Kim Tours starts our day with a big breakfast.
Cattle are hustled down the road.
Boats waiting to take tourists to the ruins upriver.
We all piled into our boat for an hour's journey
to Yaxchilán.
Our guide.
We spot Yaxchilán through
the trees.
Hiking up to the
"Little Acropolis."
The "Little Acropolis."
Entering "The Labyinth."
Light at last…!
We emerge in front of "The Labyrinth."
Green moss clings to everything.
Note the boxy hieroglyphs carved
in the lintel above the doorway.
Structure 33. When built by Bird Jaguar (who reigned
752-772 AD), this made quite a sight from the river.
Structure 20.
King Bird Jaguar IV plays ball amid symbolism and hieroglyphs about his rise to power.
King Bird Jaguar IV's mother,
Lady Eveningstar.
We're faster than that croc, aren't we?
Van ride for our leg into the Lacadón Forest.
Bonampak's main plaza.
Three doorways lead into three rooms of
matchless Mayan murals.
Room 1: Pomp and circumstance surround the presentation
of King Chan Muan II's infant heir.
The detail -- nearly 1200 years later
-- was astonishing.
Celebrating with trumpets.
Room 2: Prisoners are tortured by pulling out their fingernails.
Room 3: Noblewomen pierce their tongues in ritual blood-letting.
Lintel above Room 1's doorway: Chan
Muan holds a captive by the hair.
She got a kick out of taking a
photo of Mark.
Yaxchilán & Bonampak, Mexico
March, 2012 - There are many beautiful things to see in the Palenque area and, for most tourists, rather than struggling to
drive on the little winding roads, the easiest way to see them all is by van tour. Van tours are a big business in this region, and
almost all the vehicles on the small roads outside Palenque are vans filled with tourists. Our van from Kim Tours picked us up at
7:00 a.m. for a 12-hour tour to the remote Mayan ruins of Yaxchilán and Bonampak. After several hours on the road, everyone
in our group was grateful when the van stopped mid-morning for a sumptuous breakfast at a casual open-air restaurant.
Besides van tours, farming and agriculture play an important role
here too, and we watched with amusement as two cowboys on
horseback hustled a herd of cattle down the road while we were
getting back in the van after breakfast. Those cows could trot
pretty fast!
After another hour or so of negotiating skinny, speedbump filled
roads, we finally arrived at the river that defines the border
between Mexico and Guatemala, the Río Usumacinta. Here we
boarded a small outboard-driven boat with a canopy top for an
hour-long boat ride up the river. Talk about remote -- these ruins
are really out there!
We were five
couples all together.
Two couples hailed
from Mexico City
and Argentina, and
they gabbed away in
Spanish with each other
and the guide. The other
two couples were from
French Canada and
France, and they
chatted easily in
French. We mostly
listened and enjoyed
the views.
The narrow river
meandered between
thick jungle greenery along its banks. At long
last we spotted a tall pile of rocks between the
trees heralding our arrival at the ruined Mayan
city of Yaxchilán.
We climbed a steep, moist hillside trail and
suddenly found ourselves staring at the
familiar pyramid shape of a huge Mayan building, the "Little
Acropolis." This building was extensive and had rooms and
windows and unroofed hallways that begged to be explored.
However, we were given only an hour to see the whole sight
and the "Great Acropolis" complex of buildings awaited us
further on. If only you could go to a place like this easily on
your own and hang out for a few days...
Hiking back down and then up again,
we came to "The Labyrinth," a crazy
maze of winding tunnels that is pitch
dark inside. We relied on flashes
from our cameras to light the way.
Finally shafts of light penetrated and
we emerged on the other side,
standing in front of a series of doors
into the Labyrinth and looking out
into the Grand Plaza.
The jungle here has been
conquered, seeded with grass lawns, and swept back to reveal these
impressive ruins. But mossy overgrowth clings to everything. As we
wandered past sturdy walls and rows of doorways, two thoughts kept
swirling through my mind: what did this place look like when it was
newly constructed and filled with inhabitants? And what did the
European discoverers think when they first found this large complex of
buildings in the tight grip of the
jungle in the mid-1800's?
It is mind-boggling to think that this
little bend in a nondescript, brown
silty river was once a very important
spot, a destination, a port for trade.
Today it would be indistinguishable
from the rest of the jungle
riverbanks if it weren't for the
sprinkling of tourists
arriving every few
hours in colorful
canopied boats.
Who built this stuff
and when?
Fortunately, Yaxchilán is loaded with doorway and window
lintels that are covered with square-shaped Mayan
hieroglyphic text, and they tell the story. Unraveling the
meaning behind Mayan hieroglyphs began in the late
19th century, when the numeric system was first
deciphered. Major breakthroughs came in the 1980's
(while studying lists of rulers in Palenque), and now
90% of Mayan writings can be read. The history of
conquests, defeats and transfers of power in Yaxchilán
are surprisingly well known, right down to specific days
and years due to the detailed Mayan calendar.
The area was likely settled by 250 AD, but
the first historic text points to 359 AD when
Yaxchilán's first ruler ascended the thrown.
Rulers with evocative names like "Bird
Jaguar" and "Moon Skull" reigned for
centuries, each date of ascension to the
throne carefully recorded in stone. One
ruler's wife, Lady Pakal, lived to the ripe old
age of 98. That may not have been a typical
ancient Mayan lifespan, but the ruling class
obviously lived well.
The city reached its peak in the early 8th
century, and most of the ruins date from that
time period when the reigning king (who lived
into his nineties) went on a building spree.
The amazing thing at this site, besides the expansive
grounds filled with 120 or so ruined buildings, is the
detailed carvings on the lintels. Passing under a
doorway you look up and see the most beautiful and
intricately carved stone just overhead. The images are
clear, and archaeologists have sorted out what almost
all of them depict -- with the help of the descriptive boxy
hieroglyphs that accompany each one.
One relief shows King Bird Jaguar IV playing ball in the
ball court, a game that had deep mystical overtones in
Mayan culture. The text around the images makes reference to
both blood letting and the decapitation of three deities leading to
three "dawnings." Two dwarfs are marked with the signs of Venus.
It is thought that they figuratively sweep the path for this rising king
as Venus sweeps the path for the rising sun.
Now it helps to know a little background about this guy Bird Jaguar IV. He was not born
in direct line to the throne, being the son of the 2nd wife rather than the 1st wife of the
king. It seems his mother, Lady Eveningstar, was quite ambitious for her son, however,
and there might have been a power struggle after her husband's death. She may have
even ruled Yaxchilán temporarily while she waited for her boy to grow up and take
over. After nearly ten years her son was finally crowned King Bird Jaguar IV.
Another relief shows this woman, the ambitious Lady Eveningstar, dressed to the nines.
Yaxchilán and its neighbors alternated between being friends and enemies, making
alliances through marriage, and taking each other's kings captive by turns. Victory
seems to have rotated between the city-states for a while, but Yaxchilán seems to have
come out on top in the early 9th century AD before
the entire ancient Mayan world slipped away into the
grasp of the jungle (possibly due to deforestation and
overpopulation).
One of the nearby rivals was Bonampak, and
fortunately for us, its unique ruins were our next stop.
First, however, we had to take another river boat ride
back to the van. Waiting to see us off at the river's
edge was a very large, grinning crocodile. Our
boatman took us pretty close to this fellow so we
could get a good look, but he assured us our
outboard engine was
faster than the croc!
The ruined Mayan city of Bonampak is situated in the
Lacandón Jungle where a very special group of
indigenous people, the Lacandones, make their home,
deep in the rainforest. When the Spanish arrived in the
16th century, the Lacandón people retreated further
into the rainforest and were never discovered.
Although they had frequent contact with other Mayan-descended groups through the centuries, the rugged lands around them
helped them keep the world at bay, retain their identity and avoid the fate of most other indigenous groups for a long time.
Numbering just 650 or so native speaking Lacandón people today, it is only in the last fifty years that relentless logging,
ranching and tourism development have invaded their space and forced them to go through the conversions and changes that
the rest of Mexico underwent four hundred years ago. Besides learning Spanish, many converted to Christianity (mostly
Protestantism). Conversion was a change the men largely frowned upon because of its intolerance of polygamy. But the
women favored the idea because there was very little ritualistic cooking involved (unlike their own traditions). Ironically, the
recent introduction of TV and popular culture has largely brought an end to spiritual rituals of any kind among the younger
generation.
Today the Lacandones hang onto their traditions as best they can while
participating in the modern economy by working within the tourist trade.
They offer a peak into their world selling hand-crafted items, shuttling
tourists to ancient Mayan sites, taking them on tours of the rainforest, and
hosting them overnight.
At the edge of their land we were transferred into a van driven by a
Lacandón man in traditional dress (a white sack-like garment with wide
short sleeves). He spoke perfect Mexican Spanish and wore an official
badge. As I watched him behind the wheel I wondered what his
grandfather would have thought of his grandson chauffeuring international
tourists into his homeland in a van. Would his own future grandkids want
to stay in the forest, hosting tourists and preserving the memory of a
vanishing culture, instead of joining mainstream Mexican society?
The main plaza of the
Bonampak ruins are
very compact. A few
large, carved stelae
under shade canopies
are sprinkled across a
wide lawn. An
enormous stairway
with small buildings
fills a hillside at the far
end.
We climbed the stairs and poked our heads into the first doorway of the little white
building half-way up. Holy mackerel! We were absolutely blown away.
Inside was a single room with a steeply vaulted ceiling, and every single square inch of
the interior was painted with extraordinary, brightly colored frescoes. In the images
encircling the room people were engaged in all kinds of activities, wearing loincloths and
elaborate headdresses.
The side-view stance of each figure looked like those of the ancient Egyptians with the
feet placed one before the other and head in profile. But unlike the Egyptians the
shoulders were shown in side-view rather than twisted with one shoulder forward and
one back.
We moved on to
the next doorway
and found another similar room with a
totally different story to tell, and likewise
inside the third doorway. Wow!
Bonampak's construction began in the 6th
century, but the paintings were completed
in 790 AD. This was the same time that
Charlemagne was rising to power in
Europe and the Vikings were beginning
their raids in England.
These murals were "discovered" in 1946
when a Yale researcher was brought to
them by a Lacandón guide. The
Lacandones had revered the murals and
worshipped at the site and never shown
them to outsiders before. Sadly, in an
effort to document and preserve them
(hadn't they been preserved already for
1,150 years?), the scientists covered the
murals with
kerosene which
brought out the
colors temporarily
but weakened the
plaster so it started
to flake off. They
photographed like
mad, but today the
photos they took
are considered
incomplete and Yale
has renewed their
efforts to document the
paintings.
Standing there, jaw agape, however, I didn't
care how much the paintings had faded in
the last 60 years. They are magnificent.
The expansive story-telling nature of the
paintings and their incredible detail had all of
us visitors oohing and ahhing to each other
in the doorways.
We later learned that the first room depicts
the presentation of the son and heir of King
Chan Muan II and Lady Rabbit (a
noblewoman from nearby Yaxchilán), in 790 AD, with great processions, trumpet playing and fanfare.
Unfortunately the city was abandoned before the infant came into power. The second room depicts the
violent conquering of an unknown enemy. Among several gruesome scenes, the unfortunate captives are
being tortured by having their fingernails pulled out. The third depicts a royal celebration, including ritual
blood-letting that the noblewomen performed by piercing their tongues.
Like Yaxchilán, the lintels over the doorways are highly decorated,
and the image carved over the first door shows King Chan Muan
holding a captive by the hair. Not only is the carving beautifully
executed, but the original blue painted background and some of the
red trim can be seen even today. Astonished by their good
condition, I had to ask the attendant if the lintels were original -- and they
were.
