3-29-06 Atlihuetzia

Go ahead and try to find Atlihuetzia on the map, we couldn't. It's in Tlaxcala state about 30 miles N.E. of Puebla. We're spending a few nights with Gail May, an old Jackson, New Hampshire friend who has settled here. Out her wall of windows, she has a wonderful view of the second highest peak in Mexico which is snow capped, and on a clear day she can look south toward Veracruz to see the top of the highest mountain in Mexico. It's a wonderful setting in a small town close to big city amenities in Tlaxcala and Puebla. Last night the valley lit up with house lights from houses we couldn't see during the day, and the sound of trucks descending mountain roads with their Jake Brakes roaring flowed through the valley. And at 8,000 feet, it gets cold!

Gail is offering a wonderful mix of comforts: A croc pot beef stew for dinner, an amazing casserole drizzled in maple syrup for breakfast, and a warm dog that likes to cuddle with Ruth and Jill in bed. Throw all of those ingredients in with an unfinished house with no inside doors and few lights, an interesting patina of concrete dust, and an old bicycle pump that required about 2 hours worth of effort to fill the air mattresses. If all goes according to plan, we'll help make adobe blocks today for the future fireplace and chimney.

Now in reverse order: We left San Cristobol over a week ago with the stated goal of avoiding long bus rides through windy mountain roads. So, where other folks spend 12 - 14 hours on an overnight bus ride between San Cristobol and Oaxaca, we broke it up into shorter daytime trips.

We went from San Cristobol down to Tuxtla Gutierrez the first day over a mountain road that at one point was just one lane headed down a marble shoot. It was too steep and narrow for two lanes and the uphill traffic took a different route. We made this journey in a tourist van on our way to Canon de Sumidero. As had happened earlier from Palenque, most of the passengers were on a day trip to a tourist site. We were too, except that we brought all of our luggage so we wouldn't have to backtrack up the gnarly road at the end of the day.

We took a boat throught Canon de Sumidero. It was a great journey and at one point the canyon wall was 3,000 feet tall and the water below us was 1,000 feet deep. We saw crocodiles and howler monkeys as well.

We spent the night in Tuxtla Gutierrez, a big city without a whole lot going on to keep us there. We did see an interesting church and its bell tower. Every hour on the hour little doors open high up on the bell tower and a procession of apostles makes a circular journey out one door and in the other.

This church was across the street from the zocalo, or main plaza, where a giant outdoor music festival was going on. It had two mainstages and when I stopped by later in the evening, a live band was performing Tuxtla's version of Headbanger's Ball and the little apostles in the church across the street were about to jump off their track. It was an odd scene with the normal collection of street vendors with hot wares over coal stoves, perfectly coifed young men and women with cell phones performing mating rituals, and the odd tourist feeling his body vibrate with the onslaught of sound waves.

Tuxtla's other noteworthy item: At dinner in the economy-food cafe, there was an inspirational Bible verse in Spanish lettered on a beautiful photo of the Grand Tetons that could have been taken from the barn I lived in for a summer on the National Elk Refuge in Jackson.

From Tuxtla we headed NW to Tehuantepec, about the halfway point to Oaxaca. The bus was going on to Oaxaca and because of the length of the trip it had 2 drivers. One driver takes a nap in a little compartment just in front of the baggage compartment down below the passengers. We had heard about this space but had never seen a driver enter or leave it.

A note about the first class buses that we take in Mexico. They are nice! They are one level below the super deluxe that are sometimes available, but they are very nice nonetheless and I wish the US had them. They are usually very new Volvo buses with seats and legroom that are much more comfortable than a plane. There's a bathroom in back, the omnipresent TV screens, and speed governing systems so the bus doesn't go above about 60 mph. We've always felt very safe regarding the driver's ability and the only warning we've heard is to keep an eye on our carry on baggage at night on certain routes. Checked baggage goes down below with real baggage claim tags that need to be cross checked when you retrieve your bags. There's a great on-line ticket site for checking bus schedules and buying tickets, and the bus stations run like airports of various sizes from a small counter with a few seats in a small town to Puebla's sprawling bus station with numerous concourses, gates, arrival and departure lanes, etc.

