Well, this day has finally come. It’s my last day. I just finished packing and I don’t know what to do with myself. I might go down the street to get some of the best gringas ever for the last time.
Over the last few weeks I’ve gone through a lot of emotions considering this day. For a while I couldn’t wait to leave, and then for a while I would get really depressed every time I thought about leaving, and now I’m excited to leave but I can’t imagine anywhere else but here. I’m probably just being dramatic. It will be great to be home, but first…
OFF TO ARGENTINA!!!!!!!!!!!! My flight leaves at 8:30pm and then it’s an overnight flight to Buenos Aires and Beth! Beth has been studying in Buenos Aires for about two months now and I can’t wait to see her in her new city. I’m not sure what she has planned for me but I know that we are going to un espectaculo that she has been raving about for weeks, El Tigre (a little town by the river), and the musical Spring Awakening in SPANISH! And, of course, we’re going to eat lots of yummy steak and go leather shopping. It should be a good time.<------------Understatement of the century
So, goodbye Mexico. You’ve been good to me. I’ll miss it and all the people in it, but I’ll be back…someday.
PS: My host nephew, Jaziel, died last night. He was five years old. He had been battling Leukemia since he was two, but in the time I’ve been here he had been slowly deteriorating. Over a month ago, the doctors said they couldn’t do anything else for him and sent him home, and for the last two weeks he had been in the hospital in very bad condition. Last night in the middle of the night, Señora Tere came into my room to tell me he had died and that she might not be here when I leave because the whole family was going to the funeral home. In Mexico, when a loved one dies, family and friends gather in the funeral home all night and all day. She is there right now. I don’t know what to do or say around my host family now. I think this is a good time for me to leave…Sorry to end Mexico with something so sad, but I really felt I had to share this with you. There are still three grandsons: Gabriel, Poncho, and the new born baby Santiago. The family has been expecting this for a while, and, while nothing can prepare you for something like this, I am confident that they will make it through. My thoughts are with them.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Mexico City...Finally...
Time to recount my weekend in Mexico City. Here goes…
THURSDAY (4/15)
I had midterms on Thursday so we got a bus after school for the seven hour ride to Mexico City. We both slept most of the way there. I think the first time I checked the time we were already five hours into the ride.
We got there around 10 o’clock and had to find our way to our Couch Surfing host’s place. Linda had written down his cell phone number but I couldn’t read it and we called the wrong number about 10 times before we realized it was a 7 not a 2. Abdiel, our host, said he would pick us up at the metro station, so we made our way down there. His metro stop was pretty much on the other side of the city from the bus station, so it took us a good hour to get there, but we didn’t have any problems along the way. Abdiel and his roommate Daniel picked us up in an old, beat up, white VW Bug which was pretty much the highlight of my day. That was my first time in a VW Bug of any sort, I think.
When we got to their apartment we dropped our stuff and gathered in the kitchen to make pasta, drink some Tecate, and chat. We switched back and forth between English and Spanish mostly because Linda was too tired to attempt speaking Spanish, but they also spoke really good English. After eating our pasta we started watching Scarface, but I fell asleep about half an hour in. I promise I’ll finish it someday.
FRIDAY (4/16)
We woke up at a reasonable hour and took our time getting ready in the morning. I flipped through my guide book and Abdiel gave me a few tips for what we should do during our stay. I decided on going to the Frida Khalo Museum in a neighborhood called Coyoacan which wasn’t too far away from the apartment and Linda was pretty much along for the ride.
The Frida Khalo Museum, or Casa Azul, is in the house that she and Diego Rivera lived in together. It lives up to its name; it’s a very blue house. The museum itself could have been set up better, but it was a good outing. Their house was really interesting in itself. There was one room with writing across the top of the wall that said something like “Diego Rivera, Maria Felix, and Frida Khalo’s room.” Maria Felix was a very famous actress in the 40s and 50s, so I thought that was kind of cool. There were a lot of nick nacks sitting around and Linda said, “Someday, when you’re famous, people will put your random stuff on display.” That’s pretty much how it felt.
Coyoacan itself was a pretty cute little neighborhood. It reminded me a lot of Oaxaca or Tlaquepaue with a good town square and a pretty church. There was also a good sized open air market where we stopped and bought some giant tacos. One thing we noticed early on about Mexico City was that everyone was so nice. We didn’t know how to get to a metro station from where we were so we asked a vendor on the street and he was very helpful. Later, when we took the bus too far we got off and asked a guy how to get to the metro station from there and when we looked confused at his directions he offered up his brother to walk us there. It was surprising for the biggest city in the world to be so nice and open.
After Coyoacan we were supposed to meet another guy from Couch Surfing to get a tour around the city center, but because we left Coyoacan a little late and then got lost we got to the meeting spot an hour late. We tried calling him to figure out where he was, but he was being uncooperative and only said he was in Puebla, so we just gave up on him and headed to the zócalo by ourselves.
As we started walking toward the zócalo (which I now realize was insane because we were like four metro stops away) we stopped and asked one last time if anyone knew where Puebla was. This began a very confusing series of events because Puebla, undoubtedly, is a street somewhere in Mexico City, but it also happens to be another city in another state. The men we stopped and asked were very nice and tried to give us directions, but when I started asking questions they thought I didn’t understand. So then, one of them says he’ll take us there. So we got on the metro with him and we went maybe two stops and got off and started walking to transfer to another line when he said something about a bus station, and Linda and I were both like, “Wait what? Bus station?” That’s when we realized that he thought we were talking about Puebla the city, not some street. He was taking us to the bus station to go for a four hour bus ride. Whoops. So right then and there we thanked him, got back on the metro, and went to the zócalo station.
When we got to the zócalo we were so wiped out that we went to the tourist kiosk and asked where we could drink some beer. They gave us a map of the city center and recommended a place that was easy to walk to. We wandered down the nearest street and eventually found Bar Gante, the place they had recommended. It was good to just sit and relax for a bit. Linda had been feeling really uncomfortable and uptight, so some Victoria did her some good. We were just sitting there chatting when a really creepy street performer guy dressed as a skeleton came up behind Linda and put his hand on her shoulder. She nearly jumped out of her seat. He was pretty scary. Needless to say we didn’t give him any money.
After Bar Gante we headed back to the apartment. We were thinking of meeting up with Linda’s friend, Oscar, who lives in the city, but we couldn’t get a hold of him, so we ended up going with Abdiel and Daniel with their friends. We squished seven people into their VW Bug and drove through the rain (yes rain!) to a karaoke bar called the Cotton Club.
Linda let it slip that I can sing, so I took a look through the song book and found “Oops, I Did It Again” by Britney Spears among many other gems. I signed up to sing, but sadly my song never came up. We still had a really good time. I actually knew a few of the songs other people were singing, and they had TV screens all over the place so everyone could sing along. Plus, in between karaoke songs they played salsa and banda music, so Linda and I danced with Abdiel and Daniel a little bit. We left the bar around 2 or 3am and all went back to their apartment for some more hanging out. Linda decided she had to teach our hosts the rules of beer pong and I got a great video of her over-the-top explanation. I got tired around 4:30 and snagged a bed before anyone else had even started thinking about sleeping. I found out the next morning that Linda had slept on the kitchen floor but I think that was mostly because she was being stubborn.
SATURDAY (4/17)
We woke up late the next day with no real plan. We ate some of the snacks we’d bought for the bus ride for breakfast and finally headed to the zócalo around 3. Our first stop was the Palacio Nacional on one side of the square. Inside this government building are several murals by Diego Rivera that were really interesting. In the Guadalajara government building there are a bunch of murals by Orozco, but I prefer Rivera’s style much more.
The first mural is a big one with three panels. We stood there for a long time analyzing it just for fun. One side was like native cultures and religion and it wasn’t very interesting. The big panel in the middle was the Spanish conquest depicting the capturing and branding of natives and the conversion to Catholicism.
The third panel was our favorite and we took the longest time analyzing it. It was Rivera’s take on society and corruption but also what he thought should be done about it. Linda said that a lot of his work shows bad, unhappy things but that it always ends happy. This was pretty clear in that panel. My favorite part was at the very top there was a depiction of Carl Marx with a landscape behind him. On one side the land was all ruined and dead and on the other side (in the direction he was pointing) was a idyllic, colorful landscape with shining factories and big cities. We both thought it was pretty clear what he was trying to say there.
On the second floor of the building was another series of murals depicting Aztec culture and the Spanish conquest. We walked around to all of them and Linda told me what she had heard about each one. I missed a day of our culture class when the teacher talked about these murals so Linda told me what she could remember.
When we were finally done with that we were both absolutely starving. My stomach was literally eating itself. So we went back to Bar Gante since we knew it was nearby and I got a hamburger while she got fried chicken. Very Mexican. The waiter was the same as the day before and when he came out to us (we were even sitting at the same table) he said, “OK, two Victorias?” I guess we kind of stood out.
Another girl from CEPE, Sonja, has a friend who lives in Mexico City so she gave him our numbers so we could meet up. Tavio ended up meeting us at Bar Gante while we were eating our very late lunch. When he got there it had started to rain pretty hard so we went inside the restaurant and chatted while we finished up. We switched back and forth between English and Spanish, but mostly stuck to Spanish for that part of the day. His English was relatively good but he really wanted/needed to practice.
Once it stopped raining we went back to the zócalo and I took them to “Mexico en tus sentidos” again. This is the same thing that Dad and I did when we were in DF for one night during semana santa. I think they really liked it. Afterwards Tavio said he felt very proud to be Mexican and I said I imagined you had to after something like that. When we were walking out a camera man came up to me and Linda and asked us if we would do and interview for the exhibition’s website. He took us over to a spot and interviewed us in English, mostly asking what we thought of the exhibition and what we would tell our fellow Americans about Mexico. It’s very possible that our videos are up on the website. I think the URL is mexicoentussentidos.com.mx but I could be wrong.
When we got out of that it was absolutely pouring down rain. There were parts of the temporary building that the exhibition was in that were leaking. We were pretty hesitant to walk out into that mess but the security guys were getting really annoyed and forced us out.
There were two girls selling rain slicker trash bags for five pesos each, so we bought some and ran for cover. We wanted to go to the cathedral next but because of the rain we had to walk around the perimeter of the zócalo under the arches of the surrounding buildings.
While we were looking around/taking cover in the cathedral we found out that Abdiel wouldn’t be able to make it back to the apartment until 9 or so, so we went with Tavio to a Starbucks nearby to drink something warm and wait out the rain some more. We were all soaked and freezing and none of us were used to this weather. Tavio is from La Manzanilla, a beach town near Barra de Navidad, and we were used to the sunny Guadalajara weather. We ended up sort of eating dinner at Starbucks and talking about our plans for the night. Linda was still trying to get a hold of Oscar and Tavio thought he might have plans but both ideas fell through. After much back and forth we decided to meet Tavio’s friend and go out to a bar for a little while before going back home for and early night. Linda and I were both tired from the night before and Abdiel was waiting for us back in his apartment.
Tavio’s friend, Roque, lives in a pretty nice neighborhood close to the Eugenia metro stop with a few other guys. He has an adorable black lab, Sparky, who is about a year and a half old and full of energy. We drove from his house to the Condeza neighborhood (think Greenwich Village in NYC) and went to a bar called the King’s Pub. It seemed to be a chain but it had a good atmosphere and, later, a good live band. I was pretty sleepy and boring until the live band started up with “Don’t Stop Believin’” and then I perked right up. The guys at the table next to us were practically drowning out the band with their singing along. We left the bar around midnight and made plans to meet up with them the next day for some sightseeing.
We had successfully gotten back to the apartment early-ish, but ended up staying up and talking to Abdiel until nearly 2am. So much for an early night.
SUNDAY (4/18)
That morning Linda and I decided to take Abdiel out for breakfast as a thank you. When we were walking to the breakfast place Abdiel told us that he had to go home that day and wouldn’t be able to come back for the night. This was a huge bomb to drop on us at this point because it meant we had to find somewhere else to stay for the rest of our trip. So we went back to his apartment very irritated and packed up. Linda got a hold of Tavio who told us we could stay at Roque’s for the night, so that was all set, but it was still annoying that we had to just get up and go. We still took Abdiel out for breakfast at Sanbourn’s (the Mexican Denny’s) but this time we had our suitcases with us.