While I was standing in awe of all this, trying to twist my body so I could
get the best possible shots of the murals despite the restrictive tourist
barriers, Mark had wandered off down the hill. When I caught up to him
he excitedly showed me a photo of a little Lacandón girl he had taken.
These ruins were her playground, and she climbed among the trees and
played with sticks in the dust as she watched the tourists coming and
going. Mark tried to talk to her, but Spanish and English got him nowhere.
Then he handed her the camera and showed her how to take a picture of
him and she grinned. They traded taking pics of each other and giggled
at the images on the back of the camera, all language barriers gone.
We got back to Palenque exhausted but happy. It had been quite a day.
But after a rest day in town we were ready to go again to see the famous
Agua Azul and Misol-Ha waterfalls.
Click here to see more from our adventure travels in Mexico.
Find Yaxchilán and Palenque on Mexico Maps.
Agua Azul & Misol-Ha – Waterfall Adventures in Mexico
Misol-Ha waterfall, a thin, pure stream.
Behind the falls.
Misol-Ha.
Four-year-old Amina.
Agua Azul's falls are wide and fast.
Agua Azul.
Agua Azul's pools of turquoise.
Little Amina goes
swimming.
Everyone gets photos of themselves at the falls.
Vendors in palapas line the falls.
Mango-on-a-stick.
The falls tumble down many layers of boulders.
Our companions get into another van.
Comitán's Santo Domingo, built in the late 1500's.
Santo Domingo steeple.
Lots of church steeples in this town.
Modern sculpture in the Zócalo
Patio of wooden columns.
Spring is in the air.
Hilly streets offer views into the surrounding
countryside.
Crowds take seats on the Mayan stadium stairs.
Performers appear on the 1200-year-old ruins.
Blowing on a conch shell.
Rituals for the dead victim.
Marina Chiapas at dawn.
(Photo courtesy of Capt. Andrés Reyes Prudente).
Agua Azul, Misol-Ha & Comitán, Mexico
March, 2012 - Besides the mysterious ruins of Yaxchilan & Bonampak, the Palenque
area is bursting with beautiful natural features as well. We hopped on another van
tour, this time to see waterfalls. We went with a no-name tour company, one of dozens
selling tours in town. It was cheap, this was just a day trip, and all we really needed
was transportation to the falls. We sat behind a very seasoned Central American
traveler from North Carolina named Tom who was just starting a four-month tour from
Mexico to Colombia. His itinerary, unlike ours for some reason, included both the
waterfalls and the Palenque ruins.
"I never have any expectations
when I get on a bus in these
parts." He said knowingly. We
had had plenty of bus
adventures, so we nodded with
him, almost as knowingly.
Our first stop of the day, after
bouncing over the rough roads
out of town, was the magnificent
Misol-Ha waterfall. A thin wisp
of water flowed in a steady
stream off a cliff into a cool, wide
pool. We followed a short trail
down to the falls and discovered
we could crawl underneath a rock
outcropping behind them. The fine
mist that sprayed us all was
refreshing.
Our group was in high spirits in the
early morning air as we piled back
into the van. Young European
backpackers dominated our group,
including a pair of gorgeous, tall,
leggy, blonde Danish girls up front
and three boys from Switzerland, Austria and Germany speaking German together in the
rear. A little four-year-old Mexican girl, Amina, from Playa del Carmen in the Yucatan, sat
next to me and asked to see our waterfall photos on our cameras.
A very comical and rudimentary conversation in Spanish ensued as our chatter wandered
to our granddaughters and she told us about her cousin. There's nothing like having a
four-year-old native speaker show you just how poor your command of Spanish really is.
Her giggles and funny faces made it clear we sounded pretty goofy to her. Luckily her
grandma bailed us (and her) out a
few times when our conversation
reached a total impasse of
incomprehension. We were quite
humbled when she later talked up a
storm with the van driver!
Our next stop was Agua Azul, a
series of cascading waterfalls that
rushes over stair-stepping boulders
and lands in the most exquisite
turquoise pools. Wooden viewing
platforms encourage tourists to take
their time soaking in the views and
posing for photos. The water
thunders down the rocks from
several directions and then rests for
a bit in shades of aquamarine before
sliding on.
The tour vans line up outside the park
while visitors are granted anywhere from
an hour to an afternoon to enjoy the falls
and pools. Lots of young travelers
eagerly donned their swimsuits and
jumped into the water.
Vendors selling all kinds of snacks and
trinkets under makeshift palapas line the
sides of the waterfalls at various levels beside the endless wooden stairs going up. We climbed up
and up and up looking for the top of the falls. The clan of young boys from our van rushed ahead
and later reported that there was a fantastic swimming hole
a mile or so away. We never got that far. Instead we
settled at a picnic table to enjoy eating mango on a stick (a
great way to eat mangos!) and watermelon slices in a cup.
After a few wonderful afternoon hours at these rushing
falls and placid pools, we all made our way back to the
van, a little damp, and rather tired at the end of a great
day. The drive back should have taken just an hour, but
this was a budget van. It turned out that not only had our
North Carolina friend, Tom, not been taken to the ruins in
Palenque as he expected, but the European travelers with
us were not returning to the town of Palenque at all. They
were headed in the opposite direction to San Cristóbal de
las Casas, some 5 hours away. Huh?
Apparently our van was supposed to meet another van on the
road somewhere and transfer the travelers over. Problem
was, "where" and "when" were not well defined, and although
we all stood by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere
waiting for over an hour, the other van never showed up. Tom
just nodded knowingly with a smirk on his face.
Luckily we all had lots to talk about, comparing notes about
what we'd seen in Mexico, and talking about what we missed
most from home. The young German fellow said he missed
his wiener schnitzel terribly, and we all missed our favorite dark
beers from home. Travel is wonderful, but homesickness for
familiar things steals over you once in a while.
Eventually the driver hailed a van labeled "San Cristóbal" and payed
for five tickets out of his own pocket so our companions could get to
their promised destination. That van was already full, so I can only
imagine what everyone thought when five extra people and their
luggage were piled into and on top of it for five hours of travel on
twisty, miserable roads filled with speed bumps. Tom said he'd just
catch a cheap combi van to the Palenque ruins on his own the next
day. No problema!
We could have easily stayed in Palenque another week, but
disturbing news from family in the US began to take on a more and
more urgent tone, and we decided it was best to begin our trek out
of the jungle just in case we needed to fly back soon. In the bus
station I saw a poster for a huge Spring Equinox celebration at the
Palenque ruins. Oh my! We were leaving the Mayan world on the
eve of the equinox! You can't do that!! Oh well.
The distance from Palenque to Puerto
Chiapas where Groovy was waiting for
us is only 550 miles, but it is two long
days of bus travel. We decided to
break it up by stopping in Comitán, a
colonial city we had glimpsed from the
bus window on our way to San
Cristóbal and that had perked our
interest.
After spending several weeks plunk in
the middle of the touristy Gringo Trail,
surrounded by fellow travelers from
foreign countries, it was a delightful
change to walk the streets of Comitán.
It has all the colonial charm of other similar towns, but has
not been singled out for tourism development in the same
way. Everyone on the streets was a local, or at least
Mexican, and all the happenings around town were put on
by the locals for the locals.
It is a hilly town, with a multitude of church spires piercing the sky. The
Santo Domingo cathedral is the oldest, dating to the late 16th century,
some 50 years or so after Comitán was conquered by the Spanish.
Santo Domingo sits on the edge of the Zócalo, or town square, and while
we wandered among the beautiful shade trees and colorful flowers in the
late afternoon, we listened to the priest giving a sermon to his flock,
broadcast over speakers on the outside of the church.
The Zócalo is the heart of the town, and people hang out in the park doing all the fun
things that parks are made for: relaxing, people watching, selling stuff, buying stuff,
and, of course, enjoying each other's company in a romantic setting.
While wandering around I
looked up to see a huge
poster advertising -- a
celebration of the Spring
Equinox at the local
Mayan ruins of Tenem
Puente! That afternoon!!
What luck!!!
We quickly jumped into a
local combi van and
headed out to the ruins a
few miles away. This was
a hugely popular event
and the van was stuffed
to overflowing with
people. It was full body
contact on all sides for
everyone. Every
bare limb, thigh,
elbow, etc., was
pressed tightly
against those of fellow
passengers on each side.
We all breathed each
other's breath, except
those lucky enough to be
near an open window.
Dads stacked their kids
on their laps, oldest ones
on the bottom and
toddlers on top.
We learned that the
Mayan city of Tenem
Puente was at its peak
between 600 and 900
AD, although it was
occupied until 1200 AD.
It wasn't discovered by
archaeologists until 1925.
Unfortunately, when we
got there the ruins had
been closed off for the
celebration, so we saw
just the first building which stood opposite a hill of
staircases so common to Mayan sites. Those stairs make
perfect stadium seating, and as they quickly filled with
hundreds of people I got a chill thinking of
how the ancient Mayans had probably sat
there just like we were now for their own
gatherings over a thousand years ago.
Suddenly a trumpet sounded and some
figures appeared on the building. The men
wore enormous feather headdresses and
scrambled over the ruin. An announcer
had talked for a while about the
performance before it began, but I couldn't
quite catch all the details. The performance
depicted a battle, a killing, and some rituals
related to the death of the victim. I think I
had expected something mystical involving
the alignment of the setting sun and the
buildings and some fascinating connection
to the Mayan calendar. But this dance and music celebration had its own special
magic, especially as I scanned the crowd and realized that more than a few among
them may have had ancestors that lived inside these ruined walls when they were first built.
We took the overnight bus
to Tapachula that night, and returned to our sailboat Groovy in
the morning. The boat, the marina and the world of cruising
suddenly seemed very foreign in those early dawn hours. The
Tehuantepec had quieted down for a few days and boats
were arriving from Huatulco at the marina hourly. As we
caught the dock lines for the incoming boats our groggy minds
were still far away, filled with the vibrant images of the jungle.
Soon, however, we would be immersed in reality and thrust
back into modern American life on a long road that eventually
led to northeastern Arizona.
Find Palenque and Comitán on Mexico Maps.
Palenque – Ancient Mayan Ruins and Terror in the Jungle!
Valley farmlands between San Cristóbal and Palenque.
Lush mountains behind corn fields.
Palenque is closer to the Caribbean!
Pretty La Cañada neighborhood in
Palenque
Back streets to Palenque town.
Hard little beaded plant, like
Mardi-Gras necklaces.
Palenque is a busy town that is surprisingly nonchalant about
its tourists.
Quickie on-the-fly tailoring
Temple de la Calavera
Temple XIII and Temple of the Inscriptions
Temple XV
Temple of the Sun
Temple of the Cross
Temple XIV
The Palace
The Ball Court
Vendors sell trinkets on shaded blankets before the Palace.
Temple of the Inscriptions
Burial place of Pacal the Great
Elephant ear leaves
A moth
A ruin yet to be excavated and studied.
The Palace, a building worthy of a great king.
Palace courtyard
The watchtower -- or celestial
observatory.
Hallways with the characteristic almost-peaked roof
Thick walls
T-window
Bas-relief sculpture shows what the Mayans looked like.
Left unattended, the jungle always wins.
Mayan Ruins of Palenque, Mexico
Mid-March, 2012 - We left the cool mountain air of San
Cristóbal de las Casas and took a five-hour bus ride north to
the jungle town of Palenque, home of an amazing ancient
Mayan city. This turned out to be another spectacular bus
journey through mountainous terrain. We climbed and
descended, first through beautiful pine forests and then into
more jungle-like landscapes.
As the elevation rose and fell, the pines mixed with palms and
banana trees. Eventually the pines disappeared all together and
the hills became lush and green all around us. Then we
descended into the thick, hot, humid jungle.
