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Pulque is a drink unique to Mexico (WLMers I will email). It has a viscous type texture and a slight fizz when you drink the natural stuff, it not really very strong in taste and is usually flavoured. On Sat afternoon whilst Cleo watched a film with the neighbours, Gem, Luis, Luis's friend Jimmy (very Mexican name I know) and wee Aida who didn't want to watch the film headed along go the Pulqueria in the town centre, an attractive building decked out with cacti, a Mexican flag and pretty table clothes. We sat down and sampled the natural one (Aida contented herself colouring in). Due to its gloopy consistency it is possible to, whilst pulling the glass away leave a thin string of pulque leading from the glass to your lips, not dissimilar to when you pull chewing gum out. Luis demonstrated creating an impressive inch long line. He said that seasoned pulque drinkers can extent the glass a full arms length. I made an attempt and merely dribbled down my top, clearly practice was required.
Jimmy then said that there was cheaper and better Pulqueria nearer the house so off we went. This place was much more 'real' with pumping music and a few tables filled with young men drinking. A large mural on the wall depicted the process for making pulque. The main ingredient for this strange drink comes from the centre of the maguey plant, to the untrained eye this looks pretty much like a cactus. The sap is ciphered off, like fuel thieves nicking petrol from a car, using a tube, a sharp suck then it gathers in a goat skin bag. It's then left to ferment in White oak barrels for a few months and then voila it's ready to drink. The plants natural micro-organisms create the fermenting process (around 5%) and because of this it's fabled not to give you a hangoverI'm afraid I don't think I could drink vast quantities to find out. I found all this out from a huge chap who Jimmy knew who kindly came over and explained it all to us in a mixture of English and Spanish. He also let us try a sip of concentrated pulque which tasted much like any other 70% proof alcohol and is used as a digestif.
Pulque is mostly drunk by men and to support this fact there was only a men's loo in the Pulqueria. We still had wee Aida with us who was colouring in on the table with the addition of a pair of my clean earplugs to block out the pumping music, and so Gem, Aida and I set off on a mission to locate a ladies loo and some juice for Aida. Further down the street there was an open fronted bar, next to it a bouncer standing outside a door. We asked him if we could the use the toilet and pointed at Aida, decoy child worked as we gained entry. Now bearing in mind this was still only about 7pm we walked along a corridor and into what appeared to be a nightclub full of youths dancing and drinking to loud music as if it were midnight. Carrying a bemused Aida through the throng we located the loos which was awkwardly located under a staircase which you had to duck right under to get to. Once in the only cubicle I sat down to have a wee and the sliding door burst open and some girl on a phone appeared, voicing our protests she seem unperturbed and said it was no problem she just wanted better reception, it took for Gemma to administer a large shove to get her head out of the cubicle! Most bizarre. We finally returned to the Pulqueria plus a juice for Aida finished our pulque and after another false start with Gem's car returned home to retrieve Cleo and then a reasonably early night as on Sunday we were heading to remote ruins an hour and a half from Tlaxcala.
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