Staying home: El Cabezon near San Isidro, NM

View to the SW from the flanks of the Cabezon

I've not posted on this blog for about 9 months. The reason is that during my last trip to Mexico, my mother suffered from a stroke. My sisters were around to get her through the hospital stay and rehab process, but it fell to me, as the only one of us who is retired, to move in with her full time and take over all the details of her life like paying bills and driving.

She has made a remarkable recovery, but will never drive again. She can no longer see well enough to pay bills, use a computer, or even read. So my travel-life has shrunk down to day trips here and there, with an occasional longer trip if I can take her with me.

Recently, I met my friend Tyler in San Isidro, NM and we took his 4WD vehicle out into the Rio Puerco valley. The area is full of volcanic plugs, the largest of which is called El Cabezón, "big head" in Spanish. They are all what is left of extinct volcanos that weathered away, leaving only the hardest rock, the solidified throat or neck.

It was still wintery, though a nice day. Even with the jeep, we couldn't go that last mile to the trailhead parking lot, it was too muddy. So we slogged in on foot, ate a nice lunch on a slope protected from the constant cold wind, and then hiked up to the 'shoulder' of the mountain. Further up the rocks require ropes and pitons. The views were outstanding. I counted about 24 volcanic necks in the area of varying sizes, and that was just looking to the south. From the shoulder we could see east to the Sandias and southeast to the Manzanos. Due south was a series of volcanic mesas, valleys, desert, and blue blue sky.

El Cabezón, southwest of San Isidro, NM

Tyler, in a plaid shirt and beige pants is almost perfectly camouflaged. 

The long tubular structures happen when lava cools very slowly over time, called columnar jointing.
This entire mountain is all that is left of a once large volcano.

Return to the Familiar

Mayan Cross in the plaza of the Guadalupe Church

All over Mexico, you'll see restaurants with the phrase "Restaurante Familiar" under the name. It means they welcome families. Now in the US I would avoid a "family restaurant" like the plague - fearing my meal would be one long scream-fest. But children in Mexico are normally very well behaved and there's only crying when one is hurt or desperately needs a diaper change.

My city familiar is San Cristobal de Las Casas, in Chiapas. I'm there now. This is my sixth time to live here for some part of the year. In 2012 I lived here attempting to rehydrate my dessicated high school Spanish and have rented apartments in several locations since then.

Now I am staying in Casa Blues. It was a large two-story home to an extended family for at least a century and has been owned by the smae family for about 30 years. The two grown boys live here with their wives and children. There are two nice casita's in their own little garden on the other side of the wall from the family house. My friend John lived here for about three years before moving back to the west coast. I stayed in his casita once when he was gone, and then rented it for myself this year.

Casa Blues is just a few doors down from Margarita's house, where I took care of her animals when she was gone. It's two blocks from the house where I lived for 6 months, and barely four blocks from el Centro where I rented two different apartments. At night I can hear the amplified jazz musicians singing in the bar down the street. The tropical birds and neighbor's rooster wake me up in the morning.

View of my portal out the bathroom
window.

I know the banana man in the market where I buy the giant red bananas for frying and the tiny sweet yellow ones for eating.

I wander up the Cola del Diablo, the Tail of the Devil, a narrow street that makes a sharp turn to the left. Some cars go too fast and once in a while a pedestrian gets run over.  But the best little bakery is just on the other side of that turn and I know to walk on the left side of the street, the sidewalk is higher. When cars go too fast they tend to overshoot the turn and hit the right curb.

Traveling is always a little scary, and it's the unknown things, like the Cola del Diablo,  that actually endanger us. When one becomes familiar with a place fears disappear. This city is my Mexican home. I know people. I'm invited out to lunch, concerts and parties. Though I'm only here for short periods of time, I feel safe. I am in la ciudad familiar, in the bosom of chosen family.

Staircase leading up to the San Cristobal
church with great views of the city.

A great view from San Cristobal Church

San Miguel de Allende, Otra Vez

The Parroquia from the backside.

I am again in San Miguel de Allende. This makes the fourth time I've visited this beautiful colonial city. Friends of mine have gone back to the states and they are letting me stay in their small apartment just off Ancha de San Antonio, one of the larger streets in the city.

At the end of this street is the Zócalo, the Jardin, the Centro. It goes by all three names. A large tree'd park with a pink stone, elaborately carved, parochial church on the south side; the police station, on the north, with banks and restaurants flanking the other two sides.