It was odd to look at the map and discover we were now closer to the
Caribbean than the Pacific, our home for the last six months.
Through an incredible stroke
of luck, the budget hotel we
booked online was under
construction and we were
moved to the lovely, upscale
Hotel Maya Tulipanes for the
same price. We took one look
at the plush king bed, the
large and beautifully appointed
stone tile bathroom and the
enormous flat screen TV and
said in unison, "We're never
leaving!"
The hotel is in the La Cañada
neighborhood of the town of
Palenque, a pretty, quiet,
shaded street that hosts a
handful of small hotels and
outdoor bistros. We wandered
through the jungly back streets
behind the hotel and were
amazed at all the new-to-us plants and flowers we saw.
The weird warbling cries and calls of the birds in the trees
added to the exotic feeling.
After the buzz,
excitement and breezy
international flavor of
San Cristóbal, the laid
back warmth of this
jungle town charmed
us right away. The
sultry heat kept people
outside on our little
neighborhood street until late into the night, and we
discovered that many of the people enjoying the
outdoor eateries were locals who had just gotten off from work. A group of Mexican guys invited us
to sit with them at their table. "Welcome to the jungle!" they said. They hailed from Cancún and
Mérida, several hundred miles away in different directions, and they were as excited as we were
about spending a few days in the rainforest.
The town was wonderfully vibrant and self-possessed, despite being a tourist hub for the nearby ruins. The stores sold
everyday items like shoes, clothes, and electronics, and the uniformed school kids hung out in Burger King in the afternoons.
We had to hunt around a bit to find a shop with a souvenir t-shirt that said "Palenque" on it. On our walk down the main drag
the music poured out of every storefront in classic Mexican style, thumping modern pop tunes and loud Mexican songs.
One thing we love about Mexico is how easy it is to get immediate walk-
in service for anything from haircuts to dental work. While walking
around one afternoon, Mark was frustrated that his shorts kept slipping
down. We searched high and low for a belt, but after trying on at least
a dozen in several different stores, he just couldn't find one with the
right style and fit. Then we passed an open doorway where a guy was
kicked back in a chair, shirtless, watching the world go by. A sewing
machine sat idle in front of him. The most delicious aroma wafted out
from a back room. It seemed he was passing the time people-watching
until his wife served lunch. Mark poked his head in and asked if he
could take in his shorts. "No problema!" The fellow sprang into action,
throwing a tape measure around his neck. Mark stripped down to his
skivvies and handed him his shorts. Ten minutes and two seams later,
the man handed the shorts back to Mark. "Ahhh," he said putting them
on. He turned around a few times and wiggled to see if they'd slip.
"Much better!" We paid the tailor a few pesos and continued on down
the street.
The famous Palenque ruins were a short combi van ride from town. When we piled out of the
van at the entrance to the ruins we found ourselves in a shark pit of hustlers trying to sell
guided tours. These guides are freelancers who charge about 100 pesos ($8 USD) for a one
to two hour tour. Some speak English, all speak Spanish, but it wasn't clear just how much
they had studied the archaeological record of the site. "Why are there so many guides?" I
finally said in exasperation to the group crowding around us. "No jobs!" Fair enough.
We escaped the crowd and
discovered at the main front
gate that Mexican government
sanctioned tour guides offer
similar tours for 500 pesos
($40). These guides wear
official government badges. But
the guide we spoke to had been
in Tulum last week and
Guanajuato two weeks prior,
and on a two week jaunt around
Mexico with a Hollywood
celebrity before that. Hmmm.
His knowledge of Palenque??
We decided not to use the services of a guide but to enjoy the ambience of these stunning
ruins in our own way and at our own pace. Walking up the stairs from the entrance -- under a
thick canopy of jungle trees -- we emerged onto a grassy field where we were staring right at
the Temple de la Calavera. Wow. Next door, to the left, was Temple XIII and then Temple of
the Inscriptions.
Most of the structures were tall, yet massively
thick and squat. The dark stone was
formidable and imposing, set against the
bright green grass and dark green trees. All I
could think of was what it must have been like
to weed whack through the jungle to these
buildings, at the suggestion of a local Mayan,
as did the Spanish priest Pedro Lorenzo de la
Nada in 1567. The 16th century Mayans
called the place "Otolum," or "Land with
strong houses." The priest called it
"Palenque," Spanish for "fortification."
To my delight, just like
the Zapotec ruins at
Monte Alban, visitors
are allowed to scramble
up and down and all
around these ruins. It is
amazing and inspiring to
climb stairs that were
climbed fifteen hundred
years ago by people a
world away.
Palenque was first
settled in 100 BC, but
reached its heyday
between 600 and 800 AD, becoming the main power center in much of modern
day Tabasco and Chiapas. So while Rome was undergoing its various sackings
by the Vandals, Visigoths and Ostragoths in the fifth and sixth centuries, the
Mayan culture here was on the rise and not yet peaking.
Palenque was never a huge metropolis like Rome. In its prime
only 6,200 people called it home. However, the carved bas-
reliefs and inscriptions have divulged many secrets to insightful
archaeologists, and, to my amazement, we learned that the
entire dynastic line of kings is known by both formal name,
nickname and date, along with the history of the major events in
the city.
Powerful cities are prime targets for eventual sacking, and Rome
had company in Palenque a few centuries later. Palenque was
sacked by rival Calakmul twice: in 599 and 611. The second
defeat resulted in a break in the line of kings while the city
regrouped. An amazing 12-year-old boy emerged as king in
615, and during his 68 year reign he oversaw the rebuilding of
the city and the creation of many of the
buildings that are visible today. He
was nicknamed "the favorite of the
gods" and he was known as Pacal the
Great.
We walked through the parklike setting
of massive structures and crawled up
and down, in and around each
building.
The site is spread out over a square mile, and we were stunned to find out
that just 10% of the ruins have been excavated and rebuilt. The rest are
hidden in the surrounding jungle.
One of the most impressive and most studied excavations here was the
tomb of Pacal the Great inside the pyramid atop the Temple of the
Inscriptions. Unfortunately visitors aren't allowed inside.
Our cameras had led
us in different directions
by now, and I had lost
track of Mark's
whereabouts in this
vast site. He finally
turned up amid a cluster of elephant ear leaves. He cocked his head towards a path that
exited the grounds to one side, suggesting we head that way. We had seen tour guides
slipping off into the tangle of greenery to the right of the ruins with their clients when we first
entered the site. Now we followed the path in that direction. Stepping into the jungle, we were
quickly swallowed up by plant life.
Suddenly we heard the most horrendous noise -- quite
definitely the roar of a jaguar. It wasn't just a roar. It
was a growl, a bellowing snarl made by a huge and angry
animal really close by. And it wouldn't quit. It just went on
and on. I stopped dead in my tracks. Mark flashed a grin
at me. "I want to see what it is!" He disappeared down
the path ahead. "Are you kidding?" The roaring just
wouldn't stop. In fact, I suddenly realized that whatever it
was wasn't alone. There were two of them. Two jaguars
circling each other, somewhere terrifyingly nearby, jaws
agape, huge canine teeth bared.
I couldn't move. I just stood there transfixed, imagining wild, angry animals, and
wondering when Mark was going to come back. I imagined the headlines: "American
hiker found half eaten in Mexican jungle…" And who would find him if I kept standing
here? Oh dear. I screwed up my courage and continued down the path. At long last I
saw him standing with his camera held high recording the sound. Did he know what it
was yet? No! He continued moving towards the noise and I tromped through the brush
behind him, my heart in my throat.
Suddenly we saw another hiker up ahead, and then three more. All were
standing with their heads thrown back, craning their necks to look up
high in the trees. And there it was, an enormous, black howler monkey,
bellowing away without stopping even to catch his breath. He was big,
and apelike, with a long furry tail wrapped around a branch. We had
been told there were monkeys in the jungle, but I'd expected something
little and white, something nervous and yippy. Not a big hairy roaring
beast like this guy!
We stayed and watched the monkey and his mates moving about the
forest canopy for a long time. Finally the big guy grunted a few times,
settled down and fell silent. He had said all he wanted to say. The
heavy, damp, jungly woods were still. We tiptoed back out again,
thrilled at what we had seen. On our way out we passed the
unmistakable rock wall of an unexcavated building. What a cool place!
The impressive thing about
Palenque is the completeness
and detail of the buildings. The
Palacio is a huge structure with a
tall watch tower, or celestial
observatory -- or maybe it was
both.
Hallways and rooms and tunnels fill this enormous
structure, and we wandered freely through it.
This is a hot environment, and we found an intriguing
interior opening in a wall that seemed to act as a
vent, blowing a continual stream of cold air up from the stone rooms below ground level.
The Palace also had several T-
shaped windows that looked to me
like the perfect place to point a
weapon outwards while
remaining well protected behind
the rock wall. However, these
windows are theorized to have
something to do with the Mayan
god of the wind whose glyph is
also shaped like a T.
Many of the buildings are
decorated with ornate sculpted
images, most of which depict
historical events that archaeologists have miraculously been able to unravel. Several
have been set aside in the courtyard of the palace. What we found intriguing was the
surprising resemblance, in many ways, of the ancient peoples to some of the people
walking around Mexico today. Ironically, while the Spanish thought the builders of these
awesome ruins must have been Egyptian or Polynesian or anything other than the ancestors of the people they found living in
the area, it wasn't until 1831 that one Juan Galindo wrote of the resemblance.
We followed a narrow path that headed down, down and more down into a lower set of
buildings deep under the trees. Here we saw just how aggressive the jungle can be, as the
roots of very tall trees wrapped around the low walls of the ruins. Palenque was overtaken
by the jungle sometime after it was fatally sacked for the last time in 711 by the rival
community Toniná. The city was abandoned when the entire ancient Mayan civilization
fell, sometime in 10th century, almost six hundred years before the Spanish arrived.
There is a wonderful magic to
these ruins, and despite their
ongoing study and reconstruction,
we felt a deep mystery within their
walls that echoed in our souls.
We decided to stay in Palenque a
little longer so we could visit the
ruins of Yaxchilán & Bonampak.
Find Palenque on Mexico Maps.
San Cristobal – Colonial Delights & Spanish Immersion
Virgin of Guadelupe Church
Pretty architecture abounds in
San Cristóbal
The Cathedral
There are lots of places to take a stroll.
Colonial doorways
El Arco del Carmen
A less-visited back street.
Chocolatier "La Sonrisa del día" (the smile of
the day).
Real roof tile - what all those new Arizona
homes try to imitate.
A placement exam?!
What are we getting ourselves into?
Mark with one of his teachers, Jorge
Getting ready for class.
Got it? Good! Next topic...
My instructor Jorge taught me a lot
about life in Mexico.
Mayan women on a back street.
That's a lot of inventory for
a small girl.
Young travelers love San Cristóbal
Rotisserie grilled chicken - cheap and yummy.
A brass band suddenly starts playing.
The jingle of the propane truck provides the
soundtrack of San Cristóbal.
"Agua Agua!!"
A group of mountain bike riders on a Sunday morning.
Jaguar graffiti. Jaguars have special meaning to the
local indigenous people.
Courtyard arches in Casa Na-
Bolom.
Dining room table at the Casa Na-Bolom Museum.
Outside we found lush gardens.
Ingenious hot water heater / tortilla cooker at the
back of the garden.
Señor Fuego makes kindling.
San Cristóbal de las Casas (and Instituto Jovel), Chiapas, Mexico
Early March, 2012 - During our bus ride through
the southern part of Chiapas we could easily
see why many people consider it to be the most
beautiful state in Mexico. We soon discovered
that picturesque San Cristóbal de las Casas is its
crown jewel, a little colonial city right in the middle
of the state. Mexicans call it the "most magic" of
their specially honored "magic towns" around the
country.
