Buying STUFF

I know, I know. I told everyone that I was traveling light for 6 months in Mexico, cause it's a civilized country and you can buy anything you need. HA!!

John told me to bring an electric blanket. The sheer volume of it took up most of my suitcase but it was worth it. The nights here are quite cold and even with three layers of covers that electric blanket has been a God-send. He had told me there were none to be had here. I think he was right.

Malena's baby, Mateo (Yessi's little brother)
with one of the cooks at Malena's restaurant.

My search for a goose neck lamp goes on. Yesterday I hiked up the hill to the area north of the Santo Domingo outdoor produce market. There are a number of stores selling everything from plumbing pieces to plastic everything. The electric store had plugs, extension cords, light bulbs of every imaginable size and shape, but not one lamp. The furniture and appliance store had lamps but they were large ceramic affairs with gaudy lampshades. The cell phone and electronics gadgets store had the tiny clip on reading lights that require batteries, and one saleslady told me the kind I want does exist, but she had no idea where I might buy it. Yesi suggested the Office Depot in Tuxtla or WalMart. We even treked over to Bodega Aurera, a store that is owned (I think) by WalMart. You can certainly get a WalMart credit card there and they sell all the same type of merchandise, except lamps. The only lamp in that store was a clamp lamp, the kind mechanics use under the hoods of cars.

Hmmmm. I have a small goose neck lamp I bought for my Eastern Trip to use in the van, I could have brought it with me, if only I'd known.

On the other hand, all that shopping netted me other things the casita needed: a dish drainer, hangars, a potato masher, a clear plastic box with snap on handles, and for me, another pair of socks. At Bodega Aurera Yesi and I got all kinds of food and personal things like hair conditioner and shampoo for her mother. The trip wasn't entirely a lost cause. Malena (Yesi's mother) gave me a cellphone to use in Mexico. Yesi showed me how to charge it with minutes at the OXXO store. So now Malena can call me. I have a US cell phone which is cheap for me to use but not for someone in Mexico to call me. So far Linda and Malena have both sent texts and called, so it's come in very handy.

I met with Arnolf at Tierra Adentro for lunch and we had a nice visit. He told me about a Russian friend of his who was robbed by three men at Palenque. The Russian refused to hand over his back pack, so the robber whacked him in the head with a machete. He woke up in the hospital with stitches and a really bad headache. Back here in San Cristobal, he went to the hospital to get the stitches out, but since no one spoke English and he didn't speak Spanish, they sent him away. Arnolf, with his own limited Spanish, managed to find the Russian a doctor and get him fixed up.

The street I walk up to the mercado.

Chiles!!

A sucker vendor.

Rebosos for sale.

Wonderful murals on the wall of a home.

Closeup of the mural.

I feel quite safe in MX, really, but I still take many precautions like not carrying much money with me, keeping my passport at home and carrying only a photocopy of it and the Visa, stashing money in pockets as well as in my billfold, and staying in fairly peopled areas. I think the Russian had gotten himself somewhat isolated for that to have happened. Yesi thinks it's funny that I want to be home by 8:30 at night. I told her I didn't like to walk at night because I don't see that well and might trip and fall. But that's only half the reason. And San Cris is not Palenque. It's a real town where little children in grade school walk home together without adult supervision, teenagers gather in groups on the streets and people sit outside of bars drinking till the wee hours. But I'm more cautious when I'm alone. With John off in Oaxaca, I'm a lot more careful.

Settling into a real life....

Monday I'd planned to enroll in one of several Spanish language schools, but the first one I went to gave me a bad feeling, like it was a rip off and there was little or no interest in the students, only in money.

I used to ignore feelings like that, on the pretext that feelings are not knowledge, but I've learned the hard way that my intuition is fairly good if I'll let it have full rein. The second and third schools simply were not findable. Google maps gave me a location, but there was no school there. Either they've gone under (maybe too interested in money than in teaching?) or the maps were wrong. So I've been left to my own device, which is to look up words a lot, write them down, and talk to Yesi, Malena's 16 year old daughter who somewhat reluctantly corrects my poor grammar.

