces on a surface twenty feet in the air, having the best time ever.

Security is tight. Males 16 to 40 years old are frisked before being granted entry. Mounted patrols range the parking lot. Policemen, sharp in desert camos, keep an eye on things inside the gates.

Vendors sell cheap stuff. Here's a Zen moment: this place sells socks behind a TV blaring Korean popular music.

No man can leave the midway without winning his girl a prize. I pay $20 pesos for three darts. Successfully popping three balloons (it's impossible to miss) I get Laura a $10 peso stuffed green frog. Makes her happy. She'll give it to one-year-old Eric down the street.

Rides, games—what else is the fair about? Food! It's about pan de feria—fair bread. Competition is fierce: a dozen vendors sell it. They tear samples off loaves and thrust them into our hands, trying to obligate us.

Pan de feria appears to be a big deal, given all the hype and the sheer amount of it on offer. But I wasn't impressed. It tasted like—well—bread. Stale bread. It might as well have been made in the Bimbo factory at Matehuala last April.

Fortunately we had many more gustatory options—like my favorite, tacos al pastor. Several vendors spit-roasted layers of marinated pork in vertical broilers. Note the traditional pineapple atop the smaller spit. The carver adds a little chunk of fresh pineapple to your serving with a practiced flick of his knife.

Early in the evening, everybody is preparing food for the crowds soon to arrive. A petulant teenager has been pressed into KP duty.

Foods exotic to gringo tastes provide opportunities to expand culinary horizons. "Ricos tacos de tripas" reads a sign. A skull, not a sign, advertises tacos de cabeza.

If such foods put you off, there's plenty of hot dogs and hamburgers available. Thirty years ago they tempted me. Today I get angina pains just looking at them.

This one's new to me: potato chips on a stick. A single spiral cut potato is threaded onto a wooden stick and deep fried. No bag needed.

Fresas con chantilly—strawberries and whipped cream—sound appealing to me. I envision a paper cup overflowing with fresh, dew-picked strawberries topped with thick hand-beaten cream.

I wake up the vendor. ("Why am I the only customer" I should ask, but don't.) From a freezer, he digs up one of those milk cartons like the ones hanging overhead. He bashes it on the counter to break up the congealed glob of frozen strawberries within. Then with a large knife, he stabs into a container of frozen Cool Whip, scooping the few tiny chunks he's able to free up into the carton.

I throw mine away. Fortunately a guy across the way is making churros. Deep-fried batter rolled in sugar rectifies any disappointment.

Oh yeah. County fairs are supposed to be about agriculture. We don't see any 4-H-ers showing prizewinning lambs, nor any blue ribbon canned preserves. A few large commercial ranches exhibit livestock, that's all. Nobody seems excited about it.

Tens of thousands of people will visit this fair. The vast majority of them don't come to see domestic animals. They come to have a good time. And they will.

Growing up, midways were magical places. Lights, music, the calls of the barkers created a whole new world around me. I began innocently riding merry-go-rounds, advanced to the big coasters, and graduated to the tunnel of love.

If you live here, you could suspend all judgment, drop your inhibitions, and go. The experience will take years off you. The county fair will be open through this weekend.

Truth in Advertising

A poster on the fence surrounding the Rosewood Residences building site in San Miguel de Allende provides an impression of how the development will look: upholstered chairs on a terrace overlooking a gently curving street that leads to a view of the Parroquia in the distance.

The photograph below shows what it looks like today.

 

The uppermost spire of the Parroquia can just be made out behind the building on the right.

Parque Ecológico Joya—La Barreta

Take the highway east from San Miguel de Allende. Shortly after crossing the Guanajuato-Querétaro state line the tiny community of La Monja appears. There a roadside sign points out the winding cobblestone road to Parque Joya. Billed as an ecological park, we anticipated a place of natural features and good hiking. Four of us set out to explore it one early morning.

The park was created in 2003. More than 600 acres of ejido land were set aside to preserve some of the last unspoiled country near Querétaro.

Steep oak-covered hillsides punctuated with meadows and rocky crags characterize the topography. Occasional stone walls are all that remain of previous human uses.

A couple of steep trails provide access to the park features: panoramic views, cool forests, abundant wildflowers.

Away from the forest canopy, rocks exposed to sunshine host colorful lichens, those unlikely symbioses of fungi and algae.

Steep trails offer glimpses of the park picnic grounds, well developed with concrete shelters, picnic tables and parrillas. The John Muir Wilderness this isn't, and appropriately so. Mexicans are far less likely to seek solitude in backcountry hiking. Their focus is on family activities. To attract them, access to nature needs to be designed for everyone from aged abuelos to niños.