It is where the city goes to hang out, people watch, walk dogs, sell snowcones and plastic toys. It is a city that, starting just shortly after WWII, has been inundated and more or less taken over by Gringos. So much so that when I speak Spanish to someone, they automatically look at my pale freckled face and begin to speak English. Sigh.



It is a beautiful place, but the plethora of Gringos is why I wouldn't want to live here. Don't get me wrong, the Canadians and Americans have brought lots of money to this part of Mexico causing it to be more prosperous than many other places. They have also started over 200 non-profit organizations that perform the services the government cannot (or won't) do, like provide wells for small towns, mid-wife training for young women in the villages, dental care and library books for children, and nutrition training so people don't give their babies Coca Cola instead of water to drink.

I wouldn't live here for the one selfish reason that I speak Spanish more often and better elsewhere in Mexico where there are not so many of my countrymen.

It's not a cheap place to live, but small apartments can be rented for around $350 a month. There are plenty of low-end hotels for $20 a night, and plenty of high-end ones that will set you back more than a month's rent for one night. Homes range from $89K US dollars to over 4 million. Deep inside the city, a simple looking wall with large wooden doors guarding the driveway can be hiding a 2 million dollar elaborately outfitted home.

San Miguel has been a tourist draw for years, but now more than ever. Condé Nast named it the destination of the year and since then, the number of tourists has increased and Mexicans, in search of work, have poured into the city.

Now in the spring, the Jacarandas have finished their purple flower rain, and the bougainvilleas are in full force, ranging from deep red to the palest lavender. They overflow the walls of gardens to sprinkle their flowers on the walkways like little girls at a wedding.

During the last week, every afternoon, the clouds built up and it has rained. The rainy season is early this year. Soon the storms will be fierce by late afternoon and evening. And every morning, the streets are fresh with the scent of flowers and pan dulces baking in the panaderias.

Not much in the way of social services
for old people. They resort to begging.

Lots of free roaming cats, and a few
prisoners of affluence.

When you need a wall, and there's a tree.....

Paris: Museé de L'Orangerie

Inside the L'Orangerie Museum

Water Lilies (Les Nymphéas)
Both monumental and intimate, Water Lilies (Les Nymphéas) are the ultimate expression of Claude Monet's artistic ideas, an incredible project by a painter who wanted to explore all the variations of light in his garden at Giverny. The paintings are housed in two elliptical rooms, and encourage the visitor to gaze in endless contemplation. After the horror of the First World War, Monet wanted his work to take on this aesthetic and poetic dimension, and provide a haven for peaceful meditation. 

On the Museé de l’Orangerie website, the above description of Monet’s intention sounds inviting. The reality however is not quite what he had in mind. Around 1900, he conceived the idea that his largest and most magnificent water lily paintings might find a home, in a uniquely designed building for all to enjoy. The building already existed as a greenhouse for citrus trees. It was ultimately remodeled into two oval rooms, with a high skylight, perfectly suited to the four paintings in each. And in the center, a comfortable long double wide bench for people to sit upon and gaze. All that came to pass, but the sheer numbers of people who come to see them, make the room somewhat less contemplative than one might like. Surely, for Parisians, there must be times when fewer people would permit a visit more in line with Monet’s vision, but as a fly-by tourist, I could only sit, ponder, and then lean dramatically to look around people who stepped into view.

The eight paintings are magnificent, about eight feet wide and varying in length, each representing the light on a pond of water lilies at different times; dawn, noon, later afternoon, sunset, and reflecting cumulus clouds in the sky. It is very much like looking out a large window on a slightly foggy day, when everything is out of focus, yet discernable. The trunks of willow trees come into the picture without roots and scale upward into the sky without branching out. Only their weeping leaves rain from the sky to the water that reflects them and adds tremendous depth to the composition. The lilies themselves are mere hints of paint, applied on top of layers and layers of other colors.

After seeing so many paintings by varied artists on this trip through France, I was a bit astonished at the amount of paint, the layering, the thickness of Monet’s paintings, whereas other painters like Henri Martin let gesso covered canvas show through from time to time, without worry. It all worked the way each artist wanted, conveyed exactly what they had in mind, and the paintings never cease to astonish, a century after their deaths.

