Ruins

We recently ran into a couple who had seen 16 ruins in 20 days, so whatever proclivity I may have had to moan a bit about the ruins we'd been visiting, I'll stifle. And, as it turns out now that we're a couple days beyond ruin-visiting and are luxuriating on the beach in Isla Mujeres, the ruins we saw were actually really cool. First in the set was Palenque, an extremely-touristed, central Mayan site still somewhat in the jungle. This was my least favorite, maybe because the town and accomodations had put a bad taste in my mouth, maybe because the number of vendors of "Mayan" goods was so overwhelming. But the next day, we took a tour-- as, unfortunately, one has basically no option but to do-- to two other Mayan sites, Bonampak and Yaxchilan. Bonampak is famous for painted murals, which were cool, although someone said they'd be redone, which kind of detracts from the experience. Yaxchilan, though, was awesome. It is deep in the jungle, only reachable by boat, about an hour down a large, swiftly moving (and in my imagination, anyway, crocodile-filled) river. The first buildings we looked at were located up a steep path that seemed to be eternally on the point of absorption by the jungle. As we reached the buildings, our ears were accosted by shrieking from above that seemed a strange cross of sick dog and squealing pig. Howler monkeys were dancing through the trees above us, and a male, it seemed, had come to close to the territory of another male, causing the two to shout at each other, while the females and babies swung back away through the canopy. Throughout the visit to Yaxchilan, the monkeys got as much atttention from us and almost everybody else as the buildings did, but those deserved it in their own right-- empty of tourists in comparison to Palenque, and still alive in their jungle setting, still giving room for the imagination to picture a society actually functioning there.

Two days later, we went with some trepidation to Chichen Itza, worried that the swarms of cruise ship tourists bused in there for a day "in Mexico" (buy at the gift shop a celophane-wrapped basket with a shotglass picturing a donkey, a mini bottle of taquila, and a mouse-sized sombrero with "Mexico" printed on top) would take away any magic from the site. With some others from the hostel we were staying at, we took the earliest bus to the ruins, arriving right at opening time (making our mothers proud). And, joy of joys, we found we had done it-- the vendors weren't even set up yet, and the big buses wouldn't arrive until 11, by which time we were on our way out. We grouped up with some other English speakers, hostellers, to hire a guide, also an excellent decision, informative and entertaining, if not necessarily the source of objective scholarship. From him we learned that, like at Salem, the Mayans didn't actually sacrifice young women-- they simply gave them drugs, weighted them down with jewels and gold, and threw them into a fresh-water well, and if they drowned, well, that was an accident, not murder. We also came away with the impression that the Mayans of Chichen Itza, at least, had been quite obsessed with cross-eyed virgins, phallic earrings, and triplet dwarves. So I'm ready to go back and teach a class on the topic-- there are ways to make children interested in history.

San Juan Chamula

We spent three days in San Cristobal, a really beautiful small city in Chiapas where 11 Mayan languages are spoken. (advertisement: We stayed at Hostal Miramar, run by a warm lovely couple who treat each guest like a cared-for child, but without the loving nagging of a parent-- highly recommend it). One of those days, we took a tour of San Juan Chamula, a nearby town with a vibrant Mayan character. The church there, from the outside, looks like a brightly colored but basically traditional Catholic church. Step through the door, though, and that impression changes immediately. Pine needles cover the floor, on which hundreds of small candles are also burning (this doesn´t appear to worry locals nearly as much as it does tourists). 50 or more figures of saints line the walls, with candles in front of each, and toward the front a mariachi-type band serenades one saint or another, surrounded by a throng of people. Throughout the church, Mayan families have set up camp to erform specific rituals, or for weekly worship. We watched one shaman woman perform a healing ritual: standing in front of the hundred of candles (of a specific color, depending on the ceremony) that the family had stuck to the ground, the woman chanted for many minutes over the sick child; then she took by the feet a live chicken the mother had been holding and starting swinging the animal, sometimes passing its head over the boy to absorb the illness; then, quickly, she snapped the chicken`s neck-- later, the family will bury it`s head, and with it, they believe, the illness. Next the mother passed her small glasses of soda, which she drank one after another. Ever since the early 50s, when a Chamulan man was given a glass of Coke in the city to settle his stomach, soda has been considered a holy drink in the town, because burping is seen as a way to expel wicked spirits. Which is what the shaman did next. So what does the Catholic Church think of all this? It excommunicated San Juan Chamula over a decade ago.