The park contains a camping area. The picnic area includes playground equipment and bathrooms (so, as the Tourist-A website says, you won't have to go behind a tree). Also—rare in Mexico—there are recycling bins. Environmental progress in this country is heartening: smoking bans, plastic bag prohibitions, and now, recycling.

I was almost shocked to see a ban on music players. This is asking a lot: no family gathering is complete without fiesta music.

We hiked up a steep, muddy trail. I estimate our altitude was 7,500 feet. The air was cool and invigorating. One of our party, our friend Angela, is a gazelle. She bounded to the top of a ridge and was resting at a mirador (lookout) as the rest of us come puffing up.

Parts of the ascent were so steep they were scary. We debated the merits of continuing onward along the ridge in hopes of finding a gentler descent. Ever enthusiastic and energetic, Angela volunteered to serve as scout.

The path she found looked promising, but farther along, we began to wonder if retracing our ascent might not have been better. One stretch of the new trail would have been impassible but for a thick rope someone thoughtfully had tied to a tree.

Here Laura demonstrates her rappelling form.

Laura and I became separated from our companions and took a wrong fork in the trail. After backtracking, hopping a stone wall, and much yoohooing, we found our way back to open meadows and the road back to the park entrance.

The park staff works to eradicate evidence of prior agricultural use. A nursery contains thousands of native plants. I noticed a hillside that at first glance seemed to be littered with hundreds of one-liter plastic coke bottles. They turned out to be serving as individual greenhouses for newly transplanted seedlings—an old gardener's trick.

All this effort and expense has created a real jewel—as the name of the park implies. So many so-called ecoparks in this country are little more than commercial enterprises where people swim with dolphins or some other such outrage. Parque Ecológico Joya is the real thing; an attempt to save and provide access to a natural place.

It's a hard place to find. Turning south at La Monja means leaving behind the last directional sign. The cobblestone road winding through the pueblo of La Barreta provides ample opportunities for wrong turnings. I followed the practice of those experienced at driving through Mexico, asking at every opportunity: "¿Es la ruta al parque Ecológico?"

(On back roads, signs are unnecessary. Installing them would only deprive travelers of brief encounters with friendly people along the way, of opportunities to exchange courtesies.)

Parque Ecológico Joya opens at ten every day and closes at seven (except for campers). We hopped the fence at eight in the morning and nobody seemed to care. Fees are $10 pesos for entry and another $10 to use a picnic shelter. If you live here, you should go there.

[The only map I could find locating the park is at this link.]

Ecology Now!

The lettering on the truck reads: "Here we are born, here we live... We take care of our planet!"

This message was brought to you by Grupo Bimbo, makers of Mexican Wonder bread.

A Taxi Gets a Fill-Up

A taxi pulls up to the Pemex pump. The attendant slides a steel ramp behind a rear wheel. The taxista backs onto it.

The ramp is purpose-built. Attendant and driver employ it with the ease of long practice.

 

I want to know—what is the point?

My guess? The ramp allows a little more fuel to fit into the tank, so the taxista gets a skosh more range between pit stops.

The Chorro Steps

San Miguel de Allende meanders across the Laja River valley and creeps up the side of an escarpment. I live on the edge of the cliff, hundreds of feet above our most prominent church, the Parroquia. 

The streets in the Centro Historico are narrow and congested. Parking is difficult. Many of us find walking easier than driving. Since most any place you want to go is within a kilometer of wherever you happen to be, San Miguel is a walker's town. Except, of course, for that escarpment.

The most direct route from the southern edge of the Centro Historico to my house is via a walkway too steep for cars. Walking home means climbing stairs. My path begins at Juárez Park with fourteen inviting steps.

The ascent leads to the Lavanderia Público where some people still do their laundry.

From there the road—Callejon del Chorro—climbs. Automobiles labor up the cobblestone street; pedestrians use steps...

... and more steps. The path winds past elegant homes thick with plants and trees. The scent of lilies fills the air. This area is sometimes called the Beverly Hills of San Miguel.

El Chorro is so named for the spring that induced Fray Juan de San Miguel to found a town here. A fountain marks the spot.

I often walk down these steps to get to town. I climb up them for aerobic exercise.

My route continues past the Cultural Center where music often drifts across the path. Sometimes dancers rehearse under the arches, artists work at easels.

Climbing one more flight of steps, I reach an old church. For years I didn't know its name. One day a wedding party—six young men wearing black suits and their best piercings—were waiting outside. They identified it for me: Iglesia Santa Cruz del Chorro.

Santa Cruz—Holy Cross. A wooden one bears likenesses of objects associated with the Passion: the crown of thorns, lances, a scourge, nails and hammer, even the Roman soldiers' dice.