Founded by the Spanish in 1528 (just 7 years
after Hernán Cortés barnstormed across Mexico)
and, for once, not built on top of an ancient city,
San Cristóbal is chock full of pretty churches and
antique architecture. Several streets are paved in
patterned stone slabs and have been set aside for
pedestrians only. From morning to night these
charming roads are filled with people. Outdoor
bistros line the walking streets, and there are
countless perfect places for sitting back and
people watching.
San Cristóbal is a lot like Oaxaca, but it is much
smaller, and it sits right on the so-called Gringo
Trail that takes travelers through southern Mexico
and Central America. After living on a boat on the
coast for so long, it was quite a dramatic change
for us to begin a period of extensive travel by bus
and hotel in the interior of Mexico. We suddenly
realized we had left the floating retirement
community of west coast cruisers and were now in
the center of the youthful international
backpacking crowd.
Europeans were everywhere, and we listened to
snippets of conversation in German, French and
Italian. The arrival point for these transatlantic
travelers was Cancún, and they were all making
their way by bus through the various colonial cities, stopping to
visit the ancient pyramid ruins, the waterfalls, lakes and volcanoes
that make this region famous.
Along with international
tourists there are lots of
international residents as
well. This gives San
Cristóbal a rather
sophisticated feeling
compared to the sandy
coastal beach towns we had
been seeing in our cruising
travels. Like other towns
that enjoy lively fun-filled
nights, this town is a late
riser. Few places open until
after 8:00 a.m., and lots of
coffee shops don't even start
pouring until 8:30 or 9:00.
But once things get rolling,
the streets are lined with
people sipping tasty
beverages and enjoying the
ambiance. We were delighted to find a terrific French bakery and
we gorged ourselves on flakey crusts and hot-out-of-the-oven
pastries. Baking is not a Mexican specialty by any stretch of the
imagination, so finding a native French baker in any town is always
a big score.
We had stopped into a fancy chocolatier's shop on our first night and then
bumped into another one the next day a few blocks away. Two wonderful
shops creating handmade chocolate just doors apart, how cool! Inside this
second shop there was a beautiful photo of a bicyclist riding on a path
towards a windmill and another photo of a large castle -- unusual decor for a
chocolatier in Mexico. The owner's father, a bent old man, came over to
explain to us in Spanish that he and his family had come from Bella Chiqué
in Europe and that their chocolate was not Mexican. They had brought all
their recipes and techniques from the old country to San Cristóbal.
"Bella What?" I was very puzzled about where he was from and where this
delicious chocolate was made, but his accented Spanish and my untuned
ears couldn't get it together. He repeated the name and explained it
was a tiny country on the north coast of Europe tucked between
France and Holland. Very small. Very lovely. I scratched my head.
My knowledge of European geography is fair, but this one stumped
me. I knew tiny places like Leichtenstein turn up at the Olympics to
dominate things like cross country skiing despite a quiet existence
wedged between larger European countries. So it seemed this tiny
country was another one I'd somehow missed. Mark and I laughed
about how little we really know about this big world of ours.
A while later the old man's daughter
came over to refill our coffee cups
and I joked with her that I would
have to look up Bella Chiqué on the internet and learn a little more about it, as it obviously was a
cool place I knew nothing about. Her eyebrows shot up and she looked at me in utter surprise
and then said in very halting English, "You...never hear of...Belgium people?" Oh my! What a
funny blunder! The Spanish word for Belgium is "Bélgica," pronounced something like
"Belheeka." Better work on that Spanish!!
San Cristóbal turned out to be a perfect place
for taking intensive Spanish classes. The small
Instituto Jovel is run by a German woman,
and the school teaches English, Spanish,
German, Italian, French and two indigenous
languages local to Chiapas: Tzotzil and Tzeltal.
We stopped by and signed up for "classes" at
the school, but after taking placement exams
we were each put in a class of one, as there
were no other students at our levels at the time. $100 for
a week of tutorial instruction - sweet!
The ten or twelve tiny classrooms in this school can hold
anywhere from 1 to 10 students each, and they are built around
a charming little garden. The upstairs classrooms have a view
over the garden and across the rooftops to the mountains in the
distance. It was an ideal place for us to take a breather from
traveling, tune our ears a bit more to the local lingo and loosen
our tongues to get that Spanish flowing.
We were each given two different Mexican tutors who had
certificates in teaching Spanish. Every morning we each spent
an hour and a half in tutorial with one teacher, took a five minute
break and then spent another hour and a half with the other teacher.
This was a wonderful system, as switching teachers mid-morning meant
we never got bored, and each teacher had a slightly different approach.
Any more than three hours a day of such intensive
instruction and our eyes would have glazed over
and our ears would have closed.
How much Spanish can you learn in a week? A
whole heckuvalot! Before Mark started, he knew
lots of Spanish nouns and adjectives but no verbs.
It's hard to construct sentences without those!
Raised in that era of American public education
when the teaching of English grammar was quietly
eliminated from the grammar school curriculum,
Mark was a little shaky with what, exactly, a verb
was when he walked into his first class.
"Who is the first person?" his teacher Gabriel asked,
leaning back in his chair. Mark fidgeted and looked
around uncertainly, and then said. "Dios mio!" (my god!). Gabriel burst out
laughing, "No - It's you!" With that, Mark was off and running. By the end of the
week he had covered most of a semester's worth of material. Suddenly he
started translating newspaper headlines and street signs and ads for me as we
walked around town.
My teachers did an intensive review of everything I had learned and forgotten in
the classes I took before our travels. Conversing exclusively in Spanish, we
practiced grammatical concepts while learning about each other's lives and
countries. We were very curious about each other, and we shared stories and
thoughts about life in the US and life in Mexico. We had some great laughs as
we uncovered our similarities and differences.
Mark and I spent the afternoons huddled over homework. Fortunately, the
weather had turned nasty and it drizzled for a few days, sending the
temperatures plummeting into the mid-fifties. We had absolutely no incentive to go
sightseeing in the afternoons, which was perfect.
By the time our week of classes ended, our heads were
spinning and our notebooks and pens had become
permanent fixtures in our hands. We stumbled out into the
streets of San Cristóbal and talked to anyone and everyone
who would listen
Little Mayan women in dark skirts
with infants strapped to their
backs wandered up and down the
streets selling their woven goods.
Their well trained children made
the rounds as well.
Modern day hippies meandered
through the streets too,
instruments strapped to their
backs. Sometimes they stopped
spontaneously to play a little street music.
The young international travelers like this town
because there are good cheap hostels and good cheap
eats. One of the best restaurants we found was a place that did rotisserie style grilled
chicken, vegetables and rice. Two big plates and two large cokes came to $5.75. No
wonder the under-25 crowd hung out here.
One day we were drawn into the street by the loud noise of a band trumpeting away.
Right there, under the shade of a large tree, a group of men were playing brass and
percussion. It sounded like a parade. People appeared in windows and emerged from
doorways to listen. Then someone started shooting off bottle rockets. Fsssssst-BAM! It
was like our own private 4th of July band concert! What a fun town.
The real sounds of San Cristobal
-- the ones that punctuated our
everyday lives -- were the jingling
of the propane truck and the
loudspeaker announcements of
the water truck. These two trucks
drove up and down the hilly streets all day long
every day, selling propane and water to homes
and businesses. You could hear them from half a
mile away as they moved around the city.
The propane truck got its jingle by dragging a
metal chain behind it on which were strung a
handful of metal rings. These rings clinked and
clanked on the cobblestone streets and against
each other as the tall propane bottles jiggled and
bounced around in the back of the truck. You
could definitely hear it coming. The water truck had a
different sound. A loudspeaker was mounted to its
roof and it would yell, "Agua Agua!!" followed by some
twiddly musical notes.
This was a town that managed to court the tourists while the residents lived
real lives. One Sunday morning we watched a group of mountain bikers
pedal past.
Possibly the biggest tourist attraction in town is the Casa Na-
Bolom Museum (Tzotzil for "House of the Jaguar"). This
unique property was once the residence of Frans and
Gertrude Blom, an explorer and a photographer who met and
fell in love while on independent expeditions into the nearby
rainforest in the 1930's. Their focus was the indigenous
Lancandon people, a very small group that lived so deep in
the rainforest that the Spanish never found them. When
Frans first met the Lancandones in the 1920's they were still
living much as they had for centuries.
The goal of the Bloms' work was to gather and make available as
much information as they could about the Lancondones. They wanted
to create a center for studying indigenous people, and host visiting
researchers who came to the area. Lovely bedrooms surrounded a
courtyard, and there was a big dining room and expansive research
library in the home. Since their respective deaths in the 1960's and the
1990's, their gracious property has become a museum as well as a
hotel and restaurant.
What we really loved in this museum were the gardens. Lush plants
surround the house in a wonderfully wild and rather chaotic landscape.
Overturned flower pots were mounted on light poles to create clever
landscape lighting, and the paths were bordered with upside down wine
bottles dug into the ground. There was a quirky sense of whimsy to this
place. Mark was soon lost among the flowers with his camera.
While wandering the pretty paths he came across the
garden's caretaker, an old man who appeared to live in a
ramshackle hut at one end of the garden. His nickname at
the museum was Señor Fuego (Mr. Fire), because he
always had his fire pit going. He had built the most
ingenious system for heating up water by rigging up a
tank, pipes and a valve. He ran the water through pipes
over his fire pit. This way he not only had hot water but he
had a place to cook tortillas as well.
He looked utterly
at peace in his
little corner, and
we watched him
tend his fire and
move about his
garden, weeding
and trimming. At
long last I said to him, "Tiene una buena vida." ("You
have a good life.") He smiled the happiest smile and
said, "Estoy muy contento" ("I'm very content"). If only
we all could find such joy and peace in such simplicity.
Our ten days in San Cristóbal finally came to an end,
and we hoofed it down to the bus station for another
twisting, winding bus ride up and over more mountain
ranges, heading north until we were slightly closer to
the Caribbean than the Pacific. Then we descended
into the exotic jungles of Palenque.
Find San Cristóbal on Mexico Maps.
Chiapas by Bus – A Day of Adventure
¡Vive México!
Quiet Marina Chiapas -- just Groovy and two sport fishing boats.
New thatch roofed palapa
restaurant under construction.
"Combi" or "Colectivo" van.
New train tracks will take cargo inland.
Shrimping fleet.
Puerto Madero market
Backwards tricycles take people around town.
They're everywhere.
We get a ride.
This little girl thought Mark's face was
worthy of a photo.
Marimba players
Sunrise in Marina Chiapas
Andrés catches a Sierra (Spanish Mackerel)
"Greyhound" type buses for inland travel.
Twisting mountain roads
We drove through countless busy little towns.
There were lots of military
checkpoints.
In town, the streets are for strolling.
We had to get through this!
Swinging footbridges connected the towns on
both sides of the river.
Our road clings to the mountainsides.
Watermelon stalls fill one mountain peak.
Scenic views on our route.
A landscaped sidewalk connects many towns.
We share the road with
travelers of all kinds.
We pull alongside a horse and cart.
High school kids try to flag down the bus.
We stop dead in our tracks while a
transformer is replaced.
We discover San Cristóbal is full of life…and nightlife.
Puerto Chiapas to San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico
March, 2012 - We were very happy to return to Mexico after
visiting Antigua, Guatemala. Groovy was waiting patiently for us
in the brand new Marina Chiapas, and the construction around
the marina was still on-going.
A new palapa building that will soon house a marina bar and
restaurant was getting its final rafters, and Groovy was one of just
three boats that had taken up residence at the still-not-officially-
open marina.