OK, despite the comforts of the bus, Jill still managed to heave her nacho cheese Doritos between Tuxtla and Tehuantepec. It was a curvy mountainous road, and we should have known better.

We loved Tehuantepec! Although it's on the main drag between San Cristobol and Oaxaca, most tourists pass through it in the middle of the night. We liked its size, its people, and its funky 3-wheeled moto-carros which everyone used as taxis. The driver rides the front end of a motorcyle while the passengers stand up in the back on a cargo bed. We took a tour of the city on one and saw everything including farm animals and their tenders coming home for the night, carts pulled by donkeys and oxen, and a dead dog in the middle of the road.(Sorry for the lousy aiming of the camera. I was holding it out in front of us with one hand as we bounced down the road.)

And in keeping with the ongoing theme of culture clash, at dinner in Tehuantepec we ate in a lovely older home/restaurant with huge murals painted on the walls. While we ate our local cuisine, Kurt Cobaine sang at his loudest from over the garden wall, and Barney sang his I Love You song from the TV in the kitchen.

We headed to Oaxaca the next day with Jill on Dramine, Miles on cold medicine, Ruth on valium for her vertigo, and me on an empty stomach as a precaution. Another amazing mountain road with corkscrew switchbacks and a little bit of culture on the video screen instead of the usual blood and guts. We saw a contemporary remake of Silas Marner with Steve Martin and Great Expectations with Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow. Great Expectations was completely dubbed in Spanish and I'd be lying if I said we understood everything, but we saw it again 2 more times within a week and I think we have the gist of it by now.

We spent 4(?) nights in Oaxaca. It's a beautiful place with huge colonial buildings and cathedrals. It's a mind blower to see the money and effort that what went into the colonial era cathedrals and you wonder what Mexico might be today if the spaniards had spent that money on education, rural development, and community health instead.

Oaxaca also has a huge influx of tourists and artsy-fartsy folks. At dinner one night a gringa at the next table was reading the palm of her dinner companion and pursuing a healthy conversation about self-help therapy. We also met a nice juggler at our hostel. How do we know he's a juggler? Because he lives at the jugglers' cooperative on the Big Island of Hawaii. We also toured the ruins of nearby Monte Alban with 2 couples from California who live on their sailboats now and are working their way down the west coast of North America before splitting up farther south. One will head off to the South Pacific and the other will head east through the canal. (Our next adventure?!) But the best connection in Oaxaca was with the very kind University of Vermont student who carried a suitcase back to Burlington for us!

On the local side, we were interviewed by two groups of local school kids who were practicing their English, and we had the good fortune of being in Oaxaca on the Day of the Samaritan. In honor of the good samaritan in the Bible, countless stores and households were dishing out free drinks at their front door to all passersby.

Our waiter at lunch one day in Oaxaca was a local guy who lived in Phoenix for 8 years working for Waste Management. (I bet he wasn't an office executive.) He was a very nice guy who put a face on illegal immigration. He's home in Oaxaca right now instead of hauling garbage in Phoenix so he can take care of his aging mother.

A quick review of the ups and downs (literally) of our trip. Some altitudes: Playa del Carmen - sea level; Merida - maybe a 100 ft; Palenque - 254 ft; San Cristobol - 7,138 ft; Tuxtla - 1,756 ft; Oaxaca - 5,115 ft; and now Atlihuetzia at 8,000 feet.

Time to go help Miles and Jill make adobe blocks with Alvaro, Gail's handyman make adobe blocks. More about that in a future post.


Here are some random shots of our sweet kids:

March 19, 2006 San Cristobol de las Casas

We left Merida just a week ago but it seems like a faraway place and a long time ago. We’re now in “travel mode” which is very different from the comfortable long term stay we had in Merida. We’re on the move and not making the same connections with our hosts that we made in Merida. But, we’re seeing some incredible country!

