(click photo for larger version)
Eating 500 to 700 wild cherries in an afternoon has left my stomach feeling and gurgling oddly... but they sure were tasty!

After living in Toluca for 8� years we've become familiar with the area and had been eyeing a few particularly robust looking capulin (wild cherry) trees during our hikes over that past few months. We like to hike up around the foot of the volcano - click here for the panoramic view - and today we drove the labyrinth of dirt roads and cow paths up toward our favorite stand of these fruit trees.

Now, i'm an adult (legally) and should have been more even-headed, but when I saw those trees - branches bowed with the weight of those shiny red-black berries - i skipped happily up to it and began stuffing my mouth with them. Annette daintily picked them and put them in her little plastic bag to save for later or share with neighbors and friends. Oh sure, every once in a while she'd plop one into her mouth, close her eyes, and enjoy the fruit of her labor.

After about an hour she looked at my bag and said, "Are those all your capulines?" I spit out the 17 pits that had collected in my cheeks and replied, "Uh... yeah, i'm gonna fill my bag later, i'm just eating a few right now."

Forty-five minutes later she took this photo of me and my pathetic collection of about 25 wild cherries. Lucky for me, Annette got bored with the cherry-picking and went off taking photos of wildflowers, which gave me a chance to catch up. In the end we returned with 3 plastic bags full of capulines... one of which, i am proud to say, i filled all by myself!