Tamazunchale

OK. I didn't actually do justice to Tamazunchale, San Luis Potosi, Mexico.
First. We always pronounced this town Thomas n Chahhhlie. Which is a pretty close approximation of the correct Spanish pronunciation and easy to remember.

Tamazunchale sits in a narrow valley with a deep gorge on the north side and mountains on the south, east, and west sides. When you come down out of the mountains from the north you cross a bridge over the verrrrrry deep gorge with a river in the bottom and make a turn to the right and you are in the town.
I think it sits in a little microsystem of its own. I don't know anywhere else this far north where you can grow cocoa for instance. But, I do know that when you cross that bridge you enter a different century. The popluation is Huastecan, people sit on the sidewalk shucking corn kernels from off the cob using an already shucked cob. I stopped in at a grocery store and looked at the copal wrapped in little rectangular packets. I was curious. I asked the storekeeper, a tiny woman with long braids, (made longer by the ribbons braided through her gray hair and tying the 2 braids together at her lower back) what the copal was used for. She looked at me like I was a real dummy--You know, you put it in the coffin with the deceased. Oh, of course. How could that have slipped my mind.
When the boys got haircuts with hand held clippers it was in the Plaza under a huge old tree, but in a proper barber's chair.
I don't know. I am not giving you the feeling of this place.
One thing more. There are two roads out of town to the south, both eventually take you to Pachuca, both run through the sierra in the state of Hidalgo, both look like they head into endless tropical cloud forest, shrouded in fog and mystery.
You know when your take-off point is Tamazunchale that you are headed out past the far end of the middle of nowhere.
I love that little town.
I wonder what's happening there today???