Miraflores

We drove south about 50 kilometers this morning to the oasis town of Miraflores, another small village like Santiago where we visited the waterfalls last week. Miraflores is just a couple of kilometers off of Mex 1. According to the internet site we found, it is famous for its’ leather works and beautiful women. We found one shop featuring the former, and Bob found several of the latter to check out as we drove through town. We also found it to be an extraordinarily neat and tidy little town with many roads lined with formal sidewalks much like at home, plus roadway medians filled with blooming plants and tall trees along the side.

The leather works was a small operation in a fairly large building. We saw some cuero crudo (raw leather) being dried in the shop area, one fairly reclusive fellow sitting at a sewing machine off in a side room, and an additional small room that constituted their “gift shop”. You can see the sum total of their wares in the photo: one table with maybe a dozen items on it, plus, not pictured, perhaps 10 belts. We weren’t temped by the items in the store but did buy 26 meters of the cuero crudo. This is a thin continuous leather strip that is used to lash together timbers in the construction of the thatched roof palapas so common down here. Our idea is that it may be incorporated, as an aesthetic element, in our “someday” carport at Olalla. Or maybe it will just be hung somewhere outside as a conversation piece. Total cost 6 pesos per meter, or about $13.

Our second stop, other than our general walking around this lovely town, was at a small shop which specializes in meat and cheese. We bought a kilo of machaca, the dried meat we had in our lunch with the women at Horconcitas last Friday, and a small round of cheese of the same kind that was being made on the ranch. The cost of the machaca was 210 pesos, or about $18 and 40 pesos, or about $3.25, for about a pound of cheese.

Milaflores is definitely worth the side trip off Mex 1 if you’re passing that way and have an hour or two to spare.