The landmark cross in the Church Plaza.

Tuesday evening there was a movie that looked good; Maria, Full of Grace. The shows are in a small theater in the back of the Casa De Pan restaurant. At 6:00 there was an older white haired man standing by the door and as it turned out, we were the entire audience. It's a Columbian movie with English subtitles. And that was a good thing, because Columbian Spanish is difficult to understand, even for fluent speakers. They might as well have been speaking Portuguese.

It's an excellent movie about a 17 year old girl who is rebellious and gets conned into becoming a cocaine mule. She swallows about 60 pellets of cocaine and flies to New York. Other aspects of the plot, good and bad for her, is that she is pregnant and doesn't really want to have much more to do with the baby's father.

After the movie, that white haired gentleman and I decided to have dinner at Casa De Pan. Actually, he had tea as he'd already eaten. His name is Arnulf and he's a retired professor from Studtgardt, Germany, where he taught ethics. We had a wonderful conversation. He is also learning Spanish and has a private tutor, who is one of the teachers at the school I hadn't liked. He pays her directly about half what the school charged and is quite happy with her and his progress. I may have found my "school", as he is willing to introduce me to her and I'm more than willing to pay.

Just off the Andador Guadalupe is a used bookstore run by a black woman from New Orleans named Linda. She's just cute as a button with flared hair, sage colored eyes, and curvy figure. We've hit it off well, and she invited me to go to the organic market on Friday with her and a friend, and also to dinner. She lives a few blocks from the casita. In fact, she once lived in this same casita before she and her husband bought some property up the street. It was so run down and dilapidated that they cleared the lot and started over. I can't wait to see the new house they've built, especially after living in this much older place.

My room mate John 

John took off Monday and overnighted on a bus to one of the small resort towns on the Oaxacan coast. I don't know how long he'll be gone. He's expecting a friend to show up in a week or so and then the three of us may go to Guatemala. Meanwhile, Yesi and I have been hanging out. She speaks English mostly to me and I speak Spanish to her. Today we went to see a movie, The Tower Heist. I'd already seen it and it was good to see it dubbed in fast Spanish. English is a more curt language. It's hard to get an entire thought out in Spanish in the same timeframe as one English sentence, and the same goes for German which is even more curt. The dubbing was good, there were few lapses when Spanish was still coming out of someone's mouth but the mouth had already closed. On the other hand, the sheer speed of the speech made it very hard to follow.

On a domestic front, there are still a few things the house needs like a small lamp for reading in the loft. It appears that small reading lamps come in two forms, the kind that run on batteries and clip to your book, and the non-existant kind. So far not one electronics store, department store, or appliance store that Yesi and I visited today had a lamp. There is a clip on lamp with a goose neck in the kitchen which I will use in the loft until a more suitable one is found. I have no idea where that clip on light came from, or I'd sure go to that store!


Life is settling down. The town is showing itself to be an interesting place with many evening activities and colorful artesanal markets. I feel like I need to find something contributory to do. The Reading Train is almost kaput. John said the people running it were way more interested in making money from the tours. That would appear to be so. During the past weekend there were only a couple of tables and maybe 15 books out for the kids, no little peddle-trains for them to ride, and yet, the big "train" was running full of tourists. Sad to see. I had such high hopes for that project. (See post from April 10, 2011  Reading Train) Linda at the bookstore expressed sadness over it too.

Chiapa de Corzo

Chiapa de Corzo is a small town, almost encroached upon by Tuxtla-Gutierrez, the capital of Chiapas. It sits on the banks of the Grijalva River which runs through Canyon del Sumidero, a national park and beautiful gorge with towering walls and lush vegetation. In order to get into the park, most people take a boat from the embarcadero in Chiapa de Corzo.