One day we took a crowded combi van to the big
nearby city of Tapachula and made the half-hour
trip scrunched up against a young family with a
toddler. The husband excitedly told us all about
the improvements coming to this small seaside
community of Puerto Chiapas. Besides the new
tourist marina, which is the pet project of ten of
Tapachula's captains of industry, the waterfront
is rapidly metamorphosing.
Once home only to a large shrimping fleet,
Puerto Chiapas has cleaned up the filthy shrimping process and now
has a cruise ship dock, a growing malecón, and plans to become a
major cargo shipping port with new train tracks that head to the inland
industrial hubs. This young dad was so thrilled by the prospects for his
small town that he nearly jumped out of the seat of the van as he
described the growth and what it would mean to his community. He
was most excited that the endless construction all around us was
supported by Mexico's President Calderón and the political power base
in Mexico City. His feelings of hope and anticipation for his hometown
and his young family were palpable.
That same joy filled the air in Puerto Madero, the small
town that fronts the harbor of Puerto Chiapas around
the corner from the new marina. This is a gritty small
town that bustles with color and noise, pungent smells
and spontaneous street music. It isn't a pretty town --
dust fills the air and, at first glance, it is dirty, decrepit
and run down -- but it hums with an inner vitality.
Smiles were abundant and all the streets were filled with crazy three-
wheeled backward tricycles that shuttled people from place to place.
Some of these trikes are made from the back half of a bicycle and
others are made from the back half of a motorbike, but all have a
skinny seat up front that is shaded by a flopping awning.
Passengers hop into the front seat and get a bumpy ride.
Mark couldn't resist trying one of these carnival
rides, and all of a sudden I was squeezing in next
to him and asking the driver to take us around
town. "Where?" he asked. "Oh, just up and down
the streets so we can look around!"
He was more than happy to oblige, and for 15 minutes or so he drove us up and
down all the narrow streets, waving to his friends while we giggled like little kids in
the front street. What fun!
Whole families would pile into these things, mom, dad and three kids hanging on;
old ladies would settle their shopping bags on the seat next to them; and
businessmen would spread out, relax, and fill the whole seat. In back, the driver
would pedal or roll on the throttle, and the little jalopy would jiggle and rattle
through town.
This is a tourist town for locals from Tapachula, the big city of half a million people
about 15 miles away, but it is far from an international destination. All the tourists
are weekenders and day-trippers looking for a few hours on the waterfront in a
small seaside village. Gringos are a rarity. So we got a great laugh when a little
girl pointed her camera at Mark -- from the safety of her seat next to her mom in
a combi van -- and took Mark's picture. We definitely stood out in this crowd.
Music played everywhere, mostly from
stereo speakers, but we rounded one
corner to see three men playing a
xylophone. They were totally in sync with
each other as each took one section of the
xylophone, and the music was lighthearted and fun. I later discovered that this long
legged xylophone was called a Marimba, an instrument that is prized and beloved
throughout the state of Chiapas. This one on the streets of Puerto Madero turned out to
be one of the first of many that we would see both here and further inland in the state in
the coming weeks.
Meanwhile the
Tehuantepeckers continued
to blow hard out in the gulf,
preventing other cruising
boats from crossing to
Marina Chiapas from
Huatulco, although many
boats were waiting on the
other side to make the jump. This meant life was very quiet for us
at night, as the two of us and Andrés, the captain on the sport
fishing boat parked a few slips away from us, were the only three
people actually living in the marina.
There was still no power or water at the marina, and soon we had
to make water to refill Groovy's water tanks. We invited Andrés to
accompany us on our excursion into the bay, and he grabbed his fishing pole and happily came along. There's no equivalent
Spanish expression for "A bad day spent fishing is better than a good day at work," but he knew exactly what we meant. He had
already finished his boat work for the day, so off we went.
It turned out to be a fantastic day fishing. After tooling around in the bay for just
a little while, Andrés caught a beautiful dinner-sized Sierra (Spanish Mackerel).
Back at the dock he cleaned it expertly and I made us all a dinner from it. We
had lots of fun chatting away in broken Spanish and broken English over a
gringo style meal, comparing notes on some of the crazy expressions that fill
both languages. Where we'll call a nice person a peach, Mexicans call a loved
one a mango, and where we sing "Happy birthday to you" they'll use the same
music and sing "You're a green toad." Seems funny, but it fits the music
perfectly, far better than the long words for "happy birthday:" "feliz cumpleaños."
In the afternoons of these
pleasant days at the
marina, the cabin of the
boat was hitting 90
degrees, no matter how
we shaded the deck or
cockpit. So we decided it
was time to head inland
into the cool mountains
once again.
We caught a combi van to Tapachula, and from
there took a large Greyhound style bus 200
miles inland to San Cristóbal de las Casas, a
quaint colonial town perched high up in the
mountains.
What a ride that turned out to be. We had
front row seats to an incredible show.
If an interstate existed, the trip would be just
a few hours. But not so on this route. The
tiny, twisting, single lane mountain road
crosses two mountain ranges. "Topes," or
speed bumps, are planted along these roads
every few miles and traffic slows to a crawl as
each vehicle spares its shocks and creeps
over the steep bump. Every ten miles or so a
town crowds the road into a chaotic traffic jam.
And in between all this mayhem, the military bring the whole road to a
halt at strategically placed military checkpoints. At several of these
checkpoints we were all herded off the bus to oversee the inspection of
our luggage in the baggage compartment.
I counted seven bus
stops, seven military
checkpoints, and an
infinite number of
"topes." All this
would have made us absolutely crazy with
impatience, but the spectacular scenery
and lively towns we passed through made
it all worthwhile, despite averaging 22
mph for the entire trip.
For many miles we paralleled a river that
had communities living on both banks.
Little swinging footbridges connected the
towns on either side.
At the summit of one mountain we saw endless watermelon stalls, and for many miles
every town was connected by a bright red brick sidewalk trimmed with large, brightly
colored flowering bushes that flanked the highway.
This highway is traveled by vehicles of all kinds, from our huge bus to
cars and trucks to horseback riders to walkers pushing carts. Uniformed
high school kids stood in the middle of the road trying to raise funds by
waving cars down. The bus driver hung out the window and bantered
with them as we drove by.
When we pulled into one
town the bus had to
negotiate some very tight
turns. We were just
commenting to each about
how hard it must be to drive
a huge bus on these tiny city
streets when the bus turned
a corner and suddenly faced
a complete roadblock. Some electrical workers were replacing a transformer
on a power pole, and their truck blocked the entire road. Oh well! Our bus
parked in the middle of the road, and we all piled out onto the street yet again.
This time rather than watching men with machine guns rummage through our
luggage, we all descended on the local convenience store to get snacks and
drinks. What a hoot! We hung around in the street munching chips and
getting to know each other while we waited for the workers to complete the
transformer installation. At long last they came down off the power pole,
moved their truck out of the way, and we continued on.
We enjoyed this drive a lot. The last two
towns, Comitán and Teopisca, looked so
appealing we were tempted to hop out
and stay a while. But San Cristóbal was
our destination, and at last, after nine
hours of climbing and descending, we
finally pulled into the charming city set at
7,500' altitude.
Dropping our
bags off at the
hotel and
dashing out into
the night we
found little kids
and parents, teens, tourists,
lovers and old folks all filling
the streets. The air was brisk
and everyone was in jackets.
A chocolatier lured us into his
shop with the most delicious
fresh chocolate treats, and a
few doors down the mellow
tones of saxophone blues drew
us into the middle of a photographer's opening exhibition at an art gallery.
The wine flowed, the hot tamales were passed around, and the crowd spilled out of the gallery
and down the block. We shivered in the bitter mountain air, but the spirit of this town was warm
and inviting. It was easy to settle into San Cristóbal, and we ended up staying for 10 days.
Find Puerto Chiapas and San Cristóbal on Mexico Maps.
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Other blog posts from our land and sea travel in Chiapas, Mexico:
- Gulf of Tehuantepec, Mexico – Squeezing in a crossing between blows
- Marina Chiapas in Puerto Madero (Puerto Chiapas) Mexico – Sailing near Guatemala
- Yaxchilan and Bonampak – Haunting Ruins & Ancient Art in the Jungle
- Agua Azul & Misol-Ha – Waterfall Adventures in Mexico
- Palenque – Ancient Mayan Ruins and Terror in the Jungle!
- San Cristobal – Colonial Delights & Spanish Immersion
- Chiapas by Bus – A Day of Adventure
- Antigua, Guatemala – Trying Hard for Tourist Dollars
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- How to Install Starlink Gen 3 in an RV? Use the Speedmount! 08/07/25
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- Is Forest River a Good RV? Well Built? Here’s Our Experience 06/20/25
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Antigua, Guatemala – Trying Hard for Tourist Dollars
A "Tehuantepecker" blows at 50 knots.
On another day and in a better mood.
We make our crossing in dead calm.
A cute pooch waits to sniff the next boat.
Colonial architecture and ornamentation is Antigua's
hallmark.
Pretty cobblestone streets get much needed repair.
Antigua is nestled in the mountains.
Mayans sell colorful weavings in front of a
church ruin.
The most popular form of transportation is small
motorcycles.
"McDonalds is my kind of place..."
"...my kind of happy place."
A sleek Porsche sets up the view of the cathedral.
The town lives for tourists.
Handmade chocolate bars.
Steel doors with viewing windows
protect the inhabitants inside.
The open air market.
Musicians set up street-side.
A bike shop where we picked up a pair of
awesome Guatemala jerseys.
A display of antique bikes.
Painted schoolbus that tourists are advised to avoid.
Our bus back to Mexico weaves through a bicycle race.
Antigua, Guatemala
Late February, 2012 - We returned to Huatulco from our inspiring days in Oaxaca, and focused our thoughts on crossing the
dreaded Gulf of Tehuantepec, a 250 mile stretch of coast between Huatulco and Puerto Chiapas that is prone to horrific storms
affectionately nicknamed "Tehuantepeckers." During these vicious blows the wind howls from the north in the Gulf of Mexico,
then crosses Mexico's narrow isthmus and finally accelerates to gale force once it hits the Pacific on the south side.
The trick to crossing this gulf is timing, as the Tehuantepec blows and calms down at regular intervals all winter long. Armed
with today's sophisticated weather forecasting and a bit of patience, it is not too hard to find a good time to make the jump. The
conventional wisdom is to wait for a three-day window of calm weather. We were lucky and got six.
Since the crossing takes a typical cruising boat anywhere from 32 to 48
hours, this allowed us plenty of time. Cruisers are advised to follow the
coastline with "one foot on the beach" (very close to shore) in case all
hell breaks loose unexpectedly, but we shot nearly straight across the
gulf in 36 hours of flat calm water and still air. We arrived at the brand
new Marina Chiapas rested and smiling.
We were now just 16 miles from the Guatemalan border, and the
check-in process included a boarding by four members of the Navy
and a cabin check by a drug-sniffing dog. The dog arrived with booties
on his feet so he wouldn't scratch up the boat. Very polite.
This marina is a great place to leave the boat for inland
explorations, and after a few days we packed our
backpacks and took an 8 hour bus ride to Antigua,
Guatemala. The distance isn't that far, but the bus
probably averaged 30 mph at best, as the roads were
twisty and there were lots of "topes," or speed bumps,
plus we made lots of stops.
The most important
stop was at the
Guatemalan border
where we all shuffled
off the bus, checked
out of Mexico,
walked across the border, and then checked into Guatemala. In the distance we saw people
crossing the river that defines the border, wading waist deep in water from one side to the
other, perhaps in an effort to avoid all the official border crossing paperwork. The border
area was chaotic with vendors filing the streets and money changers approaching us
constantly with wads of Mexican pesos and Guatemalan Quetzales clutched in their fists.