On the floor below the Water Lily exhibition there is a whole other museum. It is the Walter-Guillaume collection. Paul Guillaume was an art dealer who died prematurely. His widow, Dominica, lived more than 40 more years. She married another wealthy man, Jean Walter, and continued to purchase paintings. She sold many of Guillaume’s Picassos, and kept only the paintings done during the blue period. Guillaume loved the impressionists and post-impressionists. He was open to many new experiments like cubism, so the collection is widely varied and interesting.  We got the audio guide in English. It was well worth the money as each painting was explained in detail, whereas the label next to each work had nothing more than the name of the painting and the artist.

Next to the museum is the enormous Tuileries Garden. It is filled with sculptures, collected by kings and the government of France, over the last 500 years. A picnic in the park with a longish visit to the L’Orangerie would make a wonderful day in Paris for anyone wanting to drop out of the usual tourist whirlwind.

The Big Tree by Andre Durain

Prehistoric Man in France, Part II

Prehistoric female figure

If we’d been smarter, we might have opted to stay in Sarlat, the only decent sized town (with a train station) that is close to all the decorated caves.  Most businesses, and certainly all government offices and museums close from noon to 2:00 during the off-season. On Wednesday, we had two hours to kill and so drove down to Sarlat over a two lane curvy road through a hardwood forest. It’s a medieval town with some Italianate ornamentation from the Renaissance. The streets are stone and narrow with three and four-story buildings rising above open squares. We quickly found a parking spot and wandered around while reading about the town in Joyce’s digital version of Rick Steve’s guidebook to France.

From Sarlat, it’s possible to get on bus tours to all the larger Paleolithic sites, but not in the fall.

With limited time for both our trip and the car, our second day would be only a tour at Campanelles and then on to Lascaux.

The guide at Campanelles was the same man we’d had on our tour at Cap Blanc! His English had improved slightly with all that practice

Cave at Campanelles and
visitor center

the day before and he did a decent job explaining the inscribed drawings in the narrow snake-like cave. Many artists over a very long time, had carefully observed the shape of various spots on the rocks and incorporated the natural marks and formations into drawings of animals and a few female figures. Most drawings were a single scratch and in softer rock, a single swipe with a finger.

In that cave too, were the stirrings of a written language. Symbols, most of them with unknown meanings, were everywhere, especially triangles, Vs and Xs. The guide, in a very stilted way, indicated that the V or triangle represented female anatomy, and the upside down V was the male’s. So an X was, of course, the two mated.

The archeological data indicates reindeer as the principle meat animal of the Cro-Magnon and later the Magdalenian people. Yet few reindeer are drawn or carved in the area’s overhangs and caves. I guess if you ate the same thing all the time and only occasionally got something tastier……the cow, horse, or mammoth might be the preferred choice for reverence.

This is the case in Lascaux where, 17,000 years ago, a group of people, using scaffolding (you can see the holes in the rocks to hold the poles) painted the high walls and the ceiling. What dominates the cave are enormous bulls, some in ¾ view, some with animals superimposed on them, and some with other animals roughly indicated behind, as they would be seen in a herd.

What we are permitted to see today is an amazing facsimile. People descend stairs into a darkened room with displays and explanations from a guide. Then the doors open and the cave is just beyond. Every square millimeter of the most decorated section of the original cave has been duplicated and painted with the same minerals the original artists used. The space is cool with a slight draft just like in a real cave, made more realistic because the room is actually underground. This is Lascaux II.

The real cave has been closed, and will remain closed forever. In the 1960s, after twenty years of humans traipsing through, the paintings suffered terrible degradation from mold and bacteria brought in by people. The decision was made to duplicate it as perfectly as technology would permit, and on November 19, 1984, Laxcaux II opened. The 30^th anniversary celebration will take place this month.

An identical copy, Lascaux III, is a portable facsimile that is traveling the globe, bringing the amazing art and artistic sensitivity of prehistoric people to modern people around the world. And a new project is underway, Lascaux IV, another underground model, that will be the entire cave system, replicated with every painting, drawing, and carving. It will open in 2016 about a mile from the current site.

Lascaux IV was designed by laser-scanning the original cave to create the perfect model on a computer. This technology was perfected on the Chauvet Cave, discovered in 1994.  The decision was made not to allow public access at all, so that no foreign organisms would be introduced. Chauvet Cave has paintings and sculptures much older than Lascaux, dating back 30,000 years. The scientists dress in protective gear and are only allowed inside for short periods of time. That cave and its facsimile are documented in the movie, The Cave Of Forgotten Dreams.