From Campeche to Palenque we were blessed with our first ever Stephen Segal blood and guts bonanza on the bus. The body count was outrageously high, even by Mexican bus cinema standards. Fortunately, it was great to watch the changing scenery out the window as we drove along the Gulf coast for a bit and then started heading up into rolling hills and ranchland.

We spent the night near Palenque at El Panchan which the guidebook describes as: “The trippy epicenter of Palenque’s alternative scene, and home to a bohemian bunch of Mexican and Western residents and wanderers.” It was our first taste of gringos making handicrafts and selling them at tables next to the locals. (San Cristobol seems to be full of them also.) It was a funky jungle outpost that had nothing to keep us there. Though at breakfast in the groovy open air restaurant, the other family from Vermont strolled in. We hadn’t seen them in several weeks and now we’re together again in San Cristobol. All of our kids even did some math homework together the other day!


From El Panchan we caught a tour van to the ruins at Palenque (awesome)
and onward up into the mountains stopping at a huge waterfall at Misol Ha and a large set of cascades and falls at Agua Azul, though the day we got there the water was brown from heavy rain. In the van, we enjoyed the company of a young Chinese couple who now live in Delaware. They had both worked for IBM for 5 years in China before the husband (boyfriend?) went for an MBA at the University of Michigan. He now works in international marketing for DuPont. They were sharp folks who remind us that maybe Miles and Jill should be learning Chinese instead of Spanish.

The mountains between Palenque and San Cristobol were beautiful and endless though we were glad to be going up and down and through them in a van instead of a bus. We’ve met a few folks who have gotten sick on the bus on that windy road.

San Cristobol is a beautiful, mid-sized city surrounded by verdant mountains. We’re a little jaded though because it looks a bit like Vermont, or the Mount Washington Valley in NH, or the mountains around Evergreen, Colorado. It does get cold at night, and Ruth, the profesional ski instructor from New England, has had to put her long johns on to beat the cold!

Vermont was well represented at the hostel the other night: our family of 4, the other family of 5, a single guy from Burlington who works around the corner from ReCycle North, and 2 recent Middlebury grads.

We went for a wonderful horseback ride yesterday from San Cristobol up to a nearby small town. The family-run horseback outfit was outstanding. For $10 a head, they picked us up downtown, drove us out to thier stables, guided us up to the town and back, gave us cold drinks when we got back, and put us on a bus back to town. We were gone from about 9 a.m. til 3:00 with about 3 hours on the horses riding up through some beautiful country. Other than the fact the saddles were made of bare wood, it was a blast!


On the language front: Miles delivered a very funny monologue in Spanish the other night in the room. He did a convincing impersonation of a street vendor. I was almost ready to buy something from him!

Ruth is dealing with a stomach bug today – her first for the trip – and we are deciding whether to roll out of here tomorrow or not.

Monday - March 20: I've been trying to get some more photos posted with this entry but San Cristobol doesn't seem to have the bandwith to support my efforts. There are many computer labs to choose from with prices ranging from 60 cents to $1.00 an hour. I managed to get the existing pictures up in a quiet moment, but inevitably, someone else in the lab starts a voice-over-internet phone call, downloading itunes, or who knows what and kills the bandwidth. Time to pack and leave town tomorrow. (Small bandwidth equals leave town. Reminds me of the Italian friends we met in Merida. As soon as their coffee maker broke, they moved their return tickets up several weeks.) Tuesday - March 21 Tuxla Guiterrez: scored some decent bandwith here and finished putting the photos up!

Monday March 13, 2006 Campeche

Well, we finally left Merida. Friday was the last day of school for the kids, and their classmates and teachers sent them out with a bang. The generosity was overwhelming (in two senses: unbelievable how many gifts were given to the kids and---overwhelmed our suitcases too!) It was a very touching scene and as two people who get misty eyed at parades, Ruth and I did our best not to bawl.

We had also invited the kids’s surrogate grandparents, Fran and Claude, over from Playa del Carmen for the last day of school. Fran and Claude’s appearance was a surprise for Miles and Jill and certainly added to the moment.

It will be a darn shame if Miles and Jill don’t get back to that school sometime. Miles wants to come back for a month every year!