Our bus conductor shuttled us through the mayhem and we re-boarded our bus on the other
side, suddenly conscious that we were no longer in the familiar land of Mexico.
As the bus climbed and descended the mountainous terrain, we
crossed endless streams and rivers where women were
washing their families' clothes on the rocks. As the day wore
on and the washing was finished, each river we crossed was
strewn with clothes lying on the rocks to dry. We passed men walking alongside oxen and horses
carrying heavy loads, and we saw vast fields of sugar cane stretching into the distance.
Well after dark the road widened and the lights grew thick as we
approached Guatemala City. Suddenly our world was transformed
from extreme rural poverty to the glittering glitz and glam of new
wealth. Our fast, wide, multi-lane highway carried us at top speed
between flashy new buildings, and we watched in awe as all the
chain stores we have ever known flew past our window. The bus
station was deep downtown, however, and our driver had to slow to
a crawl and creep around sharp turns on narrow colonial streets
between crumbling antique buildings. We got stuck at one turn
where a parked car made it impossible for the bus to get around the corner without damaging
something. The driver hopped out, enlisted the help of a nearby cop and, to cheers from the
passengers, bent a large metal street sign back to allow the bus to pass without getting too
scraped up.
Once at the terminal, our bus conductor helped us negotiate a taxi ride
to Antigua, and soon we were being whisked along those same decrepit
inner city streets in a cab. At a red light the driver reached over and
manually locked each of the four doors of the cab. Mark and I
exchanged a look of surprise as we both us silently acknowledged that
we were truly in a new country.
Quetzales are currently about 7.7 to the US dollar, and I began
thinking about quick ways to handle this new exchange rate in
my head. I calculated and recalculated the gas prices I saw
posted at the gas stations, stunned by the prices. Gas was
nearly $5 per gallon, a far cry from the $3.30 or so that was
typical in Mexico. After about 45 minutes we arrived in Antigua.
It was around 7:30 pm, and we were surprised to find the
streets nearly empty. We had to ring the doorbell next to the
sturdy steel front door of our hotel to be let in. After dropping
off our bags in our room, we asked for suggestions of where to
get a bite to eat.
The hotel manager shrugged noncommittally and suggested we'd find something
within a few blocks. We took off into the night and walked a star pattern around our
hotel. The only people we saw on the streets were a handful of loud gringo tourists. It
took a good bit of walking before we found a restaurant that was open. A single gringo
patron was at the bar drinking a beer. The waitress was sullen. We ate in silence in a
room full of empty tables. Where the heck was everybody? The tab for two beers and
a small plate of french fries came to over $10. This was definitely not Mexico.
By day the mood
improved slightly.
Brilliant sunshine
filled the streets
and we found them
peopled with tall
gringos speaking
English in various
accents and tiny
Mayans selling woven textiles. The
architecture was wonderfully decorative
and old, and the narrow streets were all
cobbled, many in need of repair.
Antigua is known for its immersion
Spanish schools, and we had come hoping to take a week or two of classes
while living with a Guatemalan family during our stay. Apparently that was
why most other people were in town as well. There is a Spanish school on
every corner and several more on every street in between. There must be a
hundred Spanish language schools in this small town.
The teaching method is tutorial, and the price is generally $100 per week for
4 hours a day of tutorial work and $90 per week for a home stay that includes
meals with the family. All over town we saw pairs of people walking, sitting,
pointing and talking. Each pair was made up of one Guatemalan teacher and
one gringo student actively engaged in Spanish tutorials. Many solitary
gringos carried books around town, and students could be spotted
everywhere crouched over homework, their dictionaries, textbooks and
notebooks spread out on bistro tables next to their cups of coffee.
We took photos freely, trying to get the warm
and fuzzies for this odd place. After an hour
or so, however, Mark commented that he felt
really uncomfortable wearing his camera and wouldn't bring it out
again on our explorations around town. He found it attracted way
too much attention -- people were staring at it.
One of the best things we found in Antigua was its amazing
McDonald's, definitely the prettiest one we have ever seen anywhere.
It has a beautiful outdoor seating area with cushioned seats and sofas
(very popular for tutorial Spanish lessons). Its delightful shaded patio
looks out onto a lush garden filled with flowers. Ronald McDonald sits
on the park bench in the middle of the garden, his arms outstretched
on the back of the bench, inviting folks to take a seat and get a photo
with his iconic figure.
We stopped in and filled our
gringo tummies to the brim.
How awesome it was after
months of tacos to savor
one of the new Angus
burgers! We sat back and
relaxed for a moment, until
Mark noticed that a little kid
had made his way into the
bushes next to us to within
arm's reach of our table and
was eyeing up my camera
in front of me. "That kid is really interested in your
camera…" Mark commented. I grabbed it and
put it in my backpack. There was a creepiness
to this town that we were not accustomed to
feeling in Mexico.
The church ruins around town were lovely in a
way, but most had an air of abandonment.
Antigua is situated in a zone rich with
earthquakes, and each glorious cathedral and
church has been gutted repeatedly by
centuries of tremors and shakes.
The tourist map shows numbered streets that
are laid out with avenues in one direction and
streets in another. The street signs, however,
harken back to an earlier era when the streets had names that weren't numbers. So we felt our
way around town by becoming familiar with landmarks. However, because all the streets look
somewhat alike, the best landmarks turned out to be the people that inhabited the streets. Take
a left at the guy in the white shirt with no legs who lies on his back and holds out a tin cup (he's
on that corner everyday). Take a right at the man in the dark blue jacket who's missing both a
foot and an arm and reaches his good hand towards you clutching a shiny Quetzal coin in hopes
that you'll give him another.
In stark contrast, parked a few feet from the old woman in the tattered shawl who was hunched
over her begging basket was a brand new Porsche with Guatemalan plates. A few cars
down was a glistening BMW. Big shiny Range Rovers were common. Between these fancy
cars, over at one of the town's large public fountains, a line of women washed their families'
clothes in the outdoor pools under the
ancient church's stone arches. Tiny
tuk-tuks zipped all over the place,
ferrying people on bumpy rides up
and down the matrix of streets.
On our third day, in an effort to get
comfortable in this rather inhospitable
town, we moved from one hotel to
another a few streets away. We tried
to take one of these tuk-tuks so we
wouldn't have to carry our bags.
The hotel matron had told us not
to pay more than $1.50 for
the ride, but none of the
drivers would go that low,
and all drove off in disgust at
the idea of taking us a few
streets for less than $3. We
walked instead and were
glad for the exercise. In
Mexico, five mile taxi rides in
real cars were routinely just
$2 or so. Our sticker shock
in Antigua just didn't stop.
We had narrowed down our
school choice to either the highly rated (and new)
Antigua Plaza or to tutorials and a home-stay with a woman who taught
independently and had been recommended by a fellow cruiser. Both seemed
like they could be wonderful situations for improving our Spanish. But in
discussing life in Antigua with the school director we were strongly advised not to
go out at night, not to carry more than a few dollars in our pockets at any time,
and never to show our cameras in public. We were assured the school was safe
behind it's solid locked gate (and the outdoor setting for class tutorials in the
colorful garden was absolutely lovely), but the director confessed that she
preferred not to go out much herself.
An older woman walking her dog in a stroller caught our eye that afternoon and
we struck up a conversation. She had lived in Antigua for as an ex-pat for 12
years. "Don't go out at night," she suddenly said. "Don't carry more than $10 in
your pocket. And don't let anyone see your camera!" Here was the same
unsolicited advice again!! She explained that tourists and business people have
been targeted by "express-kidnappers" who zip up on a scooter
and either run the victim around town to ATMs to empty their bank
account, or strip them of their belongings at gun point. A woman
who refused to give up her bag in a recent robbery in
Antigua had been shot in broad daylight. "Things have
gotten really bad in the last six months," she told us.
Both of our hotels were barricaded by large doors that
were locked at all times. Guests were not given keys to
these front doors but instead had to ring a doorbell to be let
in. At night each hotel had a second steel door that
provided extra protection. When you rang the bell the
manager slid open a small window and peered out at you
before letting you in.
Antigua seemed to wear a superficial veil of prettiness over
a dark inner core of of fear.
We looked for signs of normalcy around town, for people who lived and worked in
Antigua outside of the tourist trade. We found few. There were none of the typical
Mexican tienda convenience stores or fruit stands or grocery stores or hardware
stores or clothing stores or pharmacies that make a community livable. A handful of tiny closet-sized stores sold
Budweiser-equivalent beer for $2 a can ($12 a six-pack) and expensive packaged snacks. Spontaneous smiles from the
locals were almost nonexistent.
The only place that offered a feeling of
congeniality was the large open air market at one
end of town. Here we saw imported fruits
(Washington apples) and local fruits and
vegetables of all kinds. Heading into the large
tents at the back of the market we discovered
where American designer clothes end up once
they've been marked all the way down. Racks
and racks of brand new clothes filled the back of
the tent.
Unsorted,
occasionally dirty,
and a few still
showing their original
store tags, these brand new
designer label clothes were strung
up alongside used duds. We were
amazed to be able to buy a brand
new pair of Levi jeans, tags and all,
for $4 and several pairs of new
name-brand shorts for even less.
The economics in Antigua baffled
us. If the folks on the street had
seemed happy it would have been a
lot less unsettling.
We left Antigua after four days never having
gotten comfortable enough anywhere in town
to stay for a whole week of Spanish classes.
Other cruisers who had been to Antigua in
years past thought we were crazy not to have
fallen in love with the city, and other travelers
will surely have different experiences. But for
us it was a place we were very glad to leave
behind. Upon crossing the border back into
Mexico we both looked at each other and
laughed, saying, "Thank goodness we're back
in Mexico!"
The homes seemed better kept, there was a lot less trash on the roads, and
in no time we saw the happy grins and heard the exuberant laughter of the
locals that make Mexico so much fun.
Upon our return to Groovy in the marina at Puerto Chiapas, I researched the
travel advisories from the UK, Canada and the US to Guatemala, El Salvador
and Honduras to try to find out whether the scary vibe we felt in Antigua was justified. I discovered the warnings to each of
those countries are not only severe but are expressed in a totally different tone than those to Mexico. Even with the terrible
drug wars, the murder rate in Mexico in 2011 was 18 per 100,000, about the same as Atlanta. In Guatemala it is 41, a little
higher than Detroit (34) but less than St. Louis (45) which is the highest in the US. El Salvador's murder rate is 71 per 100,000
(the second highest in the world) while the rate in Honduras tops it, for first place, at a whopping 86.
Unlike Mexico where tourists have not historically been targeted by violent criminals (until
the recent bus robbery in Puerto Vallarta), tourists in these other countries have been
targeted along with business people because of their perceived wealth. Although each
advisory was quick to point out that the vast majority of travelers never have any trouble,
they also helped us come to grips with the unnerving sense of danger that we felt while we
were there. An El Salvadorian on the bus with us back to Mexico told us there had been 20
murders in his small village in the last two months. Not mincing words for a moment he
said quite plainly, "El Salvador is a beautiful country, but I wouldn't recommend that you
travel inland there now."
We settled back into life in the brand new Marina Chiapas for a few days. We were one of
just three boats staying there, as construction around the marina was still in full swing and a
dredge blocked the entrance to the marina. Not sure which direction to head with Groovy,
we decided instead to take another inland tour, this time on the Mexican side of the border
through the intriguing Chiapas countryside to the charming colonial city of San Cristobal
de las Casas.
Find Antigua on Mexico Maps.
Oaxaca’s “Mitla Tour” – Ancient Zapotec Ruins & More!
