Day 9. Mexico 2022. Feliz Día del Padre 😊

A very happy Father’s Day to all you Dads!

I started the day by giving a big good-bye hug to Laura, who was such a gracious hostess in Campeche. On parting she gave me three tips: Buy some sweet bread in Pomuch, cochinita in Hecelchakán, and a new hat in Bécal. Best advice anyone has given me in a long time!

All three towns are found, in that order, along the route from Campeche to Mérida. I got to Pomuch maybe at 9:30 am, and by that time much of the bread from the three bakeries I saw was pretty much gone. I did buy a polvorón de anís and an hojaldra, with the vague idea that I would stop at a convenience store to by a cup of coffee to have with my bread. Not in this little town, however, so I ended eating most of the bread in little nibbles (but I saved a piece for breakfast tomorrow).

At Hecelchakán the place to be was the central plaza, where several kiosks are clustered together to feed the church-going crowd right after the service. As far as cochinitas I have eaten (and cooked) this one was OK but not great. This is the problem when you become a connoisseur of any one dish.

The real highlight of the trip was Bécal, which has quite a reputation for the manufacture of fine hats. The best known are the Ecuadorian “Panama” hats, so called because the toquilla fiber they are made of was harvested in the Petén regions of Guatemala and Belize, and had to be transported through Panama (nowadays through the Panama Canal) to reach Guayaquil in Ecuador, where the finest hats have been manufactured for 300 years. Well, a man from Guayaquil moved into Yucatán and was happily minding his own business when, in 1860, Empress Carlota accepted an invitation from the local hacendado to come spend a few days in the Bécal area. Eager to please the empress, our Guayaquil man went to the boss, and if he were given the funds and men to go harvest some paja toquilla in el Petén, offered to make the finest hat as a gift to the empress. It took the expedition 60 days to there and back, but they brough with them not only enough material for 100 hats, but also bulbs of the palm that thrived in the local fields. It was then labeled the jipi-japa palm, and thus was born the tradition of making of fine hats in Mexico.

The palm grows by creating a tight bundle of new leaves, which forms a tight spindle or cogoyo maybe 60 cm tall, which at this point is at its best to be harvested (if it starts unfurling to create the new leaves it is too late for use in hat making). Once the spindle is cut at its base it is hung from the stem and sliced lengthwise into thin strips, which are then stripped from its flesh to leave behind the tough fibers that are used for weaving. The fibers are then dried and “smoked” with a coal and sulfur fire, and afterward are allowed to fluff in the breeze. They are now ready to be woven. The traditional hat maker sits in a cave or tunnel where humidity is high, and uses a rounded post to give the shape and dimension to the crown of the hat, which starts with maybe twenty fibers woven for a couple of turns, at which point another twenty are added for maybe 10 turns, and so on, until by the time the wing of the hat is woven the artisan might be dealing with a couple of hundred fibers. Every couple of centimeters the hat maker uses a seashell to “brush” the fibers and tighten the weave.

The basic shape that results is that of a ghost, at which point the artisan starts shaping the hat with a damp cloth, a damp cloth heated with an iron and then applied with the hand to form the ridges on the crown of the hat, or by directly ironing the wet cloth on top of the weave to form the wing of the hat. The final hat is a thing of beauty, beautifully formed by still pliable, so it can be rolled only to pop-back to shape when unrolled (there are limits on how long the hat can stayed rolled, but if it loses some of its shape it can always be refreshed with a damp cloth).

Of course I was mesmerized by these explanations, and I figured Faby would like to give me a hat to celebrate Father’s Day, so I held and held until finally I found a unique hat with two shades of fiber and an interesting design that I thought was perfect … and now I am the proud owner of a sombrero de jipi-japa. Which reminds me of a song that we used to sing in long car trips  with my parents (maybe my brother and sister can add or correct as appropriate):

Voy a hacer mi testamento:

Apunte usted, Seňor Escribano, apunte usted con la pluma en la mano, apunte usted.

Un sombrero de jipi-japa del que no me queda más que la tapa

Una corbata de azul y rojo por dónde camina un maldito piojo

Unos botines de cuero inglés que cuando camino asoman los pies

Una sillita de Iztapalapa que bien que se para en su sola pata

Un bacín con bordes dorados por donde se escurren todos los miados

Apunte usted, Seňor Escribano, apunte usted con la pluma en la mano, apunte usted.

 Eventually I came into Mérida, in time to be late for everything, but to celebrate Father’s Day I treated myself to an early dinner at Eladio’s Bar, a super popular bar with live music and the best appetizers, which we visited as a family 25 years ago. The place was absolutely packed with many families happily celebrating Dad and Grandad.

And that is it for Yucatán. Tomorrow at 6 am I will take the flight to Oaxaca, to start with a new adventure 😊