After breakfast we went to Roque’s metro station and he and Tavio picked us up and took us out for more food. We weren’t hungry but they hadn’t eaten yet. The restaurant they took us to was right next to the bull fighting arena, but hopefully that’s not where the bulls go afterwards…After our very late brunch we went back to Roque’s house to pick up a few of his roommates and hit the town.
First we went to Chapultepec Park where the National Anthropology Museum is, along with a lot of other museums, the zoo, and acres and acres of green park grounds for the people of Mexico City.
We made a quick stop at the Anthropology Museum because we had been told that it was a must see. The people we were with didn’t seem terribly interested in the museum’s contents, so that made it a little difficult to enjoy. We zoomed through a few of the exhibits on indigenous cultures and spent a little bit longer in the Aztec exhibit. There were several really interesting pieces there including a giant sacrificial altar with the calendar on it and a replica of Montezuma’s headdress.
After the museum we headed out for Xochimilco, one of the most recognizable parts of Mexico City in my opinion. It shows up in a lot of movies set in Mexico City, kind of like Central Park and NYC. Mexico City was originally the capital of the Aztec empire, Tenochtitlan, which was built as a group of islands in the middle of a lake. It must have been very impressive in its day.
Xochimilco is kind of the remnants of this series of islands and channels. Large groups of families and friends head to the colorful boats for an afternoon of food, drink, music, and relaxation. We rented a boat for about an hour and did a good circuit of the channels, but I have a feeling there was even more to see. Every island had something different on it from restaurants to plant nurseries to petting zoos. Out on the water was no different with tons of smaller boats selling food and drinks, even one selling bonsai trees. We ordered food from one of the boats and they hooked themselves up to our boat to prepare the food and serve it to us. I got enchiladas with mole and it was delicious. All the other food people got looked good too.
One of the best parts about Xochimilco was the mariachi music floating all around us, literally.
There were smaller boats with full bands on them that went around getting hired by various groups out on the water. It was pretty common to see a mariachi group playing on their boat which was attached to the side of a bigger boat with people eating and drinking and dancing. Sometimes there would be a smaller mariachi group right on the boat with their temporary employers, the lead singer singing right in their faces. I don’t know if it gets more Mexican than Xochimilco.
After that we just went back to Roque’s and hung out. His roommate, Luis, who also knows Sonja from La Manzanilla, took us out to a taco place nearby for dinner. Luis plays for a professional soccer team in Mexico City, but I don’t know enough about the soccer scene here to know if his team is any good. I’ve forgotten the name anyway. We ended up sleeping on a mattress on the floor in Roque’s room.
MONDAY (4/19)
We woke up late and didn’t end up leaving Roque’s house until nearly 1:30 absolutely starving. I grabbed a bag of chips before we got to the metro station and then when we were changing lines we both got something at Domino’s Pizza in the metro. Breakfast of champions for sure. We got to the bus station and immediately bought tickets for the next bus to Teotihuacan.
Teotihuacan is another Aztec city that is much older than Tenochtitlan and was deserted by the time the Spanish arrived. It’s a good thing too or else the Spanish would have destroyed it too.
Teotihuacan is also the home of the largest pyramid left in Mexico. It’s only about a 45 minute bus ride outside of Mexico City, but when you get there you feel like you are millions of miles away. Linda made the comment that only a few miles away was one of the largest, most densely populated cities in the world, but there we were in a place that was pretty much the opposite. I’m sure that Teotihuacan gets packed with tourists, but on this random Monday we were nearly the only people there.
I hired a guide for us because I didn’t want to just be looking at piles of rocks without knowing what they were. He took us around on a lengthy tour and showed us a bunch of things we probably would have missed without him. There was a house that was way off the path that you could walk through. It was protected by a metal structure to keep the rain from damaging the original paint designs that are still on the walls. We definitely would have missed that without him. We also learned that the religious ball game that the Aztecs played varied greatly from the Mayan game because it is thought that they used sticks (something like intense croquet) instead of hitting the ball off their hips, knees, and elbows. To end the tour he took us to a corner of the plaza of the pyramid of the moon to demonstrate the odd acoustics. When he clapped, the sound bounced off the buildings and came back sounding like sort of animal. It’s hard to describe but, never fear, I took a video!
After our tour we climbed the two pyramids; first the smaller pyramid of the moon and then the largest pyramid in Mexico, the pyramid of the sun. The pyramid of the moon was blocked off so we could only go up half way, but that was good enough. It had the same weird acoustic phenomenon and we had some fun clapping out beats and dancing around. After catching our breath and taking lots of pictures we moved on to the mother of all pyramids.
The sun was starting to set so we knew we had to hurry to climb the more than 250 stairs to the top before they closed for the day. Climbing up wasn’t even really that bad because there were a several flat areas between the flights of stairs where we could stop and rest. When we finally got to the top, though, we were exhausted and it took us a few minutes to recharge. Right when we started to take pictures, a security man came over and told us it was closing time and we had to go back down. We asked him for a few extra minutes and then scurried around to the other side of the platform at the top where he couldn’t see us. We were so high up that you could see for miles and miles in every direction. The wind was blowing pretty strong and I just happened to have our rain slickers from Saturday still in my purse, so I got a really epic picture of Linda with her “cape” on at the top of the pyramid. We are the epitome of cool. After that the security guard saw us again and we actually had to get off the pyramid. We were the last ones to leave Teotihuacan that day.
When we finally got on the bus to go back to the city we were actually starving. Remember, we had only eaten a bag of chips and an ice cream cone (me) and a mini Domino’s pizza (Linda) more than five hours before. We had decided that since we didn’t have anywhere to stay that night that we would just get on a midnight bus back to Guadalajara and get there early Tuesday morning. Unfortunately, Linda had left a pair of shoes at Abdiel’s apartment, so before we could eat we decided to go all the way back there. We got there around 9 maybe and only stayed for a few minutes to drink a glass of water and tell him about what we did Sunday and that day. With her shoes in hand, Linda and I said good bye to him one more time and went to Sanbourn’s again for dinner.
This is where things got complicated. At dinner Linda finally got a hold of her friend and we made arrangements to meet up with him for maybe an hour. This was a problem because we still had to go back to Roque’s to pick up our suitcases before going to the bus station (all of which we would have to do on the metro) and the metro closes at midnight. So we rushed through dinner thanks to our excellent waitress and ran off to the metro to meet Oscar. It was really bad timing, but this guy was basically the reason Linda came to Mexico so they had to see each other at some point (and I really wanted to meet him). We figured out that with the amount of time we had left we would only get half an hour with him, and then he was late so it turned into fifteen minutes. We went into a nearby VIPS (the Mexican IHOP) and sat at a table while they caught up. After that we zoomed off to Roque’s house, grabbed our stuff, and said a quick good bye. At this point it was 11:20 and we still had to get to the bus station.
We were actually ahead of schedule by a little bit, so I started to relax bit. I relaxed a little too much because after we’d been on the train for a few stops I realized we were going in the wrong direction. We got off immediately and lugged our bags up and down the stairs to the other platform but the train didn’t come for another 15 mintues or so. At this point it was somewhere close to 11:50 and we still had to transfer lines to get to the bus station. The transfer between the line we were on and the one we needed was a very long tunnel that takes nearly 15 minutes to walk, so we got off the train and started running. We weren’t the only ones which made me feel a little better. At least the natives thought they had a chance if they ran too. We lucked out and a train did come.
It was about 12:15 when we finally got to the bus station. We bought tickets for the next bus which left at 12:30, hopped on, and finally got to rest. After that whole long day of pyramids, buses, metros, and stairs we spread ourselves out on the bus and fell asleep for the night. We arrived back in Guadalajara at 7:30 Tuesday morning which gave me enough time to get a taxi home and go to school. A strange end to a crazy trip.
THURSDAY (4/15)
I had midterms on Thursday so we got a bus after school for the seven hour ride to Mexico City. We both slept most of the way there. I think the first time I checked the time we were already five hours into the ride.
We got there around 10 o’clock and had to find our way to our Couch Surfing host’s place. Linda had written down his cell phone number but I couldn’t read it and we called the wrong number about 10 times before we realized it was a 7 not a 2. Abdiel, our host, said he would pick us up at the metro station, so we made our way down there. His metro stop was pretty much on the other side of the city from the bus station, so it took us a good hour to get there, but we didn’t have any problems along the way. Abdiel and his roommate Daniel picked us up in an old, beat up, white VW Bug which was pretty much the highlight of my day. That was my first time in a VW Bug of any sort, I think.
When we got to their apartment we dropped our stuff and gathered in the kitchen to make pasta, drink some Tecate, and chat. We switched back and forth between English and Spanish mostly because Linda was too tired to attempt speaking Spanish, but they also spoke really good English. After eating our pasta we started watching Scarface, but I fell asleep about half an hour in. I promise I’ll finish it someday.
FRIDAY (4/16)
We woke up at a reasonable hour and took our time getting ready in the morning. I flipped through my guide book and Abdiel gave me a few tips for what we should do during our stay. I decided on going to the Frida Khalo Museum in a neighborhood called Coyoacan which wasn’t too far away from the apartment and Linda was pretty much along for the ride.
The Frida Khalo Museum, or Casa Azul, is in the house that she and Diego Rivera lived in together. It lives up to its name; it’s a very blue house. The museum itself could have been set up better, but it was a good outing. Their house was really interesting in itself. There was one room with writing across the top of the wall that said something like “Diego Rivera, Maria Felix, and Frida Khalo’s room.” Maria Felix was a very famous actress in the 40s and 50s, so I thought that was kind of cool. There were a lot of nick nacks sitting around and Linda said, “Someday, when you’re famous, people will put your random stuff on display.” That’s pretty much how it felt.
Coyoacan itself was a pretty cute little neighborhood. It reminded me a lot of Oaxaca or Tlaquepaue with a good town square and a pretty church. There was also a good sized open air market where we stopped and bought some giant tacos. One thing we noticed early on about Mexico City was that everyone was so nice. We didn’t know how to get to a metro station from where we were so we asked a vendor on the street and he was very helpful. Later, when we took the bus too far we got off and asked a guy how to get to the metro station from there and when we looked confused at his directions he offered up his brother to walk us there. It was surprising for the biggest city in the world to be so nice and open.
After Coyoacan we were supposed to meet another guy from Couch Surfing to get a tour around the city center, but because we left Coyoacan a little late and then got lost we got to the meeting spot an hour late. We tried calling him to figure out where he was, but he was being uncooperative and only said he was in Puebla, so we just gave up on him and headed to the zócalo by ourselves.
As we started walking toward the zócalo (which I now realize was insane because we were like four metro stops away) we stopped and asked one last time if anyone knew where Puebla was. This began a very confusing series of events because Puebla, undoubtedly, is a street somewhere in Mexico City, but it also happens to be another city in another state. The men we stopped and asked were very nice and tried to give us directions, but when I started asking questions they thought I didn’t understand. So then, one of them says he’ll take us there. So we got on the metro with him and we went maybe two stops and got off and started walking to transfer to another line when he said something about a bus station, and Linda and I were both like, “Wait what? Bus station?” That’s when we realized that he thought we were talking about Puebla the city, not some street. He was taking us to the bus station to go for a four hour bus ride. Whoops. So right then and there we thanked him, got back on the metro, and went to the zócalo station.
When we got to the zócalo we were so wiped out that we went to the tourist kiosk and asked where we could drink some beer. They gave us a map of the city center and recommended a place that was easy to walk to. We wandered down the nearest street and eventually found Bar Gante, the place they had recommended. It was good to just sit and relax for a bit. Linda had been feeling really uncomfortable and uptight, so some Victoria did her some good. We were just sitting there chatting when a really creepy street performer guy dressed as a skeleton came up behind Linda and put his hand on her shoulder. She nearly jumped out of her seat. He was pretty scary. Needless to say we didn’t give him any money.
After Bar Gante we headed back to the apartment. We were thinking of meeting up with Linda’s friend, Oscar, who lives in the city, but we couldn’t get a hold of him, so we ended up going with Abdiel and Daniel with their friends. We squished seven people into their VW Bug and drove through the rain (yes rain!) to a karaoke bar called the Cotton Club.