Santa María del Tule
Home of the "Tule Tree"
The "Tule Tree," 190' around!
The baby Tule Tree, just 1,000 years old.
What fantastic creatures lurk here?.
"Tuk-tuk" taxis zipped everywhere.
Zapotec weavings in Teotitlan
del Valle.
All these colors were obtained from flowers or bugs.
Our sea turtle rug.
Hierve el Agua is a unique,
mystical place.
A manmade pool to control the water flow a bit.
Kids play in the water.
A thin film of water leaves a
microscopic layer of minerals behind.
Waterfall frozen in time.
Petrified waterfall at Hierve el Agua.
Reminded us of Yellowstone but the water was cool..
Our charming tour companions.
Mitla is square and ornate, very different than Monte Alban.
Intricate patterns like this adorn every wall inside and out.
Precise mortarless stonework from 2,000 years ago.
Massive lintel over a short doorway.
One of the interior rooms.
Impressive dovetail corner joinery made
of precisely cut decorative stone.
No two patterns on the buildings are alike.
One of the underground tombs.
Mezcal makers!! The king of Matatlan.
There are hundreds of varieties of mezcal.
Young blue agave plants.
Pineapple-like core used to make mezcal.
First they are cooked over a fire.
Then they are crushed under a rotating wheel.
The duration of the fermentation makes all the
difference in the taste.
Here, try this one!!
Mitla Tour, Oaxaca, Mexico
Mid-February, 2012 - We enjoyed the Monte Alban ruins and history so
much we decided to take another trek out to the other side of Oaxaca to
see the ruins at Mitla. The easiest way to do this was with a van-based
tour, and our day-trip included several colorful stops in addition to the
tour of the Mitla ruins.
The first stop was in the cute town of Santa María del Tule, home
of the famous "Tule Tree." The funny thing about an organized
tour like this is that you follow the pace of the leader. Our
designated stop here was just a half hour or so. But it was such an
appealing little town that I'm sure if we had been on our own we
would have probably stuck around for a day or two!
The Tule plant is a grassy reed related to cat tails that was used by the
indigenous peoples to make mats, shelters and boats. It grows in
abundance in and around Santa María del Tule. The "Tule Tree" is
actually a Sabino (Montezuma Cypress) tree, totally unrelated to the
Tule plant, but it is affectionately known as the "Tule Tree" because it
was once surrounded by tule reeds.
According to the sign in front of the tree, this monster is
over 2,000 years old, 190' in girth around the trunk, 138'
tall, 28,846 cubic feet in volume and 636,107 tons in
weight. It is considered to be the widest tree (the one with
the largest girth) in the world. Our tour guide suggested
that if we couldn't fit the whole tree in our cameras we
could always buy a souvenir postcard instead!
Just around the corner stands the offspring of this famous tree. It is a
mere 1,000 years old and not quite as large -- and it was all by itself
without a crowd around it elbowing each other to get a photo! Of course
neither of these trees is quite as humongous overall as the giant
sequoia named General Sherman that stands 275' tall and has a
volume of 52,000 cubic feet. Nor is either quite as old as the bristlecone
pine called Methuselah which has had its rings painstakingly counted to
total 4,841 years of age.
The trunk is
very gnarled
and people
see all kinds
of shapes
and creatures
in its depths.
Scooting around the streets of town we saw these funny looking three-
wheeled vehicles. These tiny taxis, called "tuk-tuks," buzzed all over the
place, not just in Santa María del Tule but in other towns we passed along
the way.
Our next stop was at Teotitlan del
Valle, home of about forty families of Zapotec weavers. We had met the son of one of
these families in the harbor town of Santa Cruz in las Bahías de Huatulco where he had set
up a loom and quietly turned out one brilliant woolen rug after another. Here we were
given a demonstration of the traditional methods used by the Zapotecs to spin and dye
their wool.
The demonstration started with the
original Zapotec method of spinning
wool which involved a balancing a
spool precariously on one knee.
What luck the Spaniards showed up
way back when and brought the
familiar spinning wheel with them.
Even so, two daring members of our
group tried to spin a little wool using
this more conventional old fashioned
spinning wheel, and neither met with
much success as the wool kept
separating in their fingers.
It was amazing to learn what the Zapotecs used for dyes to create the vibrant colors of
their wool. Starting with either white, grey or brown wool right off the sheep, they get
bright blue from the indigo plant, using ash to fix the color. Green comes from moss,
using salt to fix the dye. Yellow is from marigolds. Most intriguing, however, was that
they squash an insect that makes a cocoon on prickly pear cactus leaves, and the
squished bug produces a vibrant blood red dye. How much trial and error did it take
over the years to perfect these methods?
Again, we could have lingered for a long time in this shop and in the town in general. I
love wools and yarns and weaving, and the intricate designs, both modern and
traditional, were fantastic. We did end up holding up the tour van for a few minutes
while we negotiated to buy a lovely small rug featuring sea turtles. It had been woven
from undyed sheep wool by Rafaela, whom I met (but didn't think to photograph--darn!).
In all the thousands of miles we have sailed our boat in Mexico, the most common
wildlife sighting we have had everywhere has been sea turtles. In places
there are literally hundreds of them. So this seemed a perfect souvenir.
Jumping into the tour van for more adventures, we drove a long way out to
Hierve el Agua ("boiling water"), a phenomenal oasis of pools and petrified
waterfalls out in the mountainous hinterlands.
Apparently
"undiscovered"
until the mid-1980's, this grouping of shallow pools and
calcified deposits is reminiscent of parts of Yellowstone
National Park, except the water is cool.
In the distance three large waterfalls stand frozen in time,
suspended forever mid-fall. A thin trickle of water drips over the
edge, leaving behind a microscopic layer of mineral deposits to form
the next cascade. There is a mystical, ethereal quality to this place.
Kids played in the pools and
everyone crawled all over the site, testing the
water with their hands and taking endless
pictures.
Just as the sun
started to come out,
giving the whole place
a wonderful glow, it
was time to jump back
into the van with our
tour buddies to make
the trek to the
Zapotec ruins of Mitla.
One of the highlights of this tour was meeting the other folks that
were along for the ride with us. Three charming young women
from England filled the back seat and an older Danish couple was
up front, giving our van a decidedly European flair. The English
gals were in their first week of a three month trans-Central America
tour, and we all bubbled with excitement as we talked about the
places we'd been and where we wanted to go.
Mitla's construction was begun by the Zapotecs in more or less
the same era as Monte Alban, a few hundred years BC,
although Mitla's first inhabitants settled there much earlier. And
like Monte Alban, Mitla was built by the Zapotecs but ended up
under Mixtec control. However, in the years between 750 AD
and the arrival of the Spanish in the 1500's, Mitla was thriving
whereas Monte Alban was already in decline.
Monte Alban is built
on a hilltop while
Mitla is built in a
valley, and Monte
Alban was a city
made up of pyramids
whereas Mitla has
long and narrow
rectangular rooms
and appears possibly
to have been palatial
housing for the most
noble families as well
as a religious center. Mitla was still functioning when the Spanish arrived (the Zapotec
population in all the outlying areas was some 500,000 people by then), and after
determining that the high priest at Mitla was similar to the pope back home, the
conquistadors promptly took up residence, dismantled and sacked as many of the buildings
as they could, and used the stones to build a church on top of one end of the ruins.
Just as stunning as the massive
pyramids at Monte Alban is the
incredibly fine stonework of the
frescoes at Mitla. Each wall is
trimmed in intricately detailed
stonework patterns, all of which
were made by cutting perfectly
sized stones that fit onto one
another like jigsaw puzzle pieces,
held together without mortar.
Huge lintels lie across very low doorways,
and the corners of each room are made
with a dovetail style stone joinery, again
without mortar.
This construction is so finely and so tightly fitted, and
the walls are so massive, that a 1931 8.0 earthquake 50
miles away that damaged 70% of the buildings in the
city of Oaxaca didn't even make these buildings flinch.
"Mitla" means "Place of the dead" in the Aztec's Nahuatl
language, and the Zapotec name for the area has the
same meaning. The early Spanish conquistadors
interpreted the name as "Hell," and there are several underground tombs -- all
highly decorated with the intricately interwoven stone patterns -- where nobles and
high priests were buried and sent off to the afterlife, wether it was up to the
heavens or down.
I could have easily roamed
these ruins for quite a bit
longer, but the van was on a
mission, and this time it was
headed to a Mezcal tasting.
Actually, in hindsight, giving
up a few more moments with
the ancients for a quick
education in the art of
Mescal making
wasn't such a
bad trade-off
after all.
Like France's Champagne which is made only in Champagne,
Mexico's Tequila is made only in Tequila, about 40 miles outside of
Guadalajara, and a few other areas designated by Mexican law. All
other identical libations made from the blue agave plant in other parts
of Mexico are called Mezcal instead. And there are hundreds!
We stopped at a little place that still
makes Mezcal the old fashioned way.
After about 7 or 8 years the agave plant
has a pineapple looking core that is
removed, trimmed and cooked over a
fire.
It is then crushed using a heavy wheel
going round and round, driven by a
horse who has the fun job of walking in
circles. This creates a stringy material
that looks like hay that gets boiled in a
kiln. Eventually it is strained and placed
in casks to ferment.
The effect of the length of fermentation
was the amazing part to me. Blanco
("white") mezcal -- the common, cheap
transparent stuff -- is aged less than two
months and burns a fiery path down your
throat and tastes terrible. Reposado
("rested") mezcal is aged 2 months to two
years in an oak barrel and is barely
tolerable. Añejo ("aged") mezcal is aged
for one to three years, barely tickles your
throat and has a pleasant flavor.
Extra Añejo ("extra aged") is aged for three
years or more, goes down waaaay too
easy, and tastes terrific. It's a good thing
they were serving this stuff in thimble sized cups.
We tried some "crema" mezcals too, that is, flavored mezcals
made with cream. The mango one was good enough that the
Danes purchased a bottle to take home with them, while we
and the English gals sampled the pineapple and some others I
forget now (we were having fun!). The folks at the counter
would happily have kept on serving, but we needed to be able
to find our way back to the van, so we eventually said
"Enough!" and staggered off.
It was a great day on the outskirts of Oaxaca and the perfect
conclusion to our inland travels. But Groovy was waiting for us back in Huatulco and it
was time for us to face the much feared crossing of the Gulf of Tehuantepec and head
to Puerto Chiapas and then inland to Antigua, Guatemala.
Find Oaxaca (Mitla) on Mexico Maps.
Huatulco – Pacific Mexico’s Best Cruising
Resort rides on Tangolunda Bay.
Fish swim around our legs.
Wonderful photo ops abound, but the little alcoves
aren't 100% private!
Coast Guard cutter at Huatulco's cruise ship dock.
Cute harbor town of Santa Cruz.
Dorado! ("mahi-mahi").
Zapotec weaver Martín
Ledí says a few
Zapotec words to us.
La India cove is tucked behind some rocks.
Tourists enjoy a day on the water.
Turtle tracks in the sand.
Beach treasure.
Wonderful walking path to town.
La Crucecita was built to
resemble a classic Mexican
town.
The buildings are brightly painted.
Town church.
The vibe in La Crucecita is not as
welcoming as we expected.
Thick green vegetation abounds.
Hardwood from the Huanacaxtle tree.
Zapotec artifact found in the
Copalita ruins.
Museum piece.
A small Zapotec pyramid temple in Copalita.
Mark loves these trees.
Could be Treebeard's buddy.
Beautiful stone walking path climbs
through the jungle to an overlook.
Looking down at the shore outside Tangolunda Bay.
A moth poses on a window at the
park's headquarters.