Every year the town celebrates from the weekend prior to the weekend after January 20th, which is Saint Sebastian's day. John and I boarded a bus and rode down the curvy autopista (toll road) to the town to see the festivities. It was about 20 degrees hotter at that much lower elevation than we were accustomed to in San Cristobal. We surely could have dressed more appropriately.

The town was packed solid with observers and participants in the parades. Music blared out of loudspeakers from amplified live bands, women wore colorful flared dresses and men were in  costumes representing the "Spaniards". The costume consisted of a strange helmet-like hat made from the stiff fibers of the maguay plant, a painted mask, black suits, scarves, and long colorful drapes. The parade moved in some predetermined pattern, sometimes groups of people stopped to dance before moving on. Every once in a while, with no warning, and apparently no concern for safety, someone would light a bunch of fire crackers. At the end of the parade, a couple of giant dancing puppets, a man and woman, kept time to a Mariachi band.

Los Mariachis

In the zocalo, a carnival was set up with dozens of rides, food vendors, outdoor restaurants, and game booths. The air filled with the odors of roasting corn, grilled meats, and burned popcorn. The whole town was so thick with people it was tough to move around.  After a meal of shaved beef wrapped in tortillas that had been cooked upright much like a Greek Gyro, we skirted the fair and wandered down to the river. Its banks are lined with restaurants. The empty tour boats sat anchored out in the river. Hawkers with pamphlets extolling the virtues of various tours trolled for customers. I picked up one flyer and only when we got home did I realize the 'tour' was only for attractions like the zoo and zip-lining at the park, no boat ride was included.

The day was short and night came too quickly. The bus took us to Tuxtla so we hopped off and went to Soriana, a major grocery-department store, not unlike WalMart. After an hour of shopping which was mostly wandering around, it was time to head home. Getting across six lanes of traffic without the benefit of a cross walk or a light, a typical pedestrian experience in Mexico, we were able to catch a bus headed back to San Cristobal.

People of all ages dressed for the parades.

Parade goers stopped to listen to a band.

Smoke from grilling meat,  the best advertisement!

A gaggle of girls in gorgeous dresses. 

The inside of those strange hats.

Man in Spaniard outfit. Note the
different faces on the masks.

Close-up of the men's costume.

A very tired Spaniard holding
his mask.

The Music Men

First day in San Cristobal.....Lots of walking. The hills in town are nothing compared to the "pyramid" I lived on last April, that created calves of steel. But just street hiking requires major knee effort as the curbs are at least 10 inches and in many cases over a foot high.

San Cris is a colonial town, the buildings are OLD, made of stone and concrete. The sidewalks are slabs of various stones like granite and chert (slippery as greased snot when it rains) with just enough concrete to hold them in place. The height of the sidewalks has to do with the thickness of the stones, many are more than a foot thick.

By the end of a day of shopping for vegetables and fruit, wandering over the town familiarizing myself with it again, and meeting with Malena and her darling (now one year old) Mateo, my knees were achy and I felt OLD. But the day wasn't over.

Ladder leading to the loft, note the chopped
off top of the ladder. Good thing
it's also nailed to the beam.

The casita is a strange (by American standards) arrangement of rooms which all face out onto the courtyard. The bathroom is a narrow vault with double doors that ought to be left open as nothing airs out well in this humid climate. The large kitchen has a door to the living room, each with a door to the yard, and a second bedroom makes the leg of an L, with it's own entrance. Needless to say, leaving the place requires locking up several doors, including a large steel gate from the garden to the street.

John asked the maintenance guy to put a lock
on the interior door. But any thief with
a screwdriver can get in!!!

Also opening onto the yard are two other apartments with entrances on their opposite sides into a much more attractive garden. Apparently our garden was the "back" yard and treated as a step child by the gardener. It was overgrown with piles of rubble here and there, the poor potted plants were root bound, and the furniture was covered in spider webs. John got on his case and by the time I got here the place looked really nice.

