The tequila distillery has been around for many years and is a popular tourist stop. It is well kept and the tour is quite informative.
Here the guide is talking about the Blue Agave, which is used to produce tequila.
Blue Agave is used to produce the only real tequila.
This is agave ready for processing. The tool in the guide's hands is used to strip the leaves and roots off the agave plant. These things
are large. The oven was used to heat up the bulbs in order to soften them.
The bulbs were then cut up and mashed with this mill into fiber, separating out the juice. Must have been a fun job,
The wheel barrows contain processed fiber.
The new way is steam and grind up the bulbs, separating the pulp from the sugar.
The agave juice is then poured into a fermenting tank and the remaining ppulp is rubbed across a grit screen sitting on top of the tank, extracting as much of the juice as possible.
A strip of partially processed agave. Tastes kind of like raw sugar cane.
Tip: Remove the little green tour sticker from your shirt before going shopping. Prices go up several hundred percent when vendors see
those stickers.
What a job. Tequila wasn't bad, though.
As it is with these tours, there was not much time to look around - plenty of time for buying trinkets though.
The fruit on this tree reminded me of some I'd seen in the Philippines. Or maybe it reminded me of malformed hedge apples.
Hibiscus?
Coconut Fruit
??
There were three of these guys flying around. When they weren't overhead, they were in the church gnawing on the legs of pews.
A small church.
Out back there were pens of various creatures. Lots of sheep and birds.
And an Iguana or two.
The last leg of the tour was downtown Puerto Vallarta.