Huatulco, Oaxaca, Mexico
Early February - There are 7 main bays in Las Bahías de Huatulco and
an assortment of coves, making the total number of bays and coves
anywhere from 9 to 12, depending on what guide you read and who you
talk to. Each one is unique and has a charm of its own. Some are
protected as part of a national park, some are lined with a row of palapa
beach bars, and some have been developed for tourism.
Tangolunda Bay was set aside by Mexico's tourism
agency Fonatur for resort development, and we anchored
first at the west end of the bay and then moved down to
the east end where we found a little less swell and a lot
less noise from the resorts. There was lots of color and action on the beach, and even the fish made themselves readily
available for easy viewing if you stood in the water up to your knees.
This is a rocky and craggy coast, and we climbed over several rock
outcroppings to get from one part of Tangolunda's main beach to the next.
These rocks made perfect photo-ops for all of us tourists. One afternoon
we climbed around a corner to find a simmering scene: an amorous young
fellow was taking photos of his girlfriend nude in the sand. It wasn't quite as
private a spot as they'd thought!
These were quiet days that
rolled from one into the next
until we weren't quite sure
what day it was and couldn't
exactly recall what we had
done just two days prior.
Wandering the resort grounds
and watching the jet-skis and
catamarans zoom around while kids
played in the water were the simple
pleasures of our resort-side living.
One day we heard a very amusing
exchange on the radio between an
arriving US Coast Guard ship and
the Port Captain on shore. In
Spanish, the Coast Guard
announced their arrival and asked
permission to dock. The Port
Captain asked for
the name of the Coast Guard ship and the name of the captain.
The American speaker seemed to be confused by these questions
but when the Port Captain switched to perfect English he got no
response. Apparently the Coast Guard had gone in search of a
more fluent Spanish speaker on board and had left the mic
unattended. Finally a new Coast Guard voice began speaking in
rapid Spanish, and their business was completed. The Coast
Guard cutter made quite a sight at the cruise ship dock.
The charming waterfront harbor town at the heart of the Bays of
Huatulco is called Santa Cruz, or "Holy Cross." This cute
harbor is unlike any other we've seen on the Pacific Mexican
coast. Filled with small boats and surrounded by a tight ring of
condos, villas and restaurants, it is a great place to take a stroll.
This is a popular sport
fishing area, and a
guide had just finished
yet another successful
trip with a boatload of guests.
He was making quick work of
carving up three huge dorados to
send home with them.
Around the corner we met Martín, a Mexican of
Zapotec descent who is carrying on the weaving
tradition of his family. His parents, siblings,
cousins, aunts and uncles are all weavers in the
mountain town of Teotitlan del Valle 150 miles
inland. It is a place known for the colorful woolen
rugs the local families weave by hand. Bringing
his craft and his loom to the coast, he set up shop
in the artisan's area in Santa Cruz. We hadn't heard of these weavers and knew little
about Zapotecs, and were amazed to discover that not only was Zapotec a vibrant, living
language, but he could speak it. I asked if he'd been raised speaking Zapotec, and he
said that he'd learned it in school -- after he learned English!
As I struggle daily to converse in Spanish, speaking with less
fluency than a six-year-old, I am always impressed by anyone that
speaks a language other than their mother tongue. A young
Zapotec woman named Ledí whom we had met a few days earlier
agreed. Her parents and grandparents all spoke Zapotec, but had
never spoken it to her when she was growing up. She taught us
the few words that she did know. We later learned that Zapotec is
similar to Chinese in that it is a tonal language
where word meanings and tenses change with
inflection.
After a few days of anchoring next to the little
harbor town of Santa Cruz and enjoying some
in-town activity, we went out to one of the more
remote bays in the National Park. La India cove
is a tiny nook tucked behind some rocks that
offers a calm refuge for two or three boats.
Every day the party boats would arrive from
town, bringing tourists out to walk on the golden sand beach and
snorkel the coral reefs.
They would disappear as the sun lowered in the sky and we would
have the cove to ourselves. Walking along the neighboring beach
Playa Chachacual one morning, we saw what looked like 4-wheeler
tracks running up and down the sand to the water's edge. On closer
inspection they were sea turtle tracks. At night the mother turtles
would paddle up through the sand to lay their eggs. One morning
some rangers with big sacks came to the beach to collect the eggs to
take them to a nearby turtle sanctuary.
The quiet and solitude of this pretty cove
made simple things seem very special.
Even the waves had a jewel like quality.
Before the string of bays was converted into
a tourism destination, the tiny harbor town of
Santa Cruz was just a fishing village and there was nothing else around. When the Mexican government
started their development project in the mid-80's, they relocated the villagers inland about a mile to a new town
they built called La Crucecita. This made way for resorts, condos and upscale living for tourists on the waterfront.
They also developed an estuary into a marina and built wide roads between the two towns and the marina. Along
the center of the roads there is a big grassy median with a
wonderful sidewalk that is shaded by rustling palms. We
moved Groovy into the marina for a few days and enjoyed
many walks into the two towns.
La Crucecita has been hailed by some tourists as "the
cleanest town in Mexico." It was built to look like a
traditional Mexican town, complete with a pretty town
square, band stand and park benches.
The buildings are cute and brightly painted, and every
restaurant has hamburgers and pizza on the menu.
Of course Mexicans love those foods too, although they
like them with a special flair. We had to laugh when we
read the ingredients for the "Kansas" pizza offered at one
shop: tuna, mushroom and onion. The "Arizona" pizza was
hardly better: ham, mushrooms & jalapeños. But it was the
"Texas" pizza that really
got our stomachs
rolling: bacon, beans,
mushrooms and
jalapeños. On pizza?
The odd thing we
noticed in this self-
consciously picture
perfect little town was
that the people didn't
seem very happy or friendly. We have
grown used to the big smiles, warm
greetings and general contentment of the
Mexicans we meet on the street. It is a happy culture. But the towns in Huatulco didn't
seem so. Eyes were averted as we passed and greetings were non-existent. Too often
the mood was downright sullen. Fonatur built a town that has the right look, but a tourism
agency can't give a community soul.
However, although this
manufactured fantasy town is just a
few years old, it sits in a region whose roots go much further back. A few
miles out of town we found the Copalita Eco-Archaeolocal Park, a gem of
a park that features ancient Zapotec ruins and artifacts along with a terrific
jungle hike to some vast ocean views.
The vegetation here is
exotic and thick, and while
we waited for a taxi we
stared in wonder across
the street at the blanket of
green that lay in a thick
carpet over lumpy shapes.
The park's buildings and some walkways were
built using a local hardwood from the
Huanacaxtle tree -- the same tree for which the
very popular town among cruisers, "La Cruz de
Huanacaxtle" near Puerto Vallarta, is named.
The main building houses a small museum with
Zapotec artifacts that were dug up at the temple ruins
onsite as well as artifacts from Mixtec ruins nearby.
Outside we followed the walking path to the ruins of a
small pyramid-shaped temple.
Following the path further, it took us
through all kinds of crazy vegetation. Mark
is a born tree-hugger and a true man of the
woods, so he was in his element as he
stepped among the vines. Some of the
trees seemed worthy of J.R.R. Tolkien's
curious tree people, the ents.
Exotic bird calls accompanied us as we followed the elegant
stone path up and up and up until we came to a vast overlook
where the ocean crashed on the rocks below.
The path then took us back down into wetlands where we saw
huge, strange leaves, and tiny, colorful flowers.
Of all those beautiful wonders of nature,
my favorite sighting for the day was the
moth on the window back at the main park building.
Unlike all the gorgeous birds we had seen who refused to
stand still for the camera, this guy was totally relaxed on
his bit of window, and he stayed put for us.
After all of this low-key coastal activity, we tucked Groovy into her slip for a few days and
hopped on a bus to visit the dynamic inland city of Oaxaca.
Find Huatulco on Mexico Maps.
Visit Anchorages on Mexico's Southern Pacific Coast
to see more cruising posts from this area!
Oaxaca’s Monte Alban – Mysterious Ancient Zapotec Ruins
Carved stone figures at Monte Alban's museum.
A local school group is on a field trip.
The teacher asks which god he is pointing to.
Elaborate clay urn.
Monte Alban sits high on a hill overlooking the
Oaxaca Valley.
A vendor shows us his
artifacts.
The vendors are everywhere.
Zapotec ball court.
Monte Alban pyramid.
Looking across the central plaza.
"You are here" in Zapotec.
"Los Danzantes" - Captured
rival leaders castrated &
ready for sacrifice.
School kids burn off energy out on the stairs.
Now they can sit still for a class picture.
Restored pyramid building.
Pyramid building unchanged since "discovery" in the early 1800's.
Painstaking work numbering all the stones and resetting
them in the walls.
Courtyard of the Oaxaca Cultural Center in the Santo
Domingo Cathedral.
Ceiling art in the Cultural Center.
Grand double staircase in the Cultural Center.
Fine gold Mixtec handiwork.
Crystal urn.
Mixtec jewelry from Tomb #7
Clay sculpted urn.
God of old age and wisdom (note
the wrinkled skin).
Monte Alban, Oaxaca, Mexico
Mid-February, 2012 - Just six miles outside of Oaxaca are the
outstanding and thought provoking ancient Zapotec ruins of Monte
Alban. We took a public bus to get there and found the first museum
room filled with carved stones. The carvings featured crazy looking
animals and people.
We came in right behind a
school group, and I was as
intrigued by this group as
by the carved stones. It
was a Saturday and this
was obviously an exciting
field trip for them. A
museum guide gave them a rousing talk about the Zapotecs, the original builders
of Monte Alban (around 500 BC) and their gods who were depicted in the stone
carvings. All the kids were extremely attentive, taking notes and answering his
questions.
He explained what a lot of the carvings represented. Most were gods
of various things, recognizable by certain characteristics like a beaked
nose, a particular arrangement of feathers on the head or wrinkled
eyes. To my amazement, when the guide asked the group which god
a particular image represented, their hands shot up. They knew.
There were lots of little clay sculptures that to
us simply looked other-wordly. But most were
images of Zapotec gods which, like those in
other ancient pantheons, represented war,
old age, wisdom, fertility and other things.
We headed outside and found the Monte
Alban site is about the size of six football
fields and is situated within an overall archaeological zone of about 8
square miles. It sits on a hill at 6,400' elevation, and the Zapotecs
partially leveled the hilltop for its construction. It was the capital city of
the Zapotecs, built away from three other major valley communities of
the time (500 BC). Its population was 17,000 people between 100 BC
and 200 AD, and continued to grow until it reached its zenith between
200 and 500 AD, some 800 or so years after its construction.
Taking the path less traveled, we entered the ruins from a track that went around the back side.
While we were blocked from the sight of other tourists by the back of a large monument, a fellow
stopped us to show us some things he carried in his backpack: little clay copies of some of the
items that have been excavated here
and a few original chips from larger
artifacts. We looked at his stuff
quizzically and he explained that not only had he made the little clay
figures himself, but it was legal for local people to sell any artifacts
they found in their fields while farming. The artifacts in his backpack
were things that had turned up under his hoe in his fields, and he
pointed in the general direction of his
house in the valley.
It all sounded pretty good, until we
rounded a corner into the main plaza of
ruins and discovered that there were
guys like him at every turn. They all
had little clay replicas they had made
themselves, and presumably their
backpacks all held original artifacts they
had dug up in their farm fields. Hmmm.
We asked later at the museum and they
assured us it was definitely not legal to
sell anything original, no matter how
small, and that nothing those guys had
was a real artifact. Oh well, it had made
for an interesting conversation on the
back side of the ruins!!
The first ruin we came across was the
ball court, built in 100 BC. Monte Alban
was the first true Meso-