Being in Lascaux II, one quickly forgets that it is a model. The paintings are enormous.  A giant bull dominates the ceiling on one side with a smaller one opposing. While the paintings are everywhere they do not cover every square inch of space. Clearly it was not some sort of long term grafitti project painted over centuries by random people scrawling over the work of previous artists. Certain animals are given space, perhaps a reverence, apart from other drawings. The colors are vivid and varied.

Painting the cave was a tremendous amount of work, and clearly done with a sense of space, drama, and emotional impact. Human beings don’t undertake such projects simply for fun, there must certainly have been deep religious, or at least social, reasons to do that amount of work.  The painted ceiling, the magnificence of the art, and its probable use in an animist religion, caused it to be called the Sistine Chapel of the prehistoric era.

Photography was not allowed inside, but the art can be seen at this link:

LifeMagazineLascaux

Typical limestone block house in Sarlat

Narrow stone streets of Sarlat

Italianate mansion on
the main plaza

Ancient structure, over 1000
years old, a lantern for the dead
above a cemetery, Sarlat

Human Prehistory in France (Part 1)

We arrived in Perigueux on a Saturday afternoon. By the time we’d found our rented apartment and settled in, gone to the grocery and purchased enough food for three or four days, it was getting dark.

Sunday was dead, like being in a Zombie movie. Nobody was out and about. Then about dusk a few restaurants opened, and suddenly there was traffic and people walking the streets.

Neanderthal

Monday is the day of rest for most attractions and museums, so there wasn’t much to do, and Tuesday was Armistice Day, a national holiday. It was as dead as Sunday plus it rained.

So, we had a vacation from our vacation. It was well deserved and appreciated. Especially since our rented apartment was elegant, a step-back into the 1850s with its marble fireplaces, chandeliers, wood floors and rich dark antiques. We were extremely comfortable and well fed.

When it wasn’t raining, we did walk about, hiking all over the city, photographing the river, the cathedral, the Roman ruins, and, luckily for me, memorizing the layout of the city. This knowledge came in handy days later when we drove back into town from Les Eyzies, in the dark without a map.

Modern Human

The area, known as both the Perigord and the Dordogne, has a history longer than any other in France. Human beings, assuming Neanderthals were human beings, have occupied this region for over 400,000 years. No that’s not a typo. Four hundred thousand years.

To give us Americans a bit of perspective, the earliest finds of prehistoric man in the US date back 15,000 years, tops.  

Two thousand years before that, Paleolithic people painted the Lascaux cave.

On Monday we hiked over to the train station to talk to the car rental places, settled on a Citroen from EuropeCar, and made plans to pick it up on Wednesday. I was terrified. Although I had driven some in Belize, that beat-up van had come with the house and the road signs were in English. Plus roads in Belize are so bad it’s more like weaving through an obstacle course, not exactly “driving”. 

This was a new spotless car. The woman who gave us the keys pointed to the tiniest little black mark on the wheel rim and said this was the only damage, if it came back with more than that, I’d be responsible!

Joyce was the navigator. She read through the instructions on her computer that we’d gotten from Google maps in English, and we got out of town, through many round-abouts. The two-lane highway went through scenery that reminded her of Wisconsin and Michigan in the autumn, little low-lying farms nestled between forested hills, flat streams reflecting white clouds in an azure sky.

 

Les Eyzies

Our destination was Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil (lez a zees). It was the place where Cro-Magnon man was discovered, “Cro” meaning hole or cave, and Magnon was the landowner’s last name. 

From a film showing
how flint tools were used
to create the Cro-Magnon Venus

A large museum, welcome center, and dozens of small hotels and restaurants make up the town, which pretty much closes down after Armistice Day. The one painted cave site, La Font de Gaume, was closed for November so scientists could study it. The closest cave with engravings ran tours for six people at a time, all day, and they were booked. So we purchased the last tour for Cap Blanc, another nearby site, and tickets for the next day at Campanelles.

We had plenty of time to explore the museum that catered equally to adults and children. In small booths were films showing how various objects were made and used by the Paleolithic peoples. Full skeletons of bison, Megalaceros – an enormous moose-like deer, reindeer, and other animals were on display. Beautiful figurines, arrowheads, spear points, scrapers, animal-fat lamps, and other everyday objects filled glass cases. Several full sized figures of men, women and children, both human and Neanderthal were shown in sewn skin clothing with spears, flint knives, and even fitted boots.

