Ok. A quite serious fuck you for Star Wars- and of all the Star Wars Empire nonethless. I am so furious that I’m crying during Star Wars and not cause of Star Wars, but because you gave me an “I know” shirt once. You weren’t even into Star Wars. That was mine. On the somewhat more entertaining side, I think this is the first time Leo has seen Star Wars and he’s got feelings about Chewy. Or at least Chewy’s vocal range.
I’m so frustrated by all the things that were mine that somehow became a part of us. Things you didn’t care about. Things I shared that you decided were cool too. fuck you. It’s insidious.
My heart just still hurts so much. It just doesn’t feel done with you, whatever the rest of me thinks. And it’s a bit scary. I didn’t believe it would last this long. I’m trying to find differences, some sense of growth or distance or something between now and, say, January. Am I healing? There’s some part of me that still feels like I’ll wake up from this and I can’t figure out what I need to do to make it more real.
Skipped a week of blogging. While busy, that initial week was boringly busy. I finished my final week and final paper of class. It was hot in Portland, which meant work was activated for heat response Sunday-Tuesday aka long days for me. I continued my Spanish classes, although with a new/old teacher. However my bouganvillea got its first bloom!
The nicest thing about thie reprieve from school is that I’m back to my 4 day work week! Meaning more time for exploring new things.
Which meant that Friday, Fran and I went on an adventure with a plan to hit El Vilsito for tacos, then the Insitute of Mexican Sugar Art, and finish the day at a beer spot and with more tacos.
This did not go as planned.
I did however walk down to Navarte to meet Fran at El Vilsito. It’s a nice walk, about 3 miles bouncing through neighborhoods. Navarte is on my list of potential next hoods, being considerably cheaper than my current neighborhood. We had some delightfully delicious al pastor tacos and then walked on down to the museum. And then past it and back past it again and eventually matched the address to an unmarked, nondescript grey building. There was a bell, so I pushed it and learned that museum is open by appointment only.
So we abandoned that plan and went had some beers at Hop the Beer. It’s a big warehouse style space with an arched ceiling, a bit like an airport hanger. They do brew some of their own beer, but mostly the glory is in the selection of non Mexican style beers. Here you’ll find IPAs, NW and New England style, stouts and porters, a delightful fruit forward Hefeweizen, a gose, and even a couple witbiers. While I would never bother taking a NW native since it is rather out of the way of main attractions, it is a beer mecca here. And felt very Portland.
Saturday, I went on a hike at Parque Ecológico Dos Aguas. Situated right outside the town of San Rafael, Dos Aguas is a classic Mexican ecopark. There’s cabins, eateries, campgrounds, overhead walkways (ala Ewoks). It’s all a bit ramshackle with low slung dark stands and plastic tables. Also a bit chaotic with bright colors and playfully screaming children.
We had a good sized group this time! Mostly native Spanish speakers, which is a bit unusual, and Brian, a Canadian who’s been in Mexico City for 25 years, but is originally from Vancouver, so I also feel a little bonded.
These spaces are always a little interesting in that I keep feeling like they quickly turn into wilderness and serious hikes, but then we stumble upon a road and I realize that we just start hiking lower than many people.
As Liz warned us, this one starts off fuerte. A bit of an uphill scramble really. One thing I have not yet gotten used to here is that if the picture above had been of a hike in the Northwest, you’d know that you would be sliding all over the place. But for whatever reason, not so here. Not that there’s not moments of slip, but nothing like what you would think.
The first part of our trek involved following and often straddling over a pipe, about 2 feet in diameter, that likely at one point carried water down to San Rafael. We slogged up hill surrounded by big green trees and big green plants, ferns, lichen, mushrooms, fungi and then a whole bunch of plants I can’t identify yet. We started at 9,500 feet and at the height were around 12,800, so as you can imagine, it was work. Largely trapped in the city as I am, the fresh air and moments of quiet are all the more dear.
One thing that never fails to surprise me is that just when you think you are genuinely in the middle of wilderness you come across an opening, with establishments and a road to it and vehicles and part of me always think “seriously, we could’ve just driven here?” This one had a big grassy area littered with tents and a few worse for the wear structures and rudimentary outdoor restaurant. And a stunning new view of Iztaccihuatl. She’s the sleeping lady. To summit you go up to her feet, then knees, across her glacier belly, over her breasts to summit at her head. The view here is of her head and breasts, a different view than I normally get of her.
