Chapter 18: Strawberry Picking

An instant classic, as it would be called on ESPN, was the following weekend. This was on the list before I got home to write it down. We were exhausted, Kike and I, after the long week with the camp, my friends, and all that. So we went up to Kike’s house for the weekend, just to relax and take it easy. We got there and his entire family must have been there. Grandma, Grandpa, like six or seven pairs of aunts and uncles and flocks of cousins were hanging out, riding the horses, chasing the sheep, sitting and chatting. Tia and Tio were there with all the kids and grandkids, and Tia wanted to go to Michoacan to pick strawberries. It was the next state away, probably an hour away, but everyone was excited to go, so we went. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. In about ten minutes they showed me in what we were going to go berry picking: an old beat up UPS truck driven by one of Kike’s cousins. Everybody in! We piled in to the back, which is about as comfortable as you can imagine sitting inside a big tin box is, and we’re off. People are telling jokes, old stories about the grandma dancing all night to rap music, pointing out how uncomfortable we all are. We stopped every so often for pop or tacos or sombreros. We drove on through three different cities, finally came to a stop and all got out. There were no strawberries but we certainly were in the middle of some tiny town I had never been to. The told me it was a town of all women. All the men in the town had decided to go to the US, so they left their wives there alone, the men working together and sending the majority of their money home. I guess they had a town meeting, votes, made the plans, and all headed out together. And they were right. All we saw were women. We had actually stopped to ask directions in this town of women, but we bought some chips and looked around. They told me that there are a fair number of towns like these, and they are well known for being calm, crime-free, and except for a few garish scandals, generally well respected. It was quite rural at this point, on the edge of Michoacan. You could tell because the roads were suddenly well paved and everything was a little neater than our trashy state of Mexico. They let me sit up towards the front so I could see out, which was quite nice. Maybe another fifteen minutes and we came to what they said were strawberry fields, but I didn’t see any hut or little stand, any buckets to pick with. There were maybe a dozen women with bags walking up and down the rows of what I saw were very small strawberry plants. We got out and in a few minutes a man came over. Are these your fields? Yes. We pick these strawberries and deliver them to all over the country. We sell these baskets for 40 pesos. The straw baskets were huge. Maybe like four gallons of milk. Or maybe a baby. Actually, we wanted to pick some, if that is ok with you. Pick some? By hand? Yes. How much would you charge us for that. Umm… you can just help yourself. I don’t think you are going to demolish my fields. Due to the climate and good soil, they grow back pretty fast here anyway. Actually they grow here year round. So for the next hour I sat and ate myself silly with free strawberries. Kike and I joked around and laughed at the rather amusing situation, the little kids with red smeared across their faces, the grandma cross-legged filling her shirt with delicious berries. Kike had a huge advantage, as he put his wheels on either side of a row, and just leaned down to grab a few, ate them, and continued down the row. Quite the tactic. We did buy maybe a dozen baskets from the guy, which I’m sure made up for the ones we ate, and headed back. On the way back someone decided that we were going to take a side trip to the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary. This is one of many areas in the state of Michoacan where huge Monarch butterflies migrate to every year. You could see it from a distance, millions of these insects fluttering above the trees, like a tornado had just hit a paper recycling plant. It was a little hike in, us taking turns pushing Kike’s chair up the mostly dirt path, but once there you are covered with butterflies. I remember being amazed at some big butterfly when I was a kid. I saw all the world’s most beautiful ones together sitting on my shoulders within the span of five minutes. I mean, just everywhere. You couldn’t stop them. We were crunching them under our feet because we simply couldn’t avoid it. I did feel pretty bad both about invading their home and how many I plastered on the ground, but we didn’t wait around that long anyway. Some of the kids were trying to capture some of the bigger ones, their parents chasing them around telling them they didn’t have room at home for more pets. It was pretty funny. Me thrown into an old delivery truck with a huge family of Mexicans treating me like their son, heading up to pick free strawberries and play with butterflies? How fun is that?