It is, of course Mexico, where nothing is fixed unless it absolutely will not work, or has been destroyed, in which case, it might never be replaced at all. For instance, in the bedroom, there is a double bed and a loft accessible by a wooden ladder. My bed is in the loft. Some past resident put up plastic to cover the sloping roof and after one night I figured out why. The roof leaks. Not water but flecks of wood, dirt, balls of spider web mixed with dust, etc. Where there is no plastic, this 'crap' drifts down slowly until the entire bed is covered in brown and gray flecks. The ladder up to the loft is missing one 'hook', the bit of wood that actually goes over the top of the loft floor. Fortunately the entire thing appears to be bolted to the loft's frame so it's not likely to come crashing down with me on it.

The two other casitas are currently occupied by couples, one from Seattle and the other couple, Matt and Fran, are from the UK. They are living at-large in the world, having figured out a way to make a living from anywhere. Matt is a professional musician who transcribes music for a British firm, so he can do that via computers from anywhere. They purchased a round-the-world ticket and are headed to Australia and New Zealand this Thursday. San Cris has a fabulous music scene with many live performances in bars and restaurants at night. The less talented people are buskers in the streets and on busses.

The garden of the little house. Note the three
doors. Left is the bathroom, then the kitchen,
and on the far right, a bedroom. 

John loves music and usually has the i-pod/radio blaring in the kitchen. I'm sure when Matt was practicing, John went over and chatted him up. Matt and Fran have been here for two months, and during that time, Matt found an equally talented fellow to play with. They were warming up in his casita while I took a nap to their sweet music, then later we went to Entropia, a tiny little bar, to see them. It was amazing. They played off each other and innovated the themes so seamlessly, it was as if they'd been together for years, when in fact they had only played together three times prior to the concert.

Two glasses of wine and a long walk home zonked me out until 10:00 the next morning. Day number 2 was spent recovering with a bit more shopping. A block away is the Tres Pesos store. Like the Dollar Stores in the US, most of the plastic items are $3-10 pesos (way less than a dollar). I hauled home all kinds of goodies like a plastic container of needles, an eyebrow pencil, bucket, pitcher with lid and leaky spout, toothpaste, an apron, etc. Great haul for less than 50 pesos (4 dollars).

My 'loft' is under that sloped roof. 

Another nap later (I love being retired!!) we headed to the Andador Eclisiastico, a walking street, to attend an avant gard Jazz music festival. It was the first festival but the last night of it. The promoters would like to make it an annual event. At $120 pesos, the admission price was a bit steep for most of the locals. But (and this is very Mexican) they left the front doors wide open so the people walking past could hear the music for free! It was held in the same large auditorium where we'd seen Palenque Rojo back in April. That production ran its course and disappeared. I was a bit sad about that, it was one of the best dance productions I've ever seen, right up there with an off-broadway musical.

John, the music man, enjoyed the first group (Sophie y Los Papazuels) a lot and found the second one boring. I thought the whole thing way too loud, the room was freezing, and I had a stomach ache. So I stood in the far back and paced to keep warm. Sophie had an incredible voice and the bongo drummer was spectacular, able to make the bongos whisper love songs or pound like ocean surf. Their arrangements were way out in avant-gard-land and beyond my musical acumen or appreciation, though I certainly enjoyed much of it.

A busy two days in San Cristobal de las Casas....Vacation will soon be over, I enroll in Spanish classes on Monday.

(Turns out this blog has a map function, in case you want to see where this town is in Mexico. Click on the location below....)

Whatever you do, don't leave your jacket!

