Today, Sunday, was our last day off. Tomorrow we both return to work and my Spanish classes begin. We had a late start to the morning, lingering over tea and the news (for me) and exercise and calls home (for the GF). I was very pleased as last night, before realising that I was felled by a headache, the Gentleman Friend popped into a shop and bought a little bowl shaped liked a curled up armadillo that we had admired earlier, and presented it to me as a gift. I was very touched as he is not one for giving presents, and he had clearly really loved the bowl, but decided that since my Zapotec birth animal is a coyote-armadillo, it should be given to me. It is now sitting on my bedside table and I attribute to it my swift recovery.
We went back to probably our favourite restaurant in Oaxaca for lunch where I had beef barbacoa preceded by a really delicious consomme, very like a Mexican nihari, and he had a filet of fish with salsa verde and topped with bone marrow. I had much of the bone marrow as he is avoiding meat. Then we picked up some greens from a little farmer’s market very close to my homestay after he leaves, bought me a notebook for my lessons starting tomorrow, and got a slice of passion fruit cake for later. The clouds were lowering for the evening downpour so we popped into the museum of photography where there was an exhibition on Mexican punk and another of Oaxacana family photography. Nothing too compelling, but quite pleasant. Then our favourite cake shop turned out to be closed so we went and had a coffee at another place which we’d been to before and not liked very much. This time we tried their house special coffees – a cold brew for me, a latte for him – and both seemed to be special (and priced about 20 pesos higher than the non-special equivalent) for having some almond essence in them. Well, it was a pleasant enough way to wait out the rainstorm, and meanwhile we photobombed a young woman being photographed by an enraptured lover.
And now we are back, the holiday is over.