Linda let it slip that I can sing, so I took a look through the song book and found “Oops, I Did It Again” by Britney Spears among many other gems. I signed up to sing, but sadly my song never came up. We still had a really good time. I actually knew a few of the songs other people were singing, and they had TV screens all over the place so everyone could sing along. Plus, in between karaoke songs they played salsa and banda music, so Linda and I danced with Abdiel and Daniel a little bit. We left the bar around 2 or 3am and all went back to their apartment for some more hanging out. Linda decided she had to teach our hosts the rules of beer pong and I got a great video of her over-the-top explanation. I got tired around 4:30 and snagged a bed before anyone else had even started thinking about sleeping. I found out the next morning that Linda had slept on the kitchen floor but I think that was mostly because she was being stubborn. SATURDAY (4/17)
We woke up late the next day with no real plan. We ate some of the snacks we’d bought for the bus ride for breakfast and finally headed to the zócalo around 3. Our first stop was the Palacio Nacional on one side of the square. Inside this government building are several murals by Diego Rivera that were really interesting. In the Guadalajara government building there are a bunch of murals by Orozco, but I prefer Rivera’s style much more.
The first mural is a big one with three panels. We stood there for a long time analyzing it just for fun. One side was like native cultures and religion and it wasn’t very interesting. The big panel in the middle was the Spanish conquest depicting the capturing and branding of natives and the conversion to Catholicism.
The third panel was our favorite and we took the longest time analyzing it. It was Rivera’s take on society and corruption but also what he thought should be done about it. Linda said that a lot of his work shows bad, unhappy things but that it always ends happy. This was pretty clear in that panel. My favorite part was at the very top there was a depiction of Carl Marx with a landscape behind him. On one side the land was all ruined and dead and on the other side (in the direction he was pointing) was a idyllic, colorful landscape with shining factories and big cities. We both thought it was pretty clear what he was trying to say there.
On the second floor of the building was another series of murals depicting Aztec culture and the Spanish conquest. We walked around to all of them and Linda told me what she had heard about each one. I missed a day of our culture class when the teacher talked about these murals so Linda told me what she could remember.
When we were finally done with that we were both absolutely starving. My stomach was literally eating itself. So we went back to Bar Gante since we knew it was nearby and I got a hamburger while she got fried chicken. Very Mexican. The waiter was the same as the day before and when he came out to us (we were even sitting at the same table) he said, “OK, two Victorias?” I guess we kind of stood out.
Another girl from CEPE, Sonja, has a friend who lives in Mexico City so she gave him our numbers so we could meet up. Tavio ended up meeting us at Bar Gante while we were eating our very late lunch. When he got there it had started to rain pretty hard so we went inside the restaurant and chatted while we finished up. We switched back and forth between English and Spanish, but mostly stuck to Spanish for that part of the day. His English was relatively good but he really wanted/needed to practice.
Once it stopped raining we went back to the zócalo and I took them to “Mexico en tus sentidos” again. This is the same thing that Dad and I did when we were in DF for one night during semana santa. I think they really liked it. Afterwards Tavio said he felt very proud to be Mexican and I said I imagined you had to after something like that. When we were walking out a camera man came up to me and Linda and asked us if we would do and interview for the exhibition’s website. He took us over to a spot and interviewed us in English, mostly asking what we thought of the exhibition and what we would tell our fellow Americans about Mexico. It’s very possible that our videos are up on the website. I think the URL is mexicoentussentidos.com.mx but I could be wrong.
When we got out of that it was absolutely pouring down rain. There were parts of the temporary building that the exhibition was in that were leaking. We were pretty hesitant to walk out into that mess but the security guys were getting really annoyed and forced us out.
There were two girls selling rain slicker trash bags for five pesos each, so we bought some and ran for cover. We wanted to go to the cathedral next but because of the rain we had to walk around the perimeter of the zócalo under the arches of the surrounding buildings.While we were looking around/taking cover in the cathedral we found out that Abdiel wouldn’t be able to make it back to the apartment until 9 or so, so we went with Tavio to a Starbucks nearby to drink something warm and wait out the rain some more. We were all soaked and freezing and none of us were used to this weather. Tavio is from La Manzanilla, a beach town near Barra de Navidad, and we were used to the sunny Guadalajara weather. We ended up sort of eating dinner at Starbucks and talking about our plans for the night. Linda was still trying to get a hold of Oscar and Tavio thought he might have plans but both ideas fell through. After much back and forth we decided to meet Tavio’s friend and go out to a bar for a little while before going back home for and early night. Linda and I were both tired from the night before and Abdiel was waiting for us back in his apartment.
Tavio’s friend, Roque, lives in a pretty nice neighborhood close to the Eugenia metro stop with a few other guys. He has an adorable black lab, Sparky, who is about a year and a half old and full of energy. We drove from his house to the Condeza neighborhood (think Greenwich Village in NYC) and went to a bar called the King’s Pub. It seemed to be a chain but it had a good atmosphere and, later, a good live band. I was pretty sleepy and boring until the live band started up with “Don’t Stop Believin’” and then I perked right up. The guys at the table next to us were practically drowning out the band with their singing along. We left the bar around midnight and made plans to meet up with them the next day for some sightseeing.
We had successfully gotten back to the apartment early-ish, but ended up staying up and talking to Abdiel until nearly 2am. So much for an early night.
SUNDAY (4/18)
That morning Linda and I decided to take Abdiel out for breakfast as a thank you. When we were walking to the breakfast place Abdiel told us that he had to go home that day and wouldn’t be able to come back for the night. This was a huge bomb to drop on us at this point because it meant we had to find somewhere else to stay for the rest of our trip. So we went back to his apartment very irritated and packed up. Linda got a hold of Tavio who told us we could stay at Roque’s for the night, so that was all set, but it was still annoying that we had to just get up and go. We still took Abdiel out for breakfast at Sanbourn’s (the Mexican Denny’s) but this time we had our suitcases with us.
After breakfast we went to Roque’s metro station and he and Tavio picked us up and took us out for more food. We weren’t hungry but they hadn’t eaten yet. The restaurant they took us to was right next to the bull fighting arena, but hopefully that’s not where the bulls go afterwards…After our very late brunch we went back to Roque’s house to pick up a few of his roommates and hit the town.
First we went to Chapultepec Park where the National Anthropology Museum is, along with a lot of other museums, the zoo, and acres and acres of green park grounds for the people of Mexico City.
We made a quick stop at the Anthropology Museum because we had been told that it was a must see. The people we were with didn’t seem terribly interested in the museum’s contents, so that made it a little difficult to enjoy. We zoomed through a few of the exhibits on indigenous cultures and spent a little bit longer in the Aztec exhibit. There were several really interesting pieces there including a giant sacrificial altar with the calendar on it and a replica of Montezuma’s headdress.After the museum we headed out for Xochimilco, one of the most recognizable parts of Mexico City in my opinion. It shows up in a lot of movies set in Mexico City, kind of like Central Park and NYC. Mexico City was originally the capital of the Aztec empire, Tenochtitlan, which was built as a group of islands in the middle of a lake. It must have been very impressive in its day.
Xochimilco is kind of the remnants of this series of islands and channels. Large groups of families and friends head to the colorful boats for an afternoon of food, drink, music, and relaxation. We rented a boat for about an hour and did a good circuit of the channels, but I have a feeling there was even more to see. Every island had something different on it from restaurants to plant nurseries to petting zoos. Out on the water was no different with tons of smaller boats selling food and drinks, even one selling bonsai trees. We ordered food from one of the boats and they hooked themselves up to our boat to prepare the food and serve it to us. I got enchiladas with mole and it was delicious. All the other food people got looked good too.One of the best parts about Xochimilco was the mariachi music floating all around us, literally.
There were smaller boats with full bands on them that went around getting hired by various groups out on the water. It was pretty common to see a mariachi group playing on their boat which was attached to the side of a bigger boat with people eating and drinking and dancing. Sometimes there would be a smaller mariachi group right on the boat with their temporary employers, the lead singer singing right in their faces. I don’t know if it gets more Mexican than Xochimilco.After that we just went back to Roque’s and hung out. His roommate, Luis, who also knows Sonja from La Manzanilla, took us out to a taco place nearby for dinner. Luis plays for a professional soccer team in Mexico City, but I don’t know enough about the soccer scene here to know if his team is any good. I’ve forgotten the name anyway. We ended up sleeping on a mattress on the floor in Roque’s room.
MONDAY (4/19)
We woke up late and didn’t end up leaving Roque’s house until nearly 1:30 absolutely starving. I grabbed a bag of chips before we got to the metro station and then when we were changing lines we both got something at Domino’s Pizza in the metro. Breakfast of champions for sure. We got to the bus station and immediately bought tickets for the next bus to Teotihuacan.
Teotihuacan is another Aztec city that is much older than Tenochtitlan and was deserted by the time the Spanish arrived. It’s a good thing too or else the Spanish would have destroyed it too.
Teotihuacan is also the home of the largest pyramid left in Mexico. It’s only about a 45 minute bus ride outside of Mexico City, but when you get there you feel like you are millions of miles away. Linda made the comment that only a few miles away was one of the largest, most densely populated cities in the world, but there we were in a place that was pretty much the opposite. I’m sure that Teotihuacan gets packed with tourists, but on this random Monday we were nearly the only people there. I hired a guide for us because I didn’t want to just be looking at piles of rocks without knowing what they were. He took us around on a lengthy tour and showed us a bunch of things we probably would have missed without him. There was a house that was way off the path that you could walk through. It was protected by a metal structure to keep the rain from damaging the original paint designs that are still on the walls. We definitely would have missed that without him. We also learned that the religious ball game that the Aztecs played varied greatly from the Mayan game because it is thought that they used sticks (something like intense croquet) instead of hitting the ball off their hips, knees, and elbows. To end the tour he took us to a corner of the plaza of the pyramid of the moon to demonstrate the odd acoustics. When he clapped, the sound bounced off the buildings and came back sounding like sort of animal. It’s hard to describe but, never fear, I took a video!
After our tour we climbed the two pyramids; first the smaller pyramid of the moon and then the largest pyramid in Mexico, the pyramid of the sun. The pyramid of the moon was blocked off so we could only go up half way, but that was good enough. It had the same weird acoustic phenomenon and we had some fun clapping out beats and dancing around. After catching our breath and taking lots of pictures we moved on to the mother of all pyramids.
The sun was starting to set so we knew we had to hurry to climb the more than 250 stairs to the top before they closed for the day. Climbing up wasn’t even really that bad because there were a several flat areas between the flights of stairs where we could stop and rest. When we finally got to the top, though, we were exhausted and it took us a few minutes to recharge. Right when we started to take pictures, a security man came over and told us it was closing time and we had to go back down. We asked him for a few extra minutes and then scurried around to the other side of the platform at the top where he couldn’t see us. We were so high up that you could see for miles and miles in every direction. The wind was blowing pretty strong and I just happened to have our rain slickers from Saturday still in my purse, so I got a really epic picture of Linda with her “cape” on at the top of the pyramid. We are the epitome of cool. After that the security guard saw us again and we actually had to get off the pyramid. We were the last ones to leave Teotihuacan that day.
When we finally got on the bus to go back to the city we were actually starving. Remember, we had only eaten a bag of chips and an ice cream cone (me) and a mini Domino’s pizza (Linda) more than five hours before. We had decided that since we didn’t have anywhere to stay that night that we would just get on a midnight bus back to Guadalajara and get there early Tuesday morning. Unfortunately, Linda had left a pair of shoes at Abdiel’s apartment, so before we could eat we decided to go all the way back there. We got there around 9 maybe and only stayed for a few minutes to drink a glass of water and tell him about what we did Sunday and that day. With her shoes in hand, Linda and I said good bye to him one more time and went to Sanbourn’s again for dinner.
This is where things got complicated. At dinner Linda finally got a hold of her friend and we made arrangements to meet up with him for maybe an hour. This was a problem because we still had to go back to Roque’s to pick up our suitcases before going to the bus station (all of which we would have to do on the metro) and the metro closes at midnight. So we rushed through dinner thanks to our excellent waitress and ran off to the metro to meet Oscar. It was really bad timing, but this guy was basically the reason Linda came to Mexico so they had to see each other at some point (and I really wanted to meet him). We figured out that with the amount of time we had left we would only get half an hour with him, and then he was late so it turned into fifteen minutes. We went into a nearby VIPS (the Mexican IHOP) and sat at a table while they caught up. After that we zoomed off to Roque’s house, grabbed our stuff, and said a quick good bye. At this point it was 11:20 and we still had to get to the bus station.