More on Fran and Claude. They were our upstairs neighbors in Playa del Carmen. They are recently retired Canadiens and are spending 3 or 4 months in Playa del Carmen. They were great neighbors and even watched the kids for us as Ruth and I went through the final extrication from the time share fiasco.

Not surprisingly, Fran and Claude had become bored in Playa del Carmen and took us up on the invite to come to Merida for a visit. They don’t speak a lick of Spanish, and we thought they weren’t very adventurous. So when we sent them out the door for shopping in Merida at 10:30 Saturday morning, we assumed we would see them again in a few hours.

By 6:00 we started to notice that they hadn’t come back and through a goofy chain of events, it was determined that they must be missing since they don’t speak Spanish, Fran has low blood sugar, Fran doesn’t tolerate the blazing heat that well, our hostel isn’t very well known or easy to find, etc.

By 8:00 we had talked to the tourist information offices, the Merida downtown police, the Merida non-downtown police, the Canadian foreign affairs office in Ottawa, and were in the process of checking local hospitals. At 8:30 Fran and Claude walked in with full shopping bags and big smiles and feeling tired after a great day in Merida making up for all of the boredom in Playa del Carmen.

What did we learn besides the fact that someone-who–shall-remain-nameless can infect many people with her paranoia? That if you were a missing person in Merida you’d be up a creek so to speak. When we went to the police headquarters, the desk staff were busy watching “Chunkey 3: Muñeco Diabalito” which is Part 3 of some horror movie where a deranged doll goes around killing people (I think it was called “Child’s Play” in the U.S.). The cops never quite pulled themselves away from the TV while we were there. Plus, they didn’t have a phone that could dial outside the police department so we weren’t able to call back to the hostel to see if Fran and Claude had arrived. We also learned that the Canadian government doesn’t maintain an office in Merida, but has someone in Cancún who answers calls during the week. But on weekends, the calls go straight to Ottawa. Oh, and the largest hospital in Merida doesn’t answer its phone.

All of the guests at Hostel Alvarez had some good laughs after Fran and Claude returned and we no longer had an excuse not to get busy packing our suitcases.

Here's a shot of the hostel crew on our last day:


On Sunday, Miriam’s husband Sergio drove Miles and me, Fran and Claude, and our gigantic load of suitcases to the bus station in his Rambler station wagon. I wish I had one again! Ruth, Jill, Miriam and Allie followed in Miriam’s car.

We put Fran and Claude on their bus to Playa del Carmen with promises to reconnect at their place in Niagra Falls in May, and we quickly caught a bus to Campeche after lots of hugs and goodbyes all around.

What’s Campeche like? Pretty nice. It brags about becoming a UNESCO World Heritage Site a few years ago. Cobblestone streets, big old churches and colorful colonial houses, and live music in the main city park on Sunday night. It was a little odd that from the top of the UNESCO-worthy historic fort you can easily see the huge billboard for Sam’s Club, and it was equally interesting that in the city park in front of the main cathedral the Mexican orchestra placed "Hava Naguilla"(sp?).



We’re in a nice mid-sized hostel right near the park and church. Our host, Fernando, is related to our hosts in Merida. He’s got computers for us to use and a DVD player and home theatre system set up in the front room. The front room is right on the sidewalk with huge double doors that remain open all the time. So downtown Campeche is rolling by over my shoulder, and pedestrians are walking by about 18 inches from the televisión.

After dinner last night we came back to the hostel and Fernando offered to play some kid friendly vidoes for us. So...we saw our first (and hopefully only) full length Lindsay Lohan feature film! Ohmygod! It was like sooo stupid and just when Ms. Lohan was about to say the first meaningful thing in an hour and a half, an empty, metal, street vending cart was towed up the cobblestone street outside the door. It made such a racket that it thoroughly drowned out the Lohan Lecture that may have changed the direction of Jill and Miles’s lives. I think it was somthing like “Always tell the truth, be who you want to be, and tickle your tonsils if you ever start to get fat.”

So tomorrow we roll on to Palenque a day later than planned because the Monday bus was sold out when we pulled into town Sunday night. There is only one daytime bus from Campeche to Palenque. There are many overnight buses with dreadful departure times or dreadful arrival times. We’re not ready to subject ourselves to that.