We tried some local pineapple flavored pulque, an agave based slighlty alcoholic beverage that’s usually some kind of fruit flavored, and thick and viscous, grabbed more water and ate our snacks at a reservoir by the campgrounds with not quite so dramatic, but still lovely view of the mountain and a bit more tranquility. We were joined by 3 local dogs who patiently hung out waiting optimistically for scraps and pets.
The day was mostly lovely, but a touch more humid than usual. Which had us all shedding layers at this resting point.
The trail continued down the left side of the reservoir and we were quickly back into the forest. It’s curious the infrastructure you find in there. Someone went to great effort to build a stone viaduct and walls.
The dogs trotted alongside us for quite aways. Overhead precipes full of green jutted out from the hillside. Everything was green and mossy. Reminded me a bit of home, like in the Gorge, with tall, occassionally fat evergreens densely rising on the side of the trail and fungi growing from their sides.
Here it was cool (ok not that cool, I’m still in Mexico) and sun filtered through trees. And I found a wild dahlia.
Then we took a couple stretches essentially on a balance beam. The dogs came with. This was both scary and exhilirating. I knew this existed in the park from photos from other groups, but did not know it was on our itinerary.
The plus side of this outing was the mental energy it required from me. A certain single mindedness and it held my interest. It’s such a relief having my brain focus on one thing when that one thing is not my divorce. More important in the moment is where I’m putting my feet.
From here we started climbing up again, rising above a dense forest with lush greenness to a more open landscape with some kind of yellow fescue and sparser pine trees. Here we went up and more up and more up, until we found ourselves in a canyon with a creek cutting through. The canyon headed upward, so despite following the stream, we kept going up alongside small waterfalls.
By now it was around 1:30pm and we started our trek a little after 8am. A strong contigent was worried about an afternoon storm and actually had been for days. They kept checking on our WhatsApp group. And they were quite insistent that we turn around now to be back before the storm. In fairness, while I was not worried about a storm, I was super ready to turn around. So sadly, we did not reach our final destination of the frozen waterfall and we headed back down taking a somewhat different route and encountering a different restaurant where they clearly knew Liz well. We stopped for some food.
This was a tasty taco. The man cooked in an old barrel which had a door on the side and had a fire going in it. The top was like a comal where he warmed up tortillas and cooked meat. All tacos came with refried beans and either green or red salsa that was just the perfect amount of pica.
The rest of the way back down was steep and I was grateful for my poles as I was also quite tired. The “storm” was about 20 minutes of consistent, but gentle, rain. The way back down we passed a lot car camping sites with tents, that weren’t super private, but were demonstrably great for large parties, including one poor group who’d left for a hike maybe and neglected to put their rain fly on.
We got back to the car at 6pm, with over 15 miles under our feet, a very full day of hiking indeed.
Tacos of the Week: El Vilsito
What to say about El Vilsito. This place has been around for more than 35 years. I think the first time I went was my second trip to Mexico City after a late night out, we hopped a cab over. People were sitting and standing everywhere eating tacos and drinking Victorias. It originally began as an autoshop by day, transforming into a taqueria at night and slowly the taqueria has taken over (though there is still an active autoshop) and is now open every day of the week until at least 1am and staying open till 5am on Fridays and Saturdays. I hadn’t been since moving here and never during daylight hours, it was every bit as good as I remember on previous visits.
El Vilsito is famous for their pastor, as shown in the right hand photo below. You can always tell a place’s popularity by the size of their trompo, which is the vertical spit used to cook pastor. These are enormous ones. And there are 4 of them. We watched them putting one up on the trompo, it took 3 guys to carry the thing. This is a lot of meat, especially considering how little goes into a single taco. For the uninitiated, pastor is usually pork marinated in chiles, achiote and other spices. Each place carefully guards their exact recipe. The meat rotates on the spit with a pineapple overhead and as orders come in, the trompero slices thin pieces vertically and tops it with cilantro, onion, and pineapple.
Year One Project 
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