Cowpuchino

I think I’ve written about this before many years ago but perhaps it’s time for a recap.

Because of all the family and new friends in town, we have been finding ourselves forced to go to one of the favourite watering holes in town. It’s known by many names but we like Cowpuchino. In Spanish, they call it Parajetes. This is a Mexican tradition and you can see these places all over Mexico.

It works like this: The place opens at 8 am and after saying ‘Buenos días’ to the lady in charge you present 30 pesos and in return, she gives you a plastic cup with sugar, chocolate, and coffee in it. You can then add vanilla, cinnamon and of course, the reason we came, moonshine, but not too much as it is still early.

Then you stand in line and wait for the next available cow to be ready. All the time watching out for dogs, chickens, goats and the odd niño getting underfoot. When the next cow is due it’s a good idea to get out of the way as she heads straight for the feed bucket ready to be tied down. The cows here still have their horns so you don’t want to get in the way.

Then her calf comes charging up to get a feed before we get all the available milk. In the meantime, a goat is chased away from the feed bag several times before it can eat it all. For the rest of the time we are there, it continues to try and steal some feed. At one point it got ticked off and went to stand in the middle of the road as an act of defiance.

Eventually, your turn comes and the guy fills the cup with milk right from the cow. After giving it a good stir, (we now know to bring a spoon with us) you take your first sip, delicious. If you want, you can have goat’s milk instead. I don’t fancy it but a few of our friends say it’s great.

After we get our cup full we usually find like-minded people and settle in for exchanging news, gossip and general BS. After a while, though that darn cup turns up empty, so you just have to have another one. And so you wend your way home hoping that some relative or friend will want you to take them again before long, and of course they always do.