El Triunfo

On our drive to La Paz, we stumbled upon a delightfully quirky pueblo called El Triunfo. (Think David Lynch in Mexico.) In the mid 1800s, El Triunfo was a booming mining town with 10,000 residents. By the turn of the century, the silver rush had made it a cultural center, bringing miners, merchants, artists, foreigners, dancehall girls, and anyone else looking for a profit to the quaint mountain town. Oddly enough, it also brought pianos- lots of them. At one point in time, El Triunfo had more pianos per capita than anywhere else in Mexico. Today, it's home to 303 people, a delicious cafe aptly named Cafe El Triunfo, and one international highlight: a spectacular piano museum. 

We visited the museo de musica, and I tickled the old ivories for Tree and Kiki, and then we went to the cafe and ate an entire pizza made with prosciutto and arugula. It was divine. The crust was thin and crispy; the sauce was made with sweet, fresh tomatoes; clumps of melted raw mozzarella kept the liberal portions of salty prosciutto from falling off; AND, it was cooked in a wood fire oven. It was so incredibly delicious, in fact, that I had to meet its maker. His name was Mark. He's an expat, ex-drug addict, and maybe had trouble with the law and "had to leave the States." He had bright, twinkly blue eyes, a bald head, and a very thick and long steel mustache that hung from the sides of his face. He's also a biker, so I couldn't help but think that it was like his face was wearing hair replicas of a Harley's handlebars. Yes, his mustache really was THAT big. His arms were huge too, the way bikers arms can be, and covered in tribal tattoos. I'm not going to lie, he looked scary, but he was as sweet as his tomatoes. 
Given the fact that he was around 60 and had the same history as my biological father who died before I was born, I couldn't help but think how some people get second chances in life, and some don't. 
Wouldn't it be so cool if instead of being buried in a small grave in Hope cemetery, my dad was making mouthwatering pizzas in the Baja?  At the age of 34, it seems too late to wonder what it would have been like for me had my father not died. There's too many years to rewrite, and quite frankly, that's exhausting. But, in a parallel universe, why not?  I can see him living on the lam, smiling with a big mustache and a rolling pin, standing TALL in front of a wood fired oven somewhere deep in Mexico. More pepperoni for me pops! -Stevie