Two takeoffs, two landings. In Mexico City, I had to pick up my checked luggage and ride a train to get to the domestic terminal for the final leg of this trip. It was necessary to go through immigration and inspection, then through another security to get from the train into the terminal. Once inside, I had to obtain a boarding pass from a Kiosk and then stand in a long line so AeroMexico could check my lone piece of luggage. Another set of security checkpoints later I was in the right place, gate 72, with a couple of hours to kill.

A bathroom break, a sandwich, a long series of wanderings up and down the concourse for exercise, rolling the little back-back with everything of value in it, carrying my purse and book bag, then finally another bathroom break. Suddenly it dawned on me the red and black velour jacket, my favorite worn out thin-elbowed jacket was no longer part of my baggage entourage. I checked both bathrooms with a sinking heart. Of course if I left it in one of them it would be long gone. I went back to the security checkpoint and saw it on a shelf in one of those gray plastic containers they make you put your shoes in.

The fellow at the checkpoint was very nice but never acknowledged that the jacket in the container might be mine. No, instead he wanted to see my boarding pass. I pulled it out of my pocket. He looked it over very carefully, studied it really, pulled out his radio and made a call. Turned his back on me and took the pass over to a group of other security types with uniforms and chatted with them, then came back and with his back to me the whole time made a couple more calls. Finally he turned and asked me about the airline I came in on, or maybe he said the one I’m going out on. I wasn’t sure. What I'd given him was a Continental airlines boarding pass. Then it hit me! It was the one from the flight INTO Mexico City. Everything about it was wrong, the times written on it were long passed and I was in a terminal that serviced only AeroMexico. One would think he could have pointed that out in the first minute of studying it.

I apologized and gave him the current boarding pass. He turned his back again, made another call or two on his radio, chatted with (and kissed on the cheek) several women in uniforms who, apparently, had just showed up for work, and finally he asked for my passport. Then, his back to me again, he hunched over and studied the papers some more.

Now I was getting a bit nervous. The man had both the boarding pass and my passport and was still showing no sign of giving me the red jacket. At this point I was fully prepared to leave it behind when he turned with a form in his hand. He had painstakingly filled in my name, passport number, date of birth, etc. All I had to do was sign my name. He popped the jacket out of the box, gave me my papers, and wished me well.

Whew. I gotta pay more attention!!!

Mexico - 6 months

Tuesday, Jan 10, 2012 marks the first day of a 6 month experiment living in a foreign country. It hardly counts, when you think about it. I've already lived in Mexico for a total of 3 months, but those were three different months over a two year period, and in three different places. This 6 month stay will be again in San Cristobal de las Casas (SCLC) with (I hope) a few journeys to Guatemala, Costa Rica and possibly a house-sitting gig in Panama.

There is an expensive trip to Copper Canyon and some whale watching along the coast north of La Paz with the Los Alamos Mountaineers Club in February. So this longer stay will be punctuated with some interesting side trips and incredible scenery.

As always, there is some sense of forboding: what could happen? Will I get into an accident or will there be some drug cartel violence where I am caught in the middle? I think some fear, trepidation, and nervousness is normal before a long trip. Truly the worst fear is that I'll miss the damned plane because I didn't wake up in time, or be reading a book when they board the second flight. Perhaps I'll leave something behind.....the rolling backpack with every possible valuable thing in it.....or leave my alert brain at home and take the sluggish one instead. Fortunately there is usually coffee available.....

I am looking forward to being in Mexico again. I love the mountains there, lush and jungled yet still cool because of the high elevation. I don't mind the tiny Mayan women walking around practically begging you to buy one of the hundreds of items they carry on their bodies; blankets, scarves, woven wrist bands, purses. I wouldn't mind buying something once in a while, but they are like crows who see one of their kind getting rich so they fly in from all directions to get their piece of the action. There is a distinct double-edged sword when buying anything. On one side I want to support the local economy and would like to have a few trinkets, the other side feels attacked and can't get away fast enough.