Zipolite/Mazunte

we arrived at the beach in oaxaca at zipolite, supposedly a hippie haven but we saw just as many families on the beach. really hot temperatures. we spent the next couple days at mazunte, a slightly less touristy place. either way, at the beach everything is really laid back.
the higlight of our time there was a boat tour where we could swim holding onto a tortoise. at one particular spot we saw birds diving for fish, dolphins jumping, and turtles having sex (sorry, no pictures of this last one, but more pics to follow)

Monte Alban

monte alban

we visited the zapotec ruins of monte alban outside of oaxaca city- smaller than the aztec ruins of teotihuacan outside mexico city, but still really impressive in size. unlike some of the other ruins in mexico which have been worn away from people walking on them, you can still walk almost everywhere in monte alban. there are all different levels of elevation: within structures, and from one structure to the next, lots of terraces and courtyards. the signs describing the ruins were in spanish, english, and the indigenous language zapotec- the first time i´ve seen that.

(pictures to follow)

Benito Juarez

At this moment, we´re sitting, bathing suit-clad and sweating, in an internet cafe on the beach. The town is Zipolite, famous, according to our semi-trusty Let´s Go, for currents that come in from two directions and aging hippies running around in the buff. We have had some experience with both in our few hours here so far, but also there are lots of families, many of them Mexican, and the water is bath-like. (Also, the prices have quintupled in the 7 years since our travel guide went to press). Most of yesterday is not worth recounting, as it was spent on a bus, a late bus, weaving it´s way thankfully slowly from switchback to switchback. But the beginning of yesterday, and the day and a half before that, passed fairy-like in a mountain village, a couple miles in the air, called Benito Juarez.

Arriving, the bus dropped us off at the base of a dirt road, which, we soon discovered, wound a steep four kilometers to the town itself. But the mass of purple flowers and hummingbirds that welcomed us off the bus foreshadowed more beauty to come, and the feeliing of walking through a cloud created by the misty rain added to the rather mystical feeling. Arriving at the friendly tourist office, we paid for a single room and were given a full cabana, with fireplace and bathroom. Benito Juarez is one of several tiny towns linked by paths through the woods, similar in feeling to Cinqueterre in Italy, only a lot smaller and colder. The towns govern collectively, and have also developed a self-run eco-tourism business, with matching cabanas and tourist yuús, horse rides and birdseeing trips. We loved everything about being there. For lunch we splurged on hot chocolate and trout, wrapped in tinfoil and brimming with juices. The rest of the day disappeared reading, until around 8 a couple men came with a huge supply of wood and lit a fire for us. The next day, we took a 3 hour horseback ride in the morning. My horse appeared to be drunk, weaving back and forth constantly, and threatened to run away a couple times, but still we got lots of flower-filled valley views, and ran into some herds of sheep and a few grazing donkeys, and it was all very nice. Then we tried to hike through the woods to the next town over, Cuajimoloyas. There was one vague map, hanging in the tourist office, but the man there had said to just keep going right, so we thought we´d be ok. Well, we were ok, but after trying several forks, all of them ending quite unpromisingly, we gave up on finding the town and turned around. I guess, if they want to expand their tourist industry much, they´re going to have to put up a few signs on the trails. But it kinda seems like they like it the way it is, and so do we.