And many thanks to the host at the Internet café in Merida who showed me how easy it is to put pictures on the blog. If anyone cares, Microsoft Paint will shrink any jpeg photo simple by doing a Save As to a new file name. And another bonus! Tonight I learned how to have my blog creation instructions show up in English! Yeehaw!

Time to pack,

Paul

March 10 - Why we'll miss Merida

We're scheduled to pull out tomorrow after a month. Hence, today is the last day of school for the kids. We are all sorry that is ending. The local teachers and kids have been fantastic.



Some other reasons why I like Merida:

Listening to a local college radio station while making French toast for the kids on a Sunday morning. The station plays everything from world beat to indie rock to classical and opera.

Reading current issues of Mother Jones, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair at the Merida Enlish Library. (All right, I blew through a couple of People Magazines too to stay current on Jennifer’s life after Brad.)

Buzzing around town with Miriam, Enrique, Allie, and the 4 Lambersons piled into Miriam’s 2 door hatchback. We’ve seen it all: Allie’s piano lessons; the fruit and vegetable market for the locals complete with nearby floor space where the vendors can sleep if they don’t make it back to their small towns at night; listening to Miriam and Enrique yell out the window at the truckload of police as the police block traffic while making a slow and haphazard U-turn (there was no way the police didn’t hear the verbal onslaught from 5 feet away, and we cringed in the backseat. We were assured that no one respects the police around here.); visiting the mega stores including Liverpool, a monster clone of Filenes, May Company, etc.; learning that Miriam’s housekeeper rents coffins on the side; learning that Miriam and Enrique’s mother was a Tupperware and Avon sales champion; etc. Riding around with them is something like travelling with Wallace and Grommet, Bonnie and Clyde or Kitty Kelly and her brother. It’s a lot of fun!

We also reconnected with our host from Playa del Carmen, Gabriel. Gabriel runs the accommodations in Playa del Carmen for his brother, Dr. Tony, who is a physician here in Merida. Gabriel’s wife and 4 sons live here in Merida and he comes home to visit every 2 weeks. When we had said goodbye to him in Playa a few weeks ago, we didn’t think we’d see each other for years. He was pretty surprised when we called him at his house in Merida.

Gabriel and his family are another example of good people who are making their way in the world. He used to have a small “corner store” next to his house where he sold essentials to the neighbors. He got wiped out when the Big Boxes came to town and now rents out the former store to a Fed Ex outlet. His wife works at a religious college and their four sons are sharp young men in their late teens and early 20’s.

Gabriel usually catches an overnight bus from Playa del Carmen to Merida and I asked him how he slept this time. He stayed awake, he said, to watch a movie with Nicholas Cage in it: “National Treasure”. Oh, we saw it on the plane back from England a year ago and then Miles and I watched it on the bus to Montreal for a school field trip about a month later. I wonder if anyone ever saw it in a theatre?

We had also hoped to catch up with Jose, our other host from Playa del Carmen whose family lives in Merida as well. I went for full cultural immersion when I tried to call Jose’s wife on the phone. A man answered and I did my best to explain who I was and who I was looking for. He replied with something that I didn’t understand, so I went into Phase 2 of a long story with mediocre Spanish explaining my situation. The man on the other end spoke more slowly this time and made it very clear that I had dialled the wrong number. Oops! I redialled and had a more fruitful conversation with Jose’s wife.

We spent Sunday with Miriam, Sergio and Allie at the Sergio’s parents’ beachfront cottage in Churbuna Puerto which is a small village NW of Progresso. Staring out at the Gulf of Mexico we realized that Ruth’s folks, and at least one brother and family, were currently on the other side at Sanibel Island on the Gulf Coast of Florida. We also ate fresh coconut pudding on our way in and out of Chuburna at a few of the numerous coconut stands that were selling coconut pie, cold coconut milk, and pudding too.