Quite a few burials have been found. Neanderthals were the first to perform ritual burials, as indicated by the presence of grave goods and flower pollen. One display had the skeletons of a woman and her young child (maybe three or four years old) that had been found buried together.

We drove up a winding road over the Vezere river and up into the hills to Cap Blanc, named after the white limestone “cap” of the region. Cap Blanc is the site of a rock shelter, a deep overhang, that was carved by someone about 12,000 years ago. We were the only people on the tour so we spent at least an hour with the sculptures.

Our guide was a small man, thin and wiry, who did not speak much English. He managed with gestures, a laser pointer, and enormous enthusiasm, to tell us the story of this frieze of sculptures.

A building protects this incredible site, and only a few people are allowed inside at a time. In the center of a long wall of bas-relief carvings is a horse. A full sized carved figure that is mostly still intact. The belly bulges out and is part of the natural rock formation. One of the horses on the side has its face turned slightly towards the viewer, you can see the shape of the eyebrows and the front of the muzzle. This position is difficult to draw well, and very hard to sculpt. 

Directly below the horse is the burial of a woman, estimated to have died about 10,000 years ago. The bones are replicas, the original pieces are in the Chicago Field museum.

The frieze is thought to have been carved by a single artist. Clearly there is an overall symmetry to the group with bison and horses on either side arranged in the same way. And the style is consistent with one person’s vision.

The guide said experts have determined that with the stone tools available, and the softness of the stone, the entire grouping could have been carved in three months. That’s assuming of course that the artist didn’t have any other work to do, like go hunting. So it may have been executed over several years during lull times, or the man’s community may have supported him while he worked.

Our guide couldn’t hide his romantic nature. He pointed to the fact that only one person was buried there. The woman was about 35 years old when she died, and there were grave goods with her body. She is buried directly below the center horse, and if you stand back, it does appear to be a symmetrical monument, perhaps dedicated to her. It’s not hard to imagine a grief struck sculptor carving his heart out over three or four months, unable to do anything else to ease the pain.

Facial reconstruction of the woman found at Cap Blanc
based on the actual skull in the Field Museum

Albi & Toulouse-Lautrec

Taken from the bus to Albi, one of the few remaining roads in
France, intentionally planted with "plane" trees to provide shade for drivers.

Our second day in Toulouse, we decided to take a bus to Albi, a small city about an hour north, where Henri Toulouse-Lautrec was born. His best friend, art dealer Maurice Joyant, and mother, the Comtesse Adele Toulouse-Lautrec, created a museum in Albi that houses the largest collection of his work in the world.

The Toulouse-Lautrec
museum and gardens

The museum is housed in an estate that belonged to his family, the Palais de la Berbie, next door to the cathedral of Sainte-Cecile, on the banks of the Tarn river. It was a true fortress with thick walls, lovely gardens, and classic medieval architecture.

Henri was born to wealthy parents and had an excellent education. But because his parents were first cousins, he had some genetic problems which resulted in easily broken bones. After both legs were broken in his childhood, they didn't heal properly and quit growing. He never reached an adult height.

Also, and maybe due to his deformities, he had an emotional affiliation with people on the fringes of society, like prostitutes and cabaret performers. Much of what he is known for are the portraits of dancers and brothel workers in their off-hours, when they spent time together, eating, talking, or just waiting for customers.

But in the museum there are numerous other portraits, drawings, and lithographic stones of famous aristocrats, advertising posters, flyers, and menus for restaurants. What impressed us so much was that his style borders on the cartoonish, but the faces of his subjects, the only thing that really mattered, were executed with sensitivity and skill. He had a true love of horses and painted many in various attributes, alone, ridden, harnessed, in circuses. Although he only lived to be 36, he was prolific in his output.

Some overhanging buildings!

We were not allowed to photograph inside the museum, but the collections are online at this website:  Toulouse-Lautrec

This time of year, many museums close between noon and 2:00. So we had lunch, wandered the gardens, and did the river walk. It's a beautiful little town with ancient bridges and medieval buildings. Some of the oldest buildings have upper stories that overhang the first because in medieval times, you paid taxes only on the square footage of the ground floor! In the center of old town, a new market has been built with a full service grocery on the ground floor and many independent butcher, chocolate, and bread shops on the upper floor. Modern as it looks, it fits with the character of the town, and boy are the pain de chocolats at the bakery good!!

The Tarn River and Albi 

Beautiful old bridge, still in use.

Inside the new market