We were actually ahead of schedule by a little bit, so I started to relax bit. I relaxed a little too much because after we’d been on the train for a few stops I realized we were going in the wrong direction. We got off immediately and lugged our bags up and down the stairs to the other platform but the train didn’t come for another 15 mintues or so. At this point it was somewhere close to 11:50 and we still had to transfer lines to get to the bus station. The transfer between the line we were on and the one we needed was a very long tunnel that takes nearly 15 minutes to walk, so we got off the train and started running. We weren’t the only ones which made me feel a little better. At least the natives thought they had a chance if they ran too. We lucked out and a train did come.
It was about 12:15 when we finally got to the bus station. We bought tickets for the next bus which left at 12:30, hopped on, and finally got to rest. After that whole long day of pyramids, buses, metros, and stairs we spread ourselves out on the bus and fell asleep for the night. We arrived back in Guadalajara at 7:30 Tuesday morning which gave me enough time to get a taxi home and go to school. A strange end to a crazy trip.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
My Super Sweet Quinceñera
I went out and tried on cupcake dresses today! It was awesome!!! Notes:
- pretended I was shopping for a 21st birthday party dress
- went to centro historic to the dress street
- first shop: old man talked a lot, many suggestions for dress types and colors, asked when my party was, when I was returning to the US, if Cassandra was my mom, tried on a blue dress that I got pictures in, purple dress too no pics
- second shop: tried on a gold-ish mermaid dress and another poofy blue dress for fun, lots less questions from the women there
- third shop: tried on and AWESOME silver and black dress, attended to by a transvestite, she asked if Cassandra was my sister, Cassandra said I was staying with her as part of an exchange, seriously loved that dress. Here's my attempt at drawing it for your viewing pleasure:
- stopped at a café and had a little chocolate pastry and a coke
- stopped at another shop so Cassandra could try on full length dresses for an upcoming wedding, I picked out a really pretty dress for her but she opted for a nice red dress she had picked out, she might return to buy it later
- pretended I was shopping for a 21st birthday party dress
- went to centro historic to the dress street
- first shop: old man talked a lot, many suggestions for dress types and colors, asked when my party was, when I was returning to the US, if Cassandra was my mom, tried on a blue dress that I got pictures in, purple dress too no pics
- second shop: tried on a gold-ish mermaid dress and another poofy blue dress for fun, lots less questions from the women there
- third shop: tried on and AWESOME silver and black dress, attended to by a transvestite, she asked if Cassandra was my sister, Cassandra said I was staying with her as part of an exchange, seriously loved that dress. Here's my attempt at drawing it for your viewing pleasure:
- stopped at a café and had a little chocolate pastry and a coke
- stopped at another shop so Cassandra could try on full length dresses for an upcoming wedding, I picked out a really pretty dress for her but she opted for a nice red dress she had picked out, she might return to buy it later
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Parental Visit Chapter 3: Oaxaca and Mexico City
THURSDAY (4/1)
Dad and I got up early and left Zamas and Tulum for the airport and our flight to Oaxaca. Besides our short layover in Mexico City I thought the trip went very smoothly. That is, until we got to baggage claim.
They lost my bag somewhere along the way so all I had was what I had with me. Luckily, I had my money, camera, book, iPod, and such with me, but I was still missing a lot. This was all made worse by the fact that when I got out of the taxi at our hotel I heard my pants rip a little like they’d caught on something and the rip expanded to an embarrassing size later when we were about to leave our room and explore the city more. My only pair of pants as far as I knew was no more. Oh, and the room Dad booked was supposed to have double beds but they gave us a room with two twin beds and the hotel was full. After much negotiating they decided to give us free breakfast and lower the price, but still.
So we left the hotel (me with Dad’s sweater tied around my waist) in search of a clothing store, any clothing store. I was on a mission. I plowed right into the nearest store and quickly came up with a few options. The girl seemed surprised when I came out of the dressing room, bought the dress, and left with it on, but she never saw the rip in my pants.
After I was properly clothed again Dad and I went for a stroll through the center of Oaxaca, which is very charming and immediately changed my mood. We stopped at a street market and looked around at all the colorfully embroidered blouses that seemed to be everywhere. From there we went straight for the nearest church after that, figuring we would be able to find interesting things around it. We lucked out with the church.
The Church of San Domingo was easily the most beautiful church in Oaxaca, and a close second to the Church of Guadalupe in Morelia for most beautiful in Mexico.
It had a similar aesthetic to the church in Morelia with it’s over the top decorations, but the color pallet was more gold, gray, and white. The ceiling right as you walk in was decked out with figures that popped out for a 3D effect, all situated around tree branches which formed a kind of family tree. I’m not sure exactly what it’s demonstrating but it is certainly a show stopper.
Outside the church we stopped at a tourist kiosk and picked up a more detailed map of the city complete with a list of sights and several prepared walking tours. With the help of our new map we made our way down the absolutely packed main tourist street (as it had been described to us) towards the main square, or zócalo. The sun was starting to go down so everyone was either on their way to or from the zócalo which filled this pedestrian-only street.
I had heard from several sources (including my guidebook) that the zócalo in Oaxaca is the epitome of Oaxacan culture. It certainly seemed that way. I think everyone in the city of Oaxaca was in that square, people sitting on benches, enjoying food and drink in the surrounding restaurants, families watching the clowns perform, kids running through the crowds and buying sweets from vendors. It was crazy. The amazing thing was that no matter what time of day we went to the zócalo, and we went a lot, there were always tons of people there.
We walked around the whole square and checked out all the restaurants situated around it, under the arches of the surrounding buildings. We decided on a place and enjoyed a very good meal. I got a “Mexican Pizza” which had chorizo, beans, and jalapenos on it because, when would I get the chance to eat another “Mexican Pizza”? Dad got the most delicious mole I’ve ever tasted with chicken and rice. Among Mexicans, Oaxaca is well known for its cooking, and its mole in particular, so this was a real treat.
When we got back to the hotel after dinner I started watching a Mexican movie called Amar te Duele on TV. What initially drew me to it was that it featured young people and a lot of Spanish slang but then I realized that it was also about the social structure in Mexico. In the movie two young people fall in love in Mexico City but they are separated by social status. She’s really rich and basically the definition of “fresa” while he is poor and falls squarely under the “naco” category (slang words for high and low class). I didn’t see the end of it because I got tired, but I plan on looking it up. Also, the airport came and dropped off my luggage at the hotel!! The day started out bad but it ended well.
FRIDAY (4/2)
Since we didn’t really know what there was to do in Oaxaca we started off our only full day in the city with one of the walking tours outlined in the tourist map we got the night before. I decided we should follow the orange route because it seemed like there was a good variety of stuff between museums, churches, and markets. Each stop on the map had a little blurb about it in Spanish so I attempted translating each one for Dad as we went around the historical center. We saw a lot of cool things including the old aqueduct which now has houses built right up against it.
I liked how they used the arches of the aqueduct as overhangs with their front doors peaking out like hobbit houses. We also saw the house Benito Juarez lived in when he was a young man living with a well to do Oaxacan family. Juarez is the most important figure in Mexican history and helped form the country into a much more modern state. He is the only person to have a Mexican national holiday dedicated to him. That’s how important he is. The house is set up with furniture from a typical 19th century Mexican household and information about Juarez’s accomplishments. Also on the tour was the church of San Domingo which we happily entered again and took more pictures! One fun stop was the Casa de las Artisenias which was a collection of stores with some really beautiful pieces in them. 
There was another textile store with more place mats and table runners that I know Mom would have gone crazy in. A not so exciting stop was at the stamp museum. We popped our heads in and sat in the shade of the courtyard there for a while but we weren’t really itching to look around.
After we had completed the interesting parts of the tour we went back to the zócalo for lunch (different restaurant of course) and then back to our hotel for a nice siesta. I did some research in my guidebook and was really kicking myself for not looking sooner. My guidebook talked about two sites for ruins outside the city that sounded really interesting but we only had another half day before we were going to leave. One of the sites is called Monte Albán and it seemed like it was used by many different groups over the years. It started out as a Zapotec religious center and city and changed hands several times, being abandoned and then repopulated, over hundreds of years. One of the greatest discoveries of Mesoamerican artifacts was made at Monte Albán in Tomb 7 in the 1930s. Over 500 pieces of gold, silver, turquoise, etc were found in the tomb of one ancient ruler. Unfortunately, we weren’t going to have time to go.
We set out for another stroll after having looked up a restaurant for us to eat dinner at and deciding on Los Pacos where my guidebook said they had a wide variety of tasty moles. We ended up in the zócalo again among all the people gathered there as the sun went down. We went into one restaurant situated on a balcony overlooking the square for drinks and snacks. I had started getting sick so I drank many cups of tea while Dad drank wine and we both ate bread with yummy garlic and herb butter and manchega(?) cheese. We sat there for a long time, drinking and munching, and when we finally decided to head out for the other restaurant it was nearly nine.
Los Pacos was a small place closer to San Domingo that had a good number of people in it. It’s true, they did have good mole. They also had some very peculiar light fixtures that kind of looked like the lamps had snot running out of them. Dad can be my witness to this fact, plus we took pictures because they were so weird.
SATURDAY (4/3)
We had a flight to Mexico City at 4pm which still gave us a good chunk of the day for sight-seeing before leaving. Having looked in my guidebook the day before, I now knew that there was a museum in the former convent of San Domingo right next to our favorite church.
The Cultural Museum of Oaxaca actually turned out to be a great find, and the perfect thing to do in the time we had left.
First of all, they had audio tours!! Anyone who has traveled with me recently knows I love a good audio tour. Ever since Paris spoiled me silly with all its amazing audio tours I just can’t get enough. Then, the building was beautiful. My guidebook said that the Mexican government had put a lot of money into restoring it and it showed. And of course, the museum itself had a lot of great artifacts.
The whole museum was dedicated to telling the story of human settlement in the state of Oaxaca from the earliest times through independence. The star of all the exhibits was the treasure from Tomb 7 which varied greatly in materials and objects. Right when you walked in to the Tomb 7 room there were some intricately detailed pieces of bone or jade or something.
No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get a good enough picture to do the detail justice. Then right next to that was a human skull partially covered in turquoise mosaics. It made a very cool effect but was still a little creepy. Our audio guide said that it was possibly used as a cup in religious ceremonies.
Another interesting room in the museum was dedicated to the “conquering of souls,” as the religious conversion of natives by the Spanish is often called. It was filled with religious figures that all had stories. The audio tour said that the Dominican church got a good hold on southern Mexico early on and seemed to randomly assign patron saints to different areas based on the preferences of the missionaries. It also pointed out the correlation between the holy days of native cultures and those of the assigned patron saints, how they always seem to fall around the same time.
After making it through most of the museum we headed back to the hotel with some serious foot pains and left for the airport. This trip went much more smoothly, and we got to our hotel (Hotel Catedral) around six.
We didn’t want to waste any time so we quickly got settled in our room, I looked up a restaurant for dinner later, and we headed out for the zócalo which was only a few blocks away. The zócalo in Mexico City is absolutely giant. I think it’s one of the biggest plazas in the world. I’ve seen videos of political rallies held there with millions of people in attendance. Millions!
On one side of the square is the Cathedral which is also giant and very dark and gothic looking, not very pretty on the inside though. Another side is taken up by the government palace where, on Mexican independence day (Sept 16), the president of Mexico comes out on the balcony and yells to the crowd,
“Viva Mexico!”
And they yell back “Viva!!”
“Viva Hidalgo!”
“Viva!!”
“Viva la revolución!”
“Viva!!”
There were a lot of things going on in the zócalo that night. There was a big religious concert going on called the Marcha de Gloria, and there were tons of people waving flags and singing along. There was also a very large, temporary structure with the title “Mexico en tus sentidos” which roughly translates to “Mexico in your consciousness,” I think. Dad and I wandered in there and it was pretty cool. It was all these images of different parts of Mexico and different aspects of Mexican culture. The pictures were all beautiful. At the end of the exhibit they showed a video with more pretty images of Mexico with a very intense soundtrack. I think it only had one dynamic: epically loud. It was still very entertaining and a surprise treat in our visit to the zócalo.
