hmm, thanksgiving?

We got the inside tour of a cigar factory just outside of San Andres Tuxtla - actually on the highway halfway between Catemaco and San Andres, where we walked 2 kilometers along the road into town after our tour (a bit stressful when huge trucks fly by, no shoulder).
But we hopped off the bus as soon as we saw a building with the word tabaquería , and we ended up in the factory of Te Amo cigars, a 120 year old company, something of an establishment in Mexican cigars. As soon the as Cuban embargo happened, Mexico rejoiced with the new possibilities of cigar importing to the U.S.

Our guide took us into each step of the process. We started in the humid warehouse where they store hundreds of gigantic bricks of tobacco leaves, wrapped in cloth to keep in moisture. The more aged, the better the flavor, like wine. Our guide told us that they age their tobacco leaves for at least 7 years, but there are often anniversary blends of 10 + years.
Next we went into the room where they roll the cigars, every step of the process done by hand (all the way up to the packing and varnishing of the boxes). There were at least 50 people, working in pairs to roll all the different shapes and colors. Many were smoking them as they rolled them, our guide told us that this is encouraged, but only in the rolling room. I expected to see a bunch of crusty old men with cigars hanging out of their mouth, anyway. He also took us into the packing room where women wrapped the little paper things around the cigars and packed them into all kinds of pretty boxes.
After our tour we were obviously enclined to buy a few, mostly to compare their flavor to others we´ve tried (most notoriously the Cubans). Tasty, sure, not nothing compares to a Cuban.

After our walk along the highway, we made it into San Andres Tuxlta, a slightly bigger town than Catemaco, where every building and sidewalk is under construction (who knows why they do it in the rain). We ended up in the only bar in town, way in the back of a building, patroned by the old drunk men of the town who have been there all day, and probably every day. Ian smoked a cigar, and this seemed to encourage them to pull out their cigars. They passed around an unmarked puro, almost a foot long, and everyone smelled it intently and murmured about how delicious it would be. Then one of the men came over and gifted it to us, say "así es como somos en Mexico, un regalo," This is how we are in Mexico, a gift.

Yesterday was a beach day. The warm waters of the gulf were amazing! And we swam and swam and swam. Getting there was pretty annoying, in the back of a truck converted into a pirata, a type of rural colectivo they put seats in, an hour through rural towns and awfully unpaved roads, but we made it and the sea beckoned to us. The quiet little town that consists of a cul-de-sac is named Montepio, and the piratas are the only form of transportation I spotted the whole day. The beach was nearly empty, with the palapas that are probaly bustling during the summer and holidays, all but one abandoned. I had an authentically fresh piña colada, which took so long to make because they had to go hunt down a coconut for me.
The ride back ended up being 2 hours long, during which it got dark and super cold, both of us wet in the back of a truck.

But we were greated with an unusual Thanksgiving dinner (only by coincidence). We have neighbors now on our piece of grass behind the restaurant, an RV toting a British women, her German husband, and their Mexican dog. We ate supper with them and talked about the US and Europe and Mexico and smoked a couple cigars. There was no turkey.