I would like to try a few new things this time. Perhaps I'll rent a bicycle and ride around a bit, or take a tour to one (or more) of the villages. A tour guide can be a good thing sometimes. I want to do some longer range hiking in the hills and along the rivers. There are some wonderful lakes with boats to rent and ruins on islands. Tonina is on the agenda again, this time NOT on a Monday when the museum is closed! I've not even started to read Lonely Planet's descriptions of what is nearby in Chiapas. Just like New Mexico, you can live in a place most of your life, and still, there are places you've never been, and might not even know about!

So stay tuned! The goal is to post at least every other day with pictures. That ought to keep me busy!

Inquisition in New Mexico

Cathy and Joyce atop the Gran Quivira ruin.

My friend Rheta is a big reader, and she came across some references to the Inquisition in New Mexico. Apparently the Salinas Missions were the hot bed of activity, and she expressed a desire to go visit them. She organized a little group of friends. Cathy and Joyce joined us and we made a long day trip of it. The last day of the year, and what a marvelous day.

Joyce, Rheta and Cathy

We drove the long way, south from Santa Fe along the east side of the Sandias and Manzano Mountain ranges to the little town of Mountainair. The recent snows carpeted the landscape making the plains to the east look like a foamy ocean. It was well past lunch time when we stopped at the Shaffer Hotel and ate at the cafe. It's a down-home place that has excellent hand crafted burgers, steak, fried chicken and chicken fried steaks. But it's not the food that draws thousands of visitors a year to Pack's Cafe, it's the  New Mexican Art Deco paintings and carvings, all created by "Pop" Shaffer,  that cover the ceiling. Hanging down are chandeliers, carved and painted to match equally beautiful tables, though only a few of those are still in use. Next door, the Shaffer Hotel has a reputation for ghosts, not one but several, and a plethora of weird paranormal activity. A boy, maybe 12 years old, by the name of Jerry Pack the Third gave us a tour of the 'game room' and told us the true stories of the two large bullet holes in the ceiling of the lobby, and of his own strange experiences in the elevator, upstairs in the hotel, plus stories of the White Lady, a ghost who appears periodically. In the game room, I said suddenly "Is that a leg?," pointing at a scarecrow in pieces on the floor. The kid jumped and said I'd really scared him. I guess he believes all those stories he was telling!

Chandelier and carved/painted ceiling in
Pack's cafe.

We stopped by the Visitor Center which is a block from the Shaffer, picked up maps and information, then headed south to the Gran Quivira section of the three part Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument. The ranger on duty was a handsome young man named Mario Medina, with a long black braid and a head full of facts and anecdotes. We learned about the Inquisition at Las Humanas (that pueblo's name), the church's influence on the Pueblo people, the trials and tribulations of 400 years of Spanish and American domination, plus the amazing difference the introduction of cattle and sheep made on the local environment. At one time there were springs and a lake near the 2000 person village allowing them to grow food for over 4000 using the surplus for trade with the nomadic Plains Indians. Now there are no springs and the lake is a huge meadow used to graze, you guessed it, cattle. We were the only visitors so Mario took us on a long walking tour of the site, told us all about the financial motivations of the Spanish as well as the desires of the Church to convert souls. He was fascinating and we were thoroughly charmed by his enthusiasm and knowledge.

Lobby at the Shaffer Hotel

Gran Quivira is about 27 miles from Mountainair. It was 4:30 when we left and by the time we got to Abo, another of the missions, it was dusk, and the place was closed. It sits alongside a public road, so there is no gate or other obstacle to exploring the ruins. Abo is not as thoroughly excavated, though physically the village was almost as large as Las Humanas. Dusk gave us some beautiful blue, purple,  pink skies, and lovely silhouettes of the three story ruins.

In the dark we headed to Albuquerque for gas and a light dinner at Panda Express, the perfect last meal of 2011.

Gran Quivira 

Abo Mission at sunset

Abo ruins with 2 meter thick walls.

Abo ruins

Abo

Ruins with half moon.