When we got out of that it was time for dinner, so we walked to the restaurant I had picked out that was only a few blocks away, Café Taburca. The restaurant had been around since 1912 and my guidebook said it’s one of the most famous restaurants in Mexico City. There was a lot of stained glass and colorfully painted archways. While we were there, a mariachi-type group started playing for the guests. When we walked out we saw that they were standing around in a big circle, spread out among all the tables. The food was yummy too. I got garlic soup and enchiladas, and the chicken in the enchiladas wasn’t dry or anything.
Once we were done eating we decided it would be best to just go back to the hotel and get some rest. Dad’s flight was at like 5am the next morning and we found out that Mexico’s start of daylight savings time was Sunday, so we were already losing an hour of sleep. There wasn’t much on TV so I ended up watching American Idol. I don’t know if it was an old one or not because I haven’t watched it since season two, but it was entertaining, and it was in English.
SUNDAY (4/4)
Dad woke me up before he left (at 3am) and I said good bye, or mumbled it. I was pretty tired. My flight wasn’t until later, so I went right back to sleep and woke up with my wakeup call from the hotel that Dad had set up for me. We weren’t sure about the time change so we just let them deal with it.
I got out of the hotel on time and on my flight just fine. My journey back to Guadalajara went very smoothly.
Thank you Mom and Dad for a wonderful and restful week!! I hope you are adjusting to life back in the US of A. I’ll see you soon!
Dad and I got up early and left Zamas and Tulum for the airport and our flight to Oaxaca. Besides our short layover in Mexico City I thought the trip went very smoothly. That is, until we got to baggage claim.
They lost my bag somewhere along the way so all I had was what I had with me. Luckily, I had my money, camera, book, iPod, and such with me, but I was still missing a lot. This was all made worse by the fact that when I got out of the taxi at our hotel I heard my pants rip a little like they’d caught on something and the rip expanded to an embarrassing size later when we were about to leave our room and explore the city more. My only pair of pants as far as I knew was no more. Oh, and the room Dad booked was supposed to have double beds but they gave us a room with two twin beds and the hotel was full. After much negotiating they decided to give us free breakfast and lower the price, but still.
So we left the hotel (me with Dad’s sweater tied around my waist) in search of a clothing store, any clothing store. I was on a mission. I plowed right into the nearest store and quickly came up with a few options. The girl seemed surprised when I came out of the dressing room, bought the dress, and left with it on, but she never saw the rip in my pants.
After I was properly clothed again Dad and I went for a stroll through the center of Oaxaca, which is very charming and immediately changed my mood. We stopped at a street market and looked around at all the colorfully embroidered blouses that seemed to be everywhere. From there we went straight for the nearest church after that, figuring we would be able to find interesting things around it. We lucked out with the church.
The Church of San Domingo was easily the most beautiful church in Oaxaca, and a close second to the Church of Guadalupe in Morelia for most beautiful in Mexico.
It had a similar aesthetic to the church in Morelia with it’s over the top decorations, but the color pallet was more gold, gray, and white. The ceiling right as you walk in was decked out with figures that popped out for a 3D effect, all situated around tree branches which formed a kind of family tree. I’m not sure exactly what it’s demonstrating but it is certainly a show stopper.
Outside the church we stopped at a tourist kiosk and picked up a more detailed map of the city complete with a list of sights and several prepared walking tours. With the help of our new map we made our way down the absolutely packed main tourist street (as it had been described to us) towards the main square, or zócalo. The sun was starting to go down so everyone was either on their way to or from the zócalo which filled this pedestrian-only street.
I had heard from several sources (including my guidebook) that the zócalo in Oaxaca is the epitome of Oaxacan culture. It certainly seemed that way. I think everyone in the city of Oaxaca was in that square, people sitting on benches, enjoying food and drink in the surrounding restaurants, families watching the clowns perform, kids running through the crowds and buying sweets from vendors. It was crazy. The amazing thing was that no matter what time of day we went to the zócalo, and we went a lot, there were always tons of people there.
We walked around the whole square and checked out all the restaurants situated around it, under the arches of the surrounding buildings. We decided on a place and enjoyed a very good meal. I got a “Mexican Pizza” which had chorizo, beans, and jalapenos on it because, when would I get the chance to eat another “Mexican Pizza”? Dad got the most delicious mole I’ve ever tasted with chicken and rice. Among Mexicans, Oaxaca is well known for its cooking, and its mole in particular, so this was a real treat.
When we got back to the hotel after dinner I started watching a Mexican movie called Amar te Duele on TV. What initially drew me to it was that it featured young people and a lot of Spanish slang but then I realized that it was also about the social structure in Mexico. In the movie two young people fall in love in Mexico City but they are separated by social status. She’s really rich and basically the definition of “fresa” while he is poor and falls squarely under the “naco” category (slang words for high and low class). I didn’t see the end of it because I got tired, but I plan on looking it up. Also, the airport came and dropped off my luggage at the hotel!! The day started out bad but it ended well.
FRIDAY (4/2)
Since we didn’t really know what there was to do in Oaxaca we started off our only full day in the city with one of the walking tours outlined in the tourist map we got the night before. I decided we should follow the orange route because it seemed like there was a good variety of stuff between museums, churches, and markets. Each stop on the map had a little blurb about it in Spanish so I attempted translating each one for Dad as we went around the historical center. We saw a lot of cool things including the old aqueduct which now has houses built right up against it.
I liked how they used the arches of the aqueduct as overhangs with their front doors peaking out like hobbit houses. We also saw the house Benito Juarez lived in when he was a young man living with a well to do Oaxacan family. Juarez is the most important figure in Mexican history and helped form the country into a much more modern state. He is the only person to have a Mexican national holiday dedicated to him. That’s how important he is. The house is set up with furniture from a typical 19th century Mexican household and information about Juarez’s accomplishments. Also on the tour was the church of San Domingo which we happily entered again and took more pictures! One fun stop was the Casa de las Artisenias which was a collection of stores with some really beautiful pieces in them. 
There was another textile store with more place mats and table runners that I know Mom would have gone crazy in. A not so exciting stop was at the stamp museum. We popped our heads in and sat in the shade of the courtyard there for a while but we weren’t really itching to look around.After we had completed the interesting parts of the tour we went back to the zócalo for lunch (different restaurant of course) and then back to our hotel for a nice siesta. I did some research in my guidebook and was really kicking myself for not looking sooner. My guidebook talked about two sites for ruins outside the city that sounded really interesting but we only had another half day before we were going to leave. One of the sites is called Monte Albán and it seemed like it was used by many different groups over the years. It started out as a Zapotec religious center and city and changed hands several times, being abandoned and then repopulated, over hundreds of years. One of the greatest discoveries of Mesoamerican artifacts was made at Monte Albán in Tomb 7 in the 1930s. Over 500 pieces of gold, silver, turquoise, etc were found in the tomb of one ancient ruler. Unfortunately, we weren’t going to have time to go.
We set out for another stroll after having looked up a restaurant for us to eat dinner at and deciding on Los Pacos where my guidebook said they had a wide variety of tasty moles. We ended up in the zócalo again among all the people gathered there as the sun went down. We went into one restaurant situated on a balcony overlooking the square for drinks and snacks. I had started getting sick so I drank many cups of tea while Dad drank wine and we both ate bread with yummy garlic and herb butter and manchega(?) cheese. We sat there for a long time, drinking and munching, and when we finally decided to head out for the other restaurant it was nearly nine.
Los Pacos was a small place closer to San Domingo that had a good number of people in it. It’s true, they did have good mole. They also had some very peculiar light fixtures that kind of looked like the lamps had snot running out of them. Dad can be my witness to this fact, plus we took pictures because they were so weird.
SATURDAY (4/3)
We had a flight to Mexico City at 4pm which still gave us a good chunk of the day for sight-seeing before leaving. Having looked in my guidebook the day before, I now knew that there was a museum in the former convent of San Domingo right next to our favorite church.
The Cultural Museum of Oaxaca actually turned out to be a great find, and the perfect thing to do in the time we had left.
First of all, they had audio tours!! Anyone who has traveled with me recently knows I love a good audio tour. Ever since Paris spoiled me silly with all its amazing audio tours I just can’t get enough. Then, the building was beautiful. My guidebook said that the Mexican government had put a lot of money into restoring it and it showed. And of course, the museum itself had a lot of great artifacts.The whole museum was dedicated to telling the story of human settlement in the state of Oaxaca from the earliest times through independence. The star of all the exhibits was the treasure from Tomb 7 which varied greatly in materials and objects. Right when you walked in to the Tomb 7 room there were some intricately detailed pieces of bone or jade or something.
No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get a good enough picture to do the detail justice. Then right next to that was a human skull partially covered in turquoise mosaics. It made a very cool effect but was still a little creepy. Our audio guide said that it was possibly used as a cup in religious ceremonies. Another interesting room in the museum was dedicated to the “conquering of souls,” as the religious conversion of natives by the Spanish is often called. It was filled with religious figures that all had stories. The audio tour said that the Dominican church got a good hold on southern Mexico early on and seemed to randomly assign patron saints to different areas based on the preferences of the missionaries. It also pointed out the correlation between the holy days of native cultures and those of the assigned patron saints, how they always seem to fall around the same time.
After making it through most of the museum we headed back to the hotel with some serious foot pains and left for the airport. This trip went much more smoothly, and we got to our hotel (Hotel Catedral) around six.
We didn’t want to waste any time so we quickly got settled in our room, I looked up a restaurant for dinner later, and we headed out for the zócalo which was only a few blocks away. The zócalo in Mexico City is absolutely giant. I think it’s one of the biggest plazas in the world. I’ve seen videos of political rallies held there with millions of people in attendance. Millions!
On one side of the square is the Cathedral which is also giant and very dark and gothic looking, not very pretty on the inside though. Another side is taken up by the government palace where, on Mexican independence day (Sept 16), the president of Mexico comes out on the balcony and yells to the crowd, “Viva Mexico!”
And they yell back “Viva!!”
“Viva Hidalgo!”
“Viva!!”
“Viva la revolución!”
“Viva!!”
There were a lot of things going on in the zócalo that night. There was a big religious concert going on called the Marcha de Gloria, and there were tons of people waving flags and singing along. There was also a very large, temporary structure with the title “Mexico en tus sentidos” which roughly translates to “Mexico in your consciousness,” I think. Dad and I wandered in there and it was pretty cool. It was all these images of different parts of Mexico and different aspects of Mexican culture. The pictures were all beautiful. At the end of the exhibit they showed a video with more pretty images of Mexico with a very intense soundtrack. I think it only had one dynamic: epically loud. It was still very entertaining and a surprise treat in our visit to the zócalo.
When we got out of that it was time for dinner, so we walked to the restaurant I had picked out that was only a few blocks away, Café Taburca. The restaurant had been around since 1912 and my guidebook said it’s one of the most famous restaurants in Mexico City. There was a lot of stained glass and colorfully painted archways. While we were there, a mariachi-type group started playing for the guests. When we walked out we saw that they were standing around in a big circle, spread out among all the tables. The food was yummy too. I got garlic soup and enchiladas, and the chicken in the enchiladas wasn’t dry or anything.
Once we were done eating we decided it would be best to just go back to the hotel and get some rest. Dad’s flight was at like 5am the next morning and we found out that Mexico’s start of daylight savings time was Sunday, so we were already losing an hour of sleep. There wasn’t much on TV so I ended up watching American Idol. I don’t know if it was an old one or not because I haven’t watched it since season two, but it was entertaining, and it was in English.
SUNDAY (4/4)
Dad woke me up before he left (at 3am) and I said good bye, or mumbled it. I was pretty tired. My flight wasn’t until later, so I went right back to sleep and woke up with my wakeup call from the hotel that Dad had set up for me. We weren’t sure about the time change so we just let them deal with it.
I got out of the hotel on time and on my flight just fine. My journey back to Guadalajara went very smoothly.
Thank you Mom and Dad for a wonderful and restful week!! I hope you are adjusting to life back in the US of A. I’ll see you soon!
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Parental Visit Chapter 2: Tulum
I just got back from spring break with Mom and Dad. There’s a lot to tell so this might take a while…
SUNDAY (3/28)
We spent most of Sunday traveling. Our flight out of GDL was in the late morning and we had a connection in Puebla, so we didn’t get to the Cancun airport until 4 or so. Mom had rented a car so we all hopped in and drove to our hotel in Tulum. The drive was about an hour and a half long but, never fear, I made mix CDs for the ride!
