The trip to Tlaxcala contained elements that were both touristy and debauched, and while the tourism was impressive, I have to say I remember the debauched end of the trip with even more fondness.

On the way back from Tlaxcala, I watched the countyside of cacti, dilapidated houses and ever-present dogs while trying not to feel sick on the back “roads.” We suddenly pulled over at the suggestion of our host/guides, to a small building surrounded by even more than the usual number of dogs with a sign above reading “Pulquería.” This was to be my first experience with Pulque, a Mexican liquor made from the Maguey plant (Tequila is made from a related plant). We picked our way among the cars and the dogs, passed through a small room that seemed to be part-bar, part living room (including a number of people watching a movie about dogs) and passed into the covered yard, which we shared with an SUV and a number of drunken Mexican men. The pulque came, in enormous plastic glasses, mixed with fruit juices, the nicest combination of which was pulque with guanabana juice, a mild but pleasant fruit from Chiapas.

I embarked on a fools mission to drink the whole glass, which was not only impossible, but also completely inadvisable, given the roads we still had to travel to get home. The surroundings, meanwhile, became more and more surreal the farther I ventured into that bottomless glass: one of the drunken men wearing an enormous Mexican sombrero detached himself from his drunken group, and came over to give us a demonstration of him drinking pulque without the straw, only with his lips hovering over the drink and inhaling until a stream of pulque poured into him mouth and his moustache. Later, to the Northern Mexican dance music strains of the jukebox in the corner, he danced with himself and his plastic cup, and tried to convince us to join him.

Coming home from the pulquería was undoubtedly one of the most painful drives of my life. Carsick at the best of times, I turned positively green bouncing over the unpaved roads, swinging wildly around poorly-marked corners and grinding to a painful halt every time the car in front found a hidden speed-bump or “tope.” So the mystery pulquería in some unheard of back road between Tlaxcala and Puebla is not exactly ideal for a night out, but it was one of the most bizarrely authentic of my Mexican experiences.