Hanging out at the cottage in Churbuna also reminded us of why we’ve never owned a vacation home. What a responsibility! Miriam and Sergio hadn’t been there in over a year and were surprised to learn that the power and water had been cut off and the place was in relative disrepair. Many thanks to all you cottage owners out there who graciously let us take advantage of your year round ownership hassles!

We have also loved the interaction with guests from all nations as they pass in and out of the guest house. Among the French, Brits, Italians, Danes, Germans and Croatians we also had a great time with an American couple from Oregon, Greg and Marylou.

If you met Marylou when you handed her your clothes at the dry cleaners, or met Greg at the 7-Eleven with a cup of coffee in his hand on his way to the night shift at the metal factory, you’d probably not suspect that they are veteran world travellers. And if you had cut Greg off in the parking lot, he probably wouldn’t care. But if you had at all hassled the clerk who was originally from outside New Delhi, Greg would probably be in your face. Think John Goodman with a passport.

Greg was a source of such nuggets as:

“A vacationer has more money than time, while a traveller has more time than money.”

“I know I ought to care about the culture, but I just don’t”

But the fact is, these two low-key folks have travelled the world extensively, are keenly tuned into world affairs since they’ve been to so many places that are in the news, and are strong advocates for the underdog. I hope we meet more people like them.

And one last random observation: Despite good music and culture it is evident that not all is kosher in Mexico. There is a huge disparity between rich and poor and just a few blocks from the Hummer and Jaguar dealerships in Merida are the supermarkets where the baggers are adult volunteers. I spoke with one of them the other day away from the check out stand. I was appalled to learn that all of the baggers are volunteers and work for tips only, however, if they miss three days of work they are dismissed, and they certainly don’t receive any benefits. It has also been easy to see that all forms of discrimination are alive and well. Help Wanted signs specify age and gender and so it wasn’t surprising that the grocery store baggers were all gray haired elders who couldn’t find work elsewhere. Also, all main stream advertising features light skinned handsome folks of Spanish ancestry. Likewise with the politicians. We certainly haven’t seen folks of Mayan descent in prominent positions or advertisements.

Enough social commentary for now, time to go pack.

Paul

Photos from Merida

The kick-off parade for a week of Carnaval. A Childrens Parade, with Jill, Miles and Allie standing on a window ledge to get a view. The grown ups watching the parade were worse than your wildest Little League parent.


The Big Rigs pull in to Uxmal as part of a long tour from the US through Mexico. Plus Miles and Jill with Uxmal pretty much to ourselves.



The kids at the Centennario Park in Merida. Lots of fun, simplicity, and .... risk! (Someday I'll remember to rotate the pictures before I post them.)



A Ballet Folklorico performance on the streets of Merida. Merida invests heavily in its cultural performances with almost daily live music and dance in public places.


Allie, Jill and Miles


Allie's mother and father, Sergio and Miriam, with Paul.


Enrique with Ruth and the kids after cranking up his original Thomas Edison "record player". It plays a wax tube. Notice the warm clothes - that's changed over the past month!


Funny English signs.


Ruth and Miles in our horse drawn carriage on our first afternoon in Merida. I guess we should have known then that we'd have a hard time leaving.

March 7 Overdue Photos from Playa del Carmen

I've finally figured out how to shrink photos no matter where I am. I'd post even more in this sitting but it appears that once the other folks in the lab start listening to music, talking on voice over internet, etc. the process becomes unbearable.

Sorry about the formatting and captions. I'm not that savvy.

Edward Scissorshands strikes Playa del Carmen

With Aunt Page and Uncle Steve at their fancy resort in Playa del Carmen




On the roof of our apartment in Playa del Carmen



In front of the Castillo at Chichen Itza

Jill climbing the big pyramid at Coba

On top of the big pyramid at Coba. The highest point on the Yucatan?

Miles climbing down the big pyramid at Coba,

Poking around a sample Mayan House at one of the ruins.

Ruth and Jill at the crocodile farm south of Puerto Morelos in mid January.




Miles with Poopie the lonely dog. We later learned his name was Bobbie but the "owner's" thick German accent made it sound like Boe-pie.




The Flying Men from Veracruz performing at Tulum