We got to Zamas (our hotel) at sunset and decided to just take it easy for the rest of the day (not that there was really anything to do anyway).
We got a little cabin only a few steps from the beach. The front porch had colorful chairs and hammocks, and the beds (which came with their own ceiling fans) were beautiful and soft and white and surrounded by mosquito netting. The netting made getting in and out of bed interesting but it also added to the whole experience. There were no outlets and only a few lights in the room, so we were really away from it all.
We ate at the restaurant at Zamas that night since part of taking it easy for the rest of the day was not going in search of food. It was actually a really good meal and we were all stuffed by the end. A few highlights of the meal were my Piña Colada (which was not trying to hide the fact that it had rum in it) and my papas bravas (a dish I ate at every meal when I went to Barcelona and they had it at Zamas!).
After dinner we had our first of many low-tech nights, sitting out on our porch in chairs and hammocks, and playing word games to pass the time. Dad started a game of GHOST (which he won after I threw him a few difficult letters) while Mom read and laughed at my smack talking (“You have two ways you can lose this round, which one will you choose?”).
MONDAY (3/29)
We decided on another lazy day so I woke up late and took my time getting ready. Mom and Dad were already up and had read their email in the main office since that’s the only place with outlets. We ate brunch at the hotel and then drove over to Xel-Ha to see the Tulum ruins. Xel-Ha is a very interesting place that mixes ruins with water park and seems to be spread out along a good stretch of the Tulum shoreline.
The Tulum ruins are right on the shore. Two of the main buildings are situated up on the cliffs overlooking the beach (which is open to tourists) and the blue, blue ocean.
I’m still a little fuzzy on the history of the place but I’m pretty sure it was a late Mayan settlement which acted as a hub for the trade route that ran from Honduras up the coast of Mexico. They weren’t the best sailors and didn’t have very sophisticated ships, so the trade route stayed close to shore in the shallow water. The compound is walled in and it is thought that only the rich, important people actually lived inside the walls, while the rest lived outside and commuted in each day. Now, the ruins are the perfect thing to see on a low key day and provide plenty of opportunities for gorgeous pictures. 
There were a bunch of iguanas crawling around the ruins and posing very nicely for pictures, too. When we finished touring the ruins we stopped at a Xel-Ha restaurant and had some absolutely amazing limeade. Seriously, this stuff was sent from above. I might have just been really thirsty, though…
We got back to Zamas in the early afternoon and spent the rest of the day napping, laying on the beach, drinking beer, and reading. I got Mom and Dad to try Victoria, my favorite Mexican beer. We sat there until it started getting dark and the wind started picking up and then we went in search of food. This time we ate at a neighboring hotel with an Italian restaurant. The food could have been better but the wine was delicious and the reflection of the full moon on the water just outside made up for a lot of it.
We ended the night with a few rounds of Scrabble, which Dad and I found in the Zamas office/restaurant area. We played one full game and then, in true Carey fashion, decided to sort through the letters and figure out what we needed to make a full Scrabble set. We played our second game with all the right letters. It didn’t help my chances at all (who could hope to win against those two?) and Mom and Dad each won a game.
TUESDAY (3/30)
I woke up pretty early on Tuesday because I was excited. We made plans to go to the Xel-Ha water park that day and I wanted to get started early. We went straight to Xel-Ha before breakfast so we could be sure to get the full day experience. I’m still not sure if the place is real or not, but it was beautiful.
The Xel-Ha water park was situated around a tiny cove where you could go snorkeling or scuba diving and offered a number of other fun water activities like inner tubing down a lazy river, cliff jumping, and swimming with dolphins and manatees. There were also guys walking around taking pictures of people with parrots and giant iguanas (something I wish I’d done, looking back on it). The ticket inside included all meals and most of the water activities.
We started by eating breakfast at a giant buffet in the main restaurant. There were so many delicious things and I was surrounded by such a beautiful atmosphere that I felt like I was on the island of temptation from Pinocchio and any second we would all turn into donkeys.
After breakfast we picked up our snorkel gear and went in search of some tropical fish. Sadly, the water quality was very weird and the range of visibility was poor, but we saw lots of fish, however foggy they looked to me. It probably didn’t help that there were hundreds of other people snorkeling around us. When we got tired of looking at foggy fish we walked around the cove to a spot where we could rent bikes to get to the top of the lazy river. It was a fun change of pace to ride on the path through woods.
The lazy river was anything but, but it was still fun. The current was so slow at times that I took my flippers off my feet and put them on my hands just so I could catch up to Mom and Dad and avoid running into other people. Along the river there were a bunch of places to get off and do things like cliff jumping or this very entertaining rope bridge, but we were content to just float on by and watch other people. The rope bridge was one rope on the bottom, a few feet off the water, and one above to hold on to and people had to try and cross it without falling off. It was harder than it sounds because it kept flopping back and forth, sending a few people down into the water with every violent jerk. It was endlessly entertaining to watch as we floated along in our inner tubes. The real work came at the end of the river when it dumped back out into the cove and the current completely disappeared. We had to paddle through some rocks, against the wind, to a little dock. This made us work up an appetite!
After lunch we moseyed over to the manatee enclosure and watched a group of kids have a manatee experience. There were three manatees but they really only made one of them do tricks. Manatees are very bulky, slow animals (so slow they had algae growing on them) so their tricks weren’t anything like what they have dolphins do. The manatees didn’t seem terribly obedient either, which pleased Mom because she hated to think that the only way manatees could be saved from extinction was for them to do stupid tricks for people. We left while the kids were posing for pictures, getting kisses from the manatees.
Believe it or not, by this time we had been at the park for more than five hours and we were tired. We took our time leaving, stopping to watch a bunch of people having a dolphin experience before leaving the park. We saw the dolphins do the “foot push” maneuver to all the people in one group which proved to be very entertaining. The “foot push” is where two dolphins come up behind the waiting person and push on their feet with their noses while swimming very fast. They get going fast enough that the people get into a standing position, but the speed can also be dangerous for women wearing two piece bathing suits, like the first woman we saw.
We got back to Zamas around sunset again and just lazed around until we got hungry. Mom took a look at my guidebook for restaurant ideas and decided to try and find one suggested restaurant called Copal. This turned out to be easier said than done since my guidebook said it was in the wrong place, but we ended up eating at a really good Thai restaurant called Mezzanine instead. Definitely a fortunate accident.
**Side note: I just gave in and followed the yummy smells to my host family’s courtyard downstairs where they are having an Easter party. I had some really good Mexican barbecue which consisted of thin steak, quesadillas, and lots of salsas.
WEDNESDAY (3/31)
Mom got a taxi to the airport in the morning so Dad and I said good bye to her at Zamas. Afterwards we ate breakfast and planned the rest of our day. It was to be an ambitious venture into the sights of Tulum which were slightly off the beaten path. We decided to start with the ruins at Cobá and then go to Dos Ojos, a cenote that one of the Zamas people recommended to Dad. For those of you who don’t know, the Yucatan peninsula is all limestone which is a very weak stone. There are a bunch of spots all over the Yucatan where surface water has worn away the rock to make giant, water filled caves that open directly up towards the sky. These caves are called cenotes and a bunch of them are open to divers and snorkelers.
Anyway, we started by going to Cobá, a former Mayan city from the classic period about a 45 minute drive from our hotel. When I say city I mean city. They believe that Cobá, which reached its peak around AD 800, had somewhere around 55,000 people living in it.
The cool thing about Cobá is that most of the 6,000 structures have yet to be uncovered and they have left the trees that have grown in over the centuries to provide tourists with shade. Another cool thing is that the area is so big that they rent out bikes or offer tricycle taxis to get from one building cluster to the next.
Dad and I started by getting a 45 minutes tour around the first group of buildings. These buildings included a big temple and the main court for the famous ball game of the Mesoamerican cultures. This was not a game played for fun, as our guide said, but was one of the religious ceremonies of most ancient cultures in Mesoamerica. Players used their knees, hips, elbows, and heads to get a rubber ball through either of two hoops mounted at the top of the walls of the court.
Cultures differed in the specifics of the game and the court but they all agreed on one thing: the winner would be sacrificed to the gods. Our guide said that in the Mayan version of the game, players weren’t on teams pitted against each other, but each person got their turn to score and the others helped out. In a different spot in Cobá there was also a practice court where they would sacrifice a jaguar after every practice game.
After the tour we rented bikes and cruised around the rest of the city, stopping at different clusters of ruins and looking around. We went down one really long stretch of road that ended in an area full of big stones with engravings on them. Dad decided this was the hall of fame since there were so many engravings (which are usually about people) so densely populating this one area. Our best and final stop, though, was at the big temple to the bee god.
This temple, the largest in the Yucatan peninsula by the way, is something like 120 feet tall and pretty beautifully intact. Surprisingly, tourists are allowed to climb this temple so we had to take the opportunity and go all the way to the top. After much huffing and puffing up the over sized stairs, avoiding looking down the whole way, we made it to the top. WOW! It was so high! I got vertigo just standing at the edge and looking down but I got over it eventually. We stayed up there and took pictures and caught our breath for a few minutes and then headed back down. It was pretty steep and I’m slightly afraid of heights so I scooted down on my butt the whole way.
After taking our time with lunch we headed out for Dos Ojos. I was skeptical about the whole cenote thing and whether we would have time to do both the ruins and the cenote in one day, but we went to check it out anyway. We got there around 4:30 and they had closed which was a shame because it looked really cool. There was a giant poster out front with a map of the caves and all the different chambers (one with bats in it), but sadly it was closed as I’ve already said. Just something to put on the list for next time I go to the Cancun area!
On our drive back from Dos Ojos to Zamas we happened to see the restaurant Mom had been looking for the night before and decided to go there for dinner later. It turned out to only be about a ten minute walk from Zamas, but the sign was kind of hidden behind some plants and we hadn’t been looking for it in that area anyway. Silly guidebook giving us the wrong location!
SUNDAY (3/28)
We spent most of Sunday traveling. Our flight out of GDL was in the late morning and we had a connection in Puebla, so we didn’t get to the Cancun airport until 4 or so. Mom had rented a car so we all hopped in and drove to our hotel in Tulum. The drive was about an hour and a half long but, never fear, I made mix CDs for the ride!
We got to Zamas (our hotel) at sunset and decided to just take it easy for the rest of the day (not that there was really anything to do anyway).
We got a little cabin only a few steps from the beach. The front porch had colorful chairs and hammocks, and the beds (which came with their own ceiling fans) were beautiful and soft and white and surrounded by mosquito netting. The netting made getting in and out of bed interesting but it also added to the whole experience. There were no outlets and only a few lights in the room, so we were really away from it all.We ate at the restaurant at Zamas that night since part of taking it easy for the rest of the day was not going in search of food. It was actually a really good meal and we were all stuffed by the end. A few highlights of the meal were my Piña Colada (which was not trying to hide the fact that it had rum in it) and my papas bravas (a dish I ate at every meal when I went to Barcelona and they had it at Zamas!).
After dinner we had our first of many low-tech nights, sitting out on our porch in chairs and hammocks, and playing word games to pass the time. Dad started a game of GHOST (which he won after I threw him a few difficult letters) while Mom read and laughed at my smack talking (“You have two ways you can lose this round, which one will you choose?”).
MONDAY (3/29)
We decided on another lazy day so I woke up late and took my time getting ready. Mom and Dad were already up and had read their email in the main office since that’s the only place with outlets. We ate brunch at the hotel and then drove over to Xel-Ha to see the Tulum ruins. Xel-Ha is a very interesting place that mixes ruins with water park and seems to be spread out along a good stretch of the Tulum shoreline.
The Tulum ruins are right on the shore. Two of the main buildings are situated up on the cliffs overlooking the beach (which is open to tourists) and the blue, blue ocean.
I’m still a little fuzzy on the history of the place but I’m pretty sure it was a late Mayan settlement which acted as a hub for the trade route that ran from Honduras up the coast of Mexico. They weren’t the best sailors and didn’t have very sophisticated ships, so the trade route stayed close to shore in the shallow water. The compound is walled in and it is thought that only the rich, important people actually lived inside the walls, while the rest lived outside and commuted in each day. Now, the ruins are the perfect thing to see on a low key day and provide plenty of opportunities for gorgeous pictures. 
