Julio Álvarez, a self-taught ornithologist and highly skilled nature photographer, lives in Ahualulco de Mercado, a small town located an hour’s drive west of Guadalajara.
Every day I enjoy Álvarez’s photos of birds and animals on his Facebook feed, but last week he turned his camera to a different subject.
“I’d like you all to meet my neighbor, Don Pepe,” he wrote. “Just take a look at how this man turns a lowly bule (calabash or bottle gourd) into a delightful work of art.”
I took a look and had no trouble finding a few friends who agreed with me that Don Pepe and his workshop in Ahualulco deserved a visit.
Ahualulco is located on Jalisco’s Highway 4, which just happens to be full of interesting places to visit. There are the curious circular pyramids or Guachimontones, followed by the extraordinarily beautiful haciendas of La Labor and El Carmen, both turned into boutique hotels. Then there’s the sprawling obsidian deposit of El Pedernal, the bird sanctuary of Agua Blanca, and let’s not forget the Great Stone Balls (las Piedras Bola), a whole mountain top covered with around a hundred naturally formed stone spheres up to three meters in diameter.
There are so many cool things to see along this highway, that I’ll leave the topic for another occasion, because here we are in Ahualulco, at Calle Pino Suárez 27, and Don Pepe (José Zúñiga Méndez) is welcoming us into his workshop and home.
Everywhere there are calabashes (Lagenaria siceraria), also known as bottle gourds, birdhouse gourds and, in English, long melons. In Mexico they are commonly called guajes or bules, among a host of other names.
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