The forecourt of Iglesia Santa Cruz del Chorro contains benches. Some might welcome the opportunity to sit there and catch their breaths. I push on.

Just beyond the church, the Chorro Steps begin in earnest. They cling to the escarpment, steep and narrow.

Here and there stairs had to be cut away to make room for someone's front door. No automobile ever reaches homes like this one. Groceries, water, furniture—all must be carried up on aching backs.

A rider carries his stunt bike. Athletic people run up and down the steps: impressive at sea level, more so at our altitude of 6,400 feet.

Stairs at the inside of a curve shrink to two inches wide. Everybody walks on the outside, clinging to the handrail. At last a glimpse of sky signals the end of the Chorro steps and of the climb—for most.

But not for me. I cross the Salida a Querétaro where I look forward to climbing another ten stories.

Gone now are the elegant homes of San Miguel's Beverly Hills. My neighborhood, Barrio las Palmas, is mixed. Here many live in casas humildes: dwellings consisting of little more than rubble walls with blue tarpaulin roofs, curtains serving for front doors. Down a side alley, someone hung plants in tin cans: an attempt to soften raw concrete walls.

The steps here are fewer in number but the climb is no less arduous. Landings rise steeply between stairs. Hot sun replaces the shady cool of the Chorro Steps far below. I'm sweating, breathing harder.

Schoolchildren commute on this section. Midway, a vendor offers snacks: chicharones y tostadas con cueritos, galletas con mayonesa, gelatinas con ronpope (fried pork rinds, tostadas with pork skin, crackers with mayonnaise, and stiff, chewy Jello with eggnog).

Lipids and sugars restored, I walk another thirty steps to reach my street. Then it's just a level hundred meters to my door.

 

I collapse on my couch with an ice cold diet coke. My legs tingle. I'm high on endorphins. I've climbed 305 steps and ground up several steep streets. Why do I do this?

Six years ago I came to San Miguel and promptly suffered a heart attack. I was overweight and out of shape. I smoked. My heart was scarred and a defibrillator was implanted in my chest because my cardiologist didn't like the fascinatin' rhythm of my pulse. Clearly something had to change.

I quit smoking right there in the emergency room at Hospital de la Fé. Amazing how easy it is with good motivation. Since then I've lost forty pounds through sensible eating and exercise. Three hours a week at the gym and lots of walking around town keep me in shape. I haven't felt this good in decades.

But mostly I climb the Chorro Steps because I can. Many people with my history can't. So I find joy in taking my body out to play.

The Uruguayan Grill

At the top of the Salida a Querétaro between the Hotel Refugio del Molino and the Pemex station, a couple of small shopping centers have sprung up. One—Plaza Primavera—houses several casual restaurants; among them, an Uruguayan grill.

Uruguayans love grilled meat. Life is tough for vegetarians down in the southern cone.

Naturalmente Uruguay Restaurant will not disappoint meat lovers. The menu includes bife de chorizo (a thick steak), asado de tira (a huge, thin steak that blankets the entire plate), even a three-pound chunk of beef—intended for sharing, I think. For appetizers, there are several kinds of sausages, among them morcilla (blood sausage). There's organ meats too, such as mollejas (grilled sweetbreads).

All the food is prepared on a two-part grill. Mesquite logs burn in a U-shaped metal basket. Coals drop onto the bricks. These then are raked under the canted parrilla, where they provide intense heat and smoky flavor.

Good grilling requires lots of heat. Ponytailed owner-chef Alonzo (El Rojo) intensifies his fire with a blowpipe, putting blasts of oxygen right where they're needed.

All that meat would be problematical for Laura and me. We describe ourselves as piscetarians—fish-eating vegetarians. (Laura does better at this than I do. Every other month or so I sneak off to Vicente's for carnitas.) Fortunately the menu at Naturalmente Uruguay Restaurant includes tuna and salmon and even pizza cooked right on the parrilla.

But the real secret to this restaurant is that when Alonzo isn't cooking, he's entertaining the customers. Wearing a gorra (asador's cap) and surgeon's mask, he sings Cuban and Veracruzana songs in a rich, resonant baritone. Here he's imitating the sound of a trombone by humming through pressed-together lips.

He calls his instrument a jarama, and says it was carved from a single piece of cedar with a machete. It carries eight strings in five courses: the top and bottom strings are single, the three inner ones are doubled as in a mandolin. Weird.

With a pair of Indonesian maracas tied to his strumming hand, El Red draws bouncy rhythms from his jarama—and smiles from his audience.

Fruteria 'Gil'

If you get a sudden hankering for a nice juicy hunk of papaya, consider calling Gil's Fruit Shop.

Gil offers free home delivery. Just telephone 154-9135 and your fruit will be speeding on its way.