There were a bunch of iguanas crawling around the ruins and posing very nicely for pictures, too. When we finished touring the ruins we stopped at a Xel-Ha restaurant and had some absolutely amazing limeade. Seriously, this stuff was sent from above. I might have just been really thirsty, though…We got back to Zamas in the early afternoon and spent the rest of the day napping, laying on the beach, drinking beer, and reading. I got Mom and Dad to try Victoria, my favorite Mexican beer. We sat there until it started getting dark and the wind started picking up and then we went in search of food. This time we ate at a neighboring hotel with an Italian restaurant. The food could have been better but the wine was delicious and the reflection of the full moon on the water just outside made up for a lot of it.
We ended the night with a few rounds of Scrabble, which Dad and I found in the Zamas office/restaurant area. We played one full game and then, in true Carey fashion, decided to sort through the letters and figure out what we needed to make a full Scrabble set. We played our second game with all the right letters. It didn’t help my chances at all (who could hope to win against those two?) and Mom and Dad each won a game.
TUESDAY (3/30)
I woke up pretty early on Tuesday because I was excited. We made plans to go to the Xel-Ha water park that day and I wanted to get started early. We went straight to Xel-Ha before breakfast so we could be sure to get the full day experience. I’m still not sure if the place is real or not, but it was beautiful.
The Xel-Ha water park was situated around a tiny cove where you could go snorkeling or scuba diving and offered a number of other fun water activities like inner tubing down a lazy river, cliff jumping, and swimming with dolphins and manatees. There were also guys walking around taking pictures of people with parrots and giant iguanas (something I wish I’d done, looking back on it). The ticket inside included all meals and most of the water activities.
We started by eating breakfast at a giant buffet in the main restaurant. There were so many delicious things and I was surrounded by such a beautiful atmosphere that I felt like I was on the island of temptation from Pinocchio and any second we would all turn into donkeys.
After breakfast we picked up our snorkel gear and went in search of some tropical fish. Sadly, the water quality was very weird and the range of visibility was poor, but we saw lots of fish, however foggy they looked to me. It probably didn’t help that there were hundreds of other people snorkeling around us. When we got tired of looking at foggy fish we walked around the cove to a spot where we could rent bikes to get to the top of the lazy river. It was a fun change of pace to ride on the path through woods.
The lazy river was anything but, but it was still fun. The current was so slow at times that I took my flippers off my feet and put them on my hands just so I could catch up to Mom and Dad and avoid running into other people. Along the river there were a bunch of places to get off and do things like cliff jumping or this very entertaining rope bridge, but we were content to just float on by and watch other people. The rope bridge was one rope on the bottom, a few feet off the water, and one above to hold on to and people had to try and cross it without falling off. It was harder than it sounds because it kept flopping back and forth, sending a few people down into the water with every violent jerk. It was endlessly entertaining to watch as we floated along in our inner tubes. The real work came at the end of the river when it dumped back out into the cove and the current completely disappeared. We had to paddle through some rocks, against the wind, to a little dock. This made us work up an appetite!
After lunch we moseyed over to the manatee enclosure and watched a group of kids have a manatee experience. There were three manatees but they really only made one of them do tricks. Manatees are very bulky, slow animals (so slow they had algae growing on them) so their tricks weren’t anything like what they have dolphins do. The manatees didn’t seem terribly obedient either, which pleased Mom because she hated to think that the only way manatees could be saved from extinction was for them to do stupid tricks for people. We left while the kids were posing for pictures, getting kisses from the manatees.
Believe it or not, by this time we had been at the park for more than five hours and we were tired. We took our time leaving, stopping to watch a bunch of people having a dolphin experience before leaving the park. We saw the dolphins do the “foot push” maneuver to all the people in one group which proved to be very entertaining. The “foot push” is where two dolphins come up behind the waiting person and push on their feet with their noses while swimming very fast. They get going fast enough that the people get into a standing position, but the speed can also be dangerous for women wearing two piece bathing suits, like the first woman we saw.
We got back to Zamas around sunset again and just lazed around until we got hungry. Mom took a look at my guidebook for restaurant ideas and decided to try and find one suggested restaurant called Copal. This turned out to be easier said than done since my guidebook said it was in the wrong place, but we ended up eating at a really good Thai restaurant called Mezzanine instead. Definitely a fortunate accident.
**Side note: I just gave in and followed the yummy smells to my host family’s courtyard downstairs where they are having an Easter party. I had some really good Mexican barbecue which consisted of thin steak, quesadillas, and lots of salsas.
WEDNESDAY (3/31)
Mom got a taxi to the airport in the morning so Dad and I said good bye to her at Zamas. Afterwards we ate breakfast and planned the rest of our day. It was to be an ambitious venture into the sights of Tulum which were slightly off the beaten path. We decided to start with the ruins at Cobá and then go to Dos Ojos, a cenote that one of the Zamas people recommended to Dad. For those of you who don’t know, the Yucatan peninsula is all limestone which is a very weak stone. There are a bunch of spots all over the Yucatan where surface water has worn away the rock to make giant, water filled caves that open directly up towards the sky. These caves are called cenotes and a bunch of them are open to divers and snorkelers.
Anyway, we started by going to Cobá, a former Mayan city from the classic period about a 45 minute drive from our hotel. When I say city I mean city. They believe that Cobá, which reached its peak around AD 800, had somewhere around 55,000 people living in it.
The cool thing about Cobá is that most of the 6,000 structures have yet to be uncovered and they have left the trees that have grown in over the centuries to provide tourists with shade. Another cool thing is that the area is so big that they rent out bikes or offer tricycle taxis to get from one building cluster to the next.Dad and I started by getting a 45 minutes tour around the first group of buildings. These buildings included a big temple and the main court for the famous ball game of the Mesoamerican cultures. This was not a game played for fun, as our guide said, but was one of the religious ceremonies of most ancient cultures in Mesoamerica. Players used their knees, hips, elbows, and heads to get a rubber ball through either of two hoops mounted at the top of the walls of the court.
Cultures differed in the specifics of the game and the court but they all agreed on one thing: the winner would be sacrificed to the gods. Our guide said that in the Mayan version of the game, players weren’t on teams pitted against each other, but each person got their turn to score and the others helped out. In a different spot in Cobá there was also a practice court where they would sacrifice a jaguar after every practice game.After the tour we rented bikes and cruised around the rest of the city, stopping at different clusters of ruins and looking around. We went down one really long stretch of road that ended in an area full of big stones with engravings on them. Dad decided this was the hall of fame since there were so many engravings (which are usually about people) so densely populating this one area. Our best and final stop, though, was at the big temple to the bee god.
This temple, the largest in the Yucatan peninsula by the way, is something like 120 feet tall and pretty beautifully intact. Surprisingly, tourists are allowed to climb this temple so we had to take the opportunity and go all the way to the top. After much huffing and puffing up the over sized stairs, avoiding looking down the whole way, we made it to the top. WOW! It was so high! I got vertigo just standing at the edge and looking down but I got over it eventually. We stayed up there and took pictures and caught our breath for a few minutes and then headed back down. It was pretty steep and I’m slightly afraid of heights so I scooted down on my butt the whole way.
After taking our time with lunch we headed out for Dos Ojos. I was skeptical about the whole cenote thing and whether we would have time to do both the ruins and the cenote in one day, but we went to check it out anyway. We got there around 4:30 and they had closed which was a shame because it looked really cool. There was a giant poster out front with a map of the caves and all the different chambers (one with bats in it), but sadly it was closed as I’ve already said. Just something to put on the list for next time I go to the Cancun area!
On our drive back from Dos Ojos to Zamas we happened to see the restaurant Mom had been looking for the night before and decided to go there for dinner later. It turned out to only be about a ten minute walk from Zamas, but the sign was kind of hidden behind some plants and we hadn’t been looking for it in that area anyway. Silly guidebook giving us the wrong location!
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Parental Visit Chapter 1: Guadalajara
Yesterday Dad got in around 8 and we walked over to a restaurant that a guy on the plane recommended to Mom called La Vaca Argentina. It was a tasty steak place Argentinean style with a large wine selection. We each got different types of steak. I got ribs by accident because I didn’t know what the word meant, but it was all good. We also got a bottle of Mexican wine to fill up our giant wine glasses. The place itself was really pretty and had a great atmosphere. The highlight of the meal for me was the bread they served us (there’s not much in the way of good bread in Mexico) and the garlic olive oil and balsamic vinegar to dip it in.
Today was my full day of playing tour guide to my parents, and I actually think we covered a lot of the good sites. We started off in the late morning by going down to the historic center so that I could show Dad the cathedral and take them to San Juan de Dios (the giant market). We walked through the cathedral and all the way down to El Cabañas at the other end of the historical center. I told Dad a lot of the same things I told Mom on Wednesday, including the story of San Guadalupe and how it ties in with the story of the birth of the Aztec god Huitzilopotli. When we got to the end of the plaza we took a right and checked out the market. Mom and Dad enjoyed looking around at all the things being sold but really weren’t interested in buying anything. I admit it can be overwhelming but it was funny how out of place they seemed in there. I picked out some coconut candies for myself and after doing a good circuit around the bottom floor we headed back to the plaza in front of El Cabañas for lunch.
After lunch we took a taxi to Centro Magno and I took Dad on a foot tour of my daily life. In Centro Magno we spent a good five minutes staring at the movie show times trying to match the Amercian and Mexican movie titles. Some things are direct translations (like Alice in Wonderland is Alicia en el País Maravilloso) and some things just don’t translate (The Blind Side = Un Sueño Posible). Then I took him to CEPE and La Sacra (which were both closed unfortunately) and, finally, back to my house. The whole family was sitting around the kitchen table so Dad got to see them all. Tere saw him and said we looked exactly the same.
Side note: Santiago, Pati’s brand new baby who was born on Thursday, was sleeping in a car seat on the dining room table. He’s so cute! He looked very peaceful but I’m sure he won’t always be that way. I can’t wait to see him awake and maybe hold him. I can’t believe how active this family is in life, if that makes sense.
After Dad’s visit to my house I walked him as far as the Laundromat where I had to pick up my laundry and then we parted ways for a little siesta.
We met up again at 5 at their hotel and I took them to Tlaquepaque. This is probably the most touristy area of Guadalajara, and for good reason. It’s super cute and colonial, it’s got some great artisan shops, and there is live mariachi music on Saturday nights! There were a ton of street vendors; a lot more than were there when I went last Monday, so there was a lot to look at. We wandered around for a while. We hit gold at a linens store where Mom bought table runner for herself and matching napkins and then some more stuff. It snowballed into a giant purchase but I think it was worth it.
After the success of that stop we went to a restaurant for a drink and some guacamole. I don’t know what the name of the place was but it had a great atmosphere. We sat in a colorful and festive courtyard which centered on a cute little fountain, and to top it all off, another table had hired a small band to play music for them while they ate and drank. It was delightful. Mom and I got margaritas and Dad got a beer and we sat there as the sun went down. We finished there around 8 and wandered around for another half hour or so before going to El Paría, a plaza where they put on a ballet folklorico on Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons.
El Paría is an old building (built in 1827) with a giant courtyard in the center which is surrounded by a bunch of different restaurants.
In the center of the courtyard is a gazebo where the performance took place. The night started off with a few different mariachi groups wandering between tables, playing for different groups. My favorite was a large group of mostly old people who just came into the square to hear the music and dance. They hired one of the bands and all got up and started dancing. It was so cute to see the old couples dancing together. Old love! After that the groups took a break for a while and the ballet started.
In this case, “ballet” doesn’t mean a bunch of people jumping around in tights and leotards; it was simply a performance of several traditional Mexican dances. They started off with dances from Veracruz and then did dances from Jalisco. I liked the Jalisco ones better because the girls had big skirts that they held out and flung around while the guys all had on big black sombreros and those colorful blankets slung over their shoulders. Once the dancing was over, a mariachi band went on stage and that’s about when we left.
I’m pretty much packed for this next week and ready to go. Tomorrow I’m meeting Mom and Dad in their hotel lobby at 9:30am and we’re getting on the plane to Cancun!! I’m so excited!!!! It will be so great to get to see another part of Mexico. Plus, I’ve heard from a lot of people that Tulum in absolutely beautiful and that I’m going to fall in love and not want to come back. We’ll see about that!