Oaxacan magic

Sunday morning, our friend Kristin, from college, who has been living in Oaxaca for 4 months, invited us to join her on a visit a women´s weaving cooperative in a nearby pueblo, Teotitlan del Valle. We took two buses out to the town, made our way through the stalls filed with woven shirts, rugs, wallhangings, and headbands, turned onto a residential street, and knocked on the first door, unmarked by any sign. Inside was the compound of a remarkable family of three generations, anchored by an 86 year old grandmother, her daughter, and her five granddaughters. All of them are weavers, although all have to work other jobs as well. The flower-filled compound contains at least three large looms, a cactus for growing the bugs that make the red colored dyes, stocks of uncarded wool and endless reams of yarn dyed, with bug and indigo and lichen, vinegar and lemon and ash, an astonishing range of colors. On the wall is a poster, a gift from a cooperative in Oregon, against domestic violence.

Pastora is the oldest sister. Ten years ago, she started the women´s cooperative, called La Vida Nueva. One conversation with her is enough to sense the passion that courses through her. The family invited us to join them for a meal. During this, Pastora left her food sitting for much of the time, as she poured forth her thoughts on Zapoteca culture, on the recent election, on the war in Iraq, on the teachers´ strike, on the struggles of workers-- her speech ended with applause and a call for her to run for president. All of this energy shows itself in the weavings that she and the other members of the cooperative make. Some follow completely traditional Zapoteca designs, filled with symbolism that has stayed relevant for thousands of years. Others, like our favorite, Pastora´s design of La Mujer de la Maiz, are her own and others´variations on ancient themes. Two days after visting for the first time, we returned to Teotitlan to place an order for our own Mujer de la Maiz.

Market day in Oaxaca

In the market in Oaxaca City, Erik made his first Mexico purchase: roasted grasshoppers. They tasted a lot like anchovies. And were actually pretty good. More pictures of our first days in Mexico are up here.

We spent the first two days in Queretaro, Mexico´s fastest growing city, with former K-O Spanish teacher Rachel Josephs and her boyfriend Sebastian. Sebastian, who is our age, is an architect in the process of having his first house built (picture of them below). We are wandering around for a year. We were very impressed. Also in Qro we tasted our first Mexican fruit, a pineapple, which was as sweet as only the canned ones are in the states. Since then we´ve feasted on mango, papaya, banana, avocado, and coconut, along with tacos by the dozen (if you haven´t been to Mexico, as I hadn´t until four days ago, you may not realize that tacos here look nothing like tacos in the U.S.; they´re little tortillas that can be filled with any number of yummy things and covered in lime juice and salsas). And we watched Kyslowski´s `White´, practicing our Polish as well as Spanish and French.

The bus ride from Qro to Oaxaca was uneventful, and would even have been pleasant, if not for the unavoidable, surround-sound showing of two of the worst movies ever to go straight to video. Seeing Double was the moving story of a British pop band, S Club, which awoke one morning to find their manager kidnapped and clones of themselves on a runaway world tour. After escaping from a Barcelona prison by conducting their dance routine with all of the prisoners and guards, our heroes move on to Los Angeles, where they befriended their clones, infiltrated the castle where the evil professor manufactured them, and freed the hundreds of others who were kept there. Then, Today You Die was the moving story of a big-hearted drug pusher, who escapes from prison, kills 40 or so bad guys while swearing copiously, then donates the $20 million he had been hiding to a children´s hospital. Aww.

But now we´re happily ensconced in a friendly hostel with parrots in the jungly courtyard. We spent the morning in the market-- picture a New York City block filled with stands containing, variously, shoes, ceramics, plucked chickens with huge feet, overflowing baskets of teeny shrimps, long strips of cow intestine (or something), radishes, chiles, mangoes, oranges, etc. Somehow, within this maze, we bumped into a friend from Hartford, Maureen. She guided us back to her apartment, where she and her girlfriend Hannah fed us on avocado and fresh string cheese, and, crucially, taught us how to use our blog. Anything you see here is thanks to them.