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:
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:
posted by The Lambersons at 8:44 PM
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