Today was my full day of playing tour guide to my parents, and I actually think we covered a lot of the good sites. We started off in the late morning by going down to the historic center so that I could show Dad the cathedral and take them to San Juan de Dios (the giant market). We walked through the cathedral and all the way down to El Cabañas at the other end of the historical center. I told Dad a lot of the same things I told Mom on Wednesday, including the story of San Guadalupe and how it ties in with the story of the birth of the Aztec god Huitzilopotli. When we got to the end of the plaza we took a right and checked out the market. Mom and Dad enjoyed looking around at all the things being sold but really weren’t interested in buying anything. I admit it can be overwhelming but it was funny how out of place they seemed in there. I picked out some coconut candies for myself and after doing a good circuit around the bottom floor we headed back to the plaza in front of El Cabañas for lunch.
After lunch we took a taxi to Centro Magno and I took Dad on a foot tour of my daily life. In Centro Magno we spent a good five minutes staring at the movie show times trying to match the Amercian and Mexican movie titles. Some things are direct translations (like Alice in Wonderland is Alicia en el País Maravilloso) and some things just don’t translate (The Blind Side = Un Sueño Posible). Then I took him to CEPE and La Sacra (which were both closed unfortunately) and, finally, back to my house. The whole family was sitting around the kitchen table so Dad got to see them all. Tere saw him and said we looked exactly the same.
Side note: Santiago, Pati’s brand new baby who was born on Thursday, was sleeping in a car seat on the dining room table. He’s so cute! He looked very peaceful but I’m sure he won’t always be that way. I can’t wait to see him awake and maybe hold him. I can’t believe how active this family is in life, if that makes sense.
After Dad’s visit to my house I walked him as far as the Laundromat where I had to pick up my laundry and then we parted ways for a little siesta.
We met up again at 5 at their hotel and I took them to Tlaquepaque. This is probably the most touristy area of Guadalajara, and for good reason. It’s super cute and colonial, it’s got some great artisan shops, and there is live mariachi music on Saturday nights! There were a ton of street vendors; a lot more than were there when I went last Monday, so there was a lot to look at. We wandered around for a while. We hit gold at a linens store where Mom bought table runner for herself and matching napkins and then some more stuff. It snowballed into a giant purchase but I think it was worth it.
After the success of that stop we went to a restaurant for a drink and some guacamole. I don’t know what the name of the place was but it had a great atmosphere. We sat in a colorful and festive courtyard which centered on a cute little fountain, and to top it all off, another table had hired a small band to play music for them while they ate and drank. It was delightful. Mom and I got margaritas and Dad got a beer and we sat there as the sun went down. We finished there around 8 and wandered around for another half hour or so before going to El Paría, a plaza where they put on a ballet folklorico on Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons.
El Paría is an old building (built in 1827) with a giant courtyard in the center which is surrounded by a bunch of different restaurants.
In the center of the courtyard is a gazebo where the performance took place. The night started off with a few different mariachi groups wandering between tables, playing for different groups. My favorite was a large group of mostly old people who just came into the square to hear the music and dance. They hired one of the bands and all got up and started dancing. It was so cute to see the old couples dancing together. Old love! After that the groups took a break for a while and the ballet started. In this case, “ballet” doesn’t mean a bunch of people jumping around in tights and leotards; it was simply a performance of several traditional Mexican dances. They started off with dances from Veracruz and then did dances from Jalisco. I liked the Jalisco ones better because the girls had big skirts that they held out and flung around while the guys all had on big black sombreros and those colorful blankets slung over their shoulders. Once the dancing was over, a mariachi band went on stage and that’s about when we left.
I’m pretty much packed for this next week and ready to go. Tomorrow I’m meeting Mom and Dad in their hotel lobby at 9:30am and we’re getting on the plane to Cancun!! I’m so excited!!!! It will be so great to get to see another part of Mexico. Plus, I’ve heard from a lot of people that Tulum in absolutely beautiful and that I’m going to fall in love and not want to come back. We’ll see about that!
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Morelia
SUNDAY (3/14)
I got up early and packed and took the 622 to where I was meeting Nikiya and her friend Dennis. Our bus left at 10:10am from Guadalajara and arrived in Morelia around 1:30pm. We checked into our hotel and went out in search of food.
We thought our hotel was much closer to the main cathedral, but we were wrong and we wandered around for a long time before we finally settled on a place. We assumed there would be a lot of restaurants around the main cathedral when we found it, but Morelia has a different church every two blocks or something so part of our problem was that we didn’t know which one was the main cathedral. After eating we wandered around some more and ended up doing some shopping. I bought a high-waisted jean pencil skirt for 90 pesos that I’m wearing right now! When it was all over it was like 6 and we decided to go back to our hotel and rest before getting dinner.
For dinner I was much more prepared. I looked up restaurants in my guidebook and found one near the main cathedral and the plaza de armas called La Casa del Portal.
It was this funky place in an 18th century house with the original wall paper, cluttered with random pieces of old Mexico and custom furniture and the food was delicious. I got a regional soup from Michoacan with a bean base, chiles, avocados, tortilla strips, and cream. It was so good! After dinner we walked around looking for something to do but there wasn’t much. We sat down outside a bar with live music (they played lots of Bee Gees for some reason) and had a few beers. We turned in pretty early.
MONDAY (3/15)
Lots of churches. That’s my impression of Morelia. We had pretty much all of Monday to explore the city since our bus didn’t leave until 8pm. After walking around so much Sunday afternoon we decided we could take it slow, visit all the churches, go to the market, and leave.
We started off by visiting the aqueduct, only a few blocks from out hotel.
There was a pretty park with two fountains where the aqueduct ended. One of the fountains was of three topless women holding up a giant platter piled with all the fruit from the region. I noticed, walking around later, that this fountain is kind of a symbol of Morelia.
After that we went to all the churches in the center. I was the keeper of the map so I helped navigate us through the narrow streets with their narrow sidewalks while Nikiya announced that she had no idea where we were. We went to a lot of churches so I’ll only mention the ones of interest. We went to the church we had nicknamed the Dome of the Rock because it had a very impressive gold mosaic dome, but the inside was disappointing. We also went to the main cathedral which was beautiful, the outside and the inside. There was a giant organ with a winding staircase up to it that Dennis climbed up.
I took a picture of him on the stairs because the size difference between him and the organ was funny. It was huge. But by far the coolest church in Morelia was the church of San Guadalupe which we saw on our bus tour we took before lunch. The bus stopped there and we all got off. It looked like a regular church from the outside but as soon as I stepped inside I realized this place was special. What I loved about this church was that it was a representation of the Mexican passion for their beliefs, not some attempted reproduction of European designs. The walls and ceiling were completely covered in colorful decorations in the shapes of flowers and fruit with gold accents that glinted in the sunlight let in through the stained glass windows of the giant dome. Everything seemed so hectic and yet it all worked together and had a kind of beautiful symmetry about it.
At the end of the bus tour we were dropped off at El Museo de Dulces (the Candy Museum) where we paid 7 pesos to take a little tour (all in Spanish) lead by a girl in 19th century (?) costume. Apparently Morelia is known for its fruit candies. In the olden days each family made a hobby out of making candies and selling them from their front door. The museum was in the house of one family in particular that took candy beyond just a hobby. They make the candy by turning the fruit into pulp and then heating it and adding sugar. then they take this sugary pulp they spread it out on boards to dry in the sun or stamp them into molds with words or images on them. They gave us a little demonstration where they showed us the heating and adding sugar part and then gave us all little sample cups at the end. It was like sticky applesauce and very tasty. The tour ended in the museum store (of course) and I bought myself some caramels and rolls of the fruity stuff.
After the candy museum and lunch we walked to the market which sat against the back wall of one of the churches further out of the center. It had a lot of the typical things and it was no fun because they wouldn’t bargain at all, but I think I made some good purchases.
By the time we finished at the market it was time to go back to the hotel and get our stuff and go. We stopped at a café on the way back and had some truly awful tea and went on our way. We got a taxi and got on the bus without any problems and got back to Guadalajara around midnight. We shared a taxi and made two stops, first at the Casa Internacional for them and then my house. Then it was sleep for me.
I got up early and packed and took the 622 to where I was meeting Nikiya and her friend Dennis. Our bus left at 10:10am from Guadalajara and arrived in Morelia around 1:30pm. We checked into our hotel and went out in search of food.
We thought our hotel was much closer to the main cathedral, but we were wrong and we wandered around for a long time before we finally settled on a place. We assumed there would be a lot of restaurants around the main cathedral when we found it, but Morelia has a different church every two blocks or something so part of our problem was that we didn’t know which one was the main cathedral. After eating we wandered around some more and ended up doing some shopping. I bought a high-waisted jean pencil skirt for 90 pesos that I’m wearing right now! When it was all over it was like 6 and we decided to go back to our hotel and rest before getting dinner.
For dinner I was much more prepared. I looked up restaurants in my guidebook and found one near the main cathedral and the plaza de armas called La Casa del Portal.
It was this funky place in an 18th century house with the original wall paper, cluttered with random pieces of old Mexico and custom furniture and the food was delicious. I got a regional soup from Michoacan with a bean base, chiles, avocados, tortilla strips, and cream. It was so good! After dinner we walked around looking for something to do but there wasn’t much. We sat down outside a bar with live music (they played lots of Bee Gees for some reason) and had a few beers. We turned in pretty early.MONDAY (3/15)
Lots of churches. That’s my impression of Morelia. We had pretty much all of Monday to explore the city since our bus didn’t leave until 8pm. After walking around so much Sunday afternoon we decided we could take it slow, visit all the churches, go to the market, and leave.
We started off by visiting the aqueduct, only a few blocks from out hotel.
There was a pretty park with two fountains where the aqueduct ended. One of the fountains was of three topless women holding up a giant platter piled with all the fruit from the region. I noticed, walking around later, that this fountain is kind of a symbol of Morelia. After that we went to all the churches in the center. I was the keeper of the map so I helped navigate us through the narrow streets with their narrow sidewalks while Nikiya announced that she had no idea where we were. We went to a lot of churches so I’ll only mention the ones of interest. We went to the church we had nicknamed the Dome of the Rock because it had a very impressive gold mosaic dome, but the inside was disappointing. We also went to the main cathedral which was beautiful, the outside and the inside. There was a giant organ with a winding staircase up to it that Dennis climbed up.
I took a picture of him on the stairs because the size difference between him and the organ was funny. It was huge. But by far the coolest church in Morelia was the church of San Guadalupe which we saw on our bus tour we took before lunch. The bus stopped there and we all got off. It looked like a regular church from the outside but as soon as I stepped inside I realized this place was special. What I loved about this church was that it was a representation of the Mexican passion for their beliefs, not some attempted reproduction of European designs. The walls and ceiling were completely covered in colorful decorations in the shapes of flowers and fruit with gold accents that glinted in the sunlight let in through the stained glass windows of the giant dome. Everything seemed so hectic and yet it all worked together and had a kind of beautiful symmetry about it.
At the end of the bus tour we were dropped off at El Museo de Dulces (the Candy Museum) where we paid 7 pesos to take a little tour (all in Spanish) lead by a girl in 19th century (?) costume. Apparently Morelia is known for its fruit candies. In the olden days each family made a hobby out of making candies and selling them from their front door. The museum was in the house of one family in particular that took candy beyond just a hobby. They make the candy by turning the fruit into pulp and then heating it and adding sugar. then they take this sugary pulp they spread it out on boards to dry in the sun or stamp them into molds with words or images on them. They gave us a little demonstration where they showed us the heating and adding sugar part and then gave us all little sample cups at the end. It was like sticky applesauce and very tasty. The tour ended in the museum store (of course) and I bought myself some caramels and rolls of the fruity stuff.
After the candy museum and lunch we walked to the market which sat against the back wall of one of the churches further out of the center. It had a lot of the typical things and it was no fun because they wouldn’t bargain at all, but I think I made some good purchases.
By the time we finished at the market it was time to go back to the hotel and get our stuff and go. We stopped at a café on the way back and had some truly awful tea and went on our way. We got a taxi and got on the bus without any problems and got back to Guadalajara around midnight. We shared a taxi and made two stops, first at the Casa Internacional for them and then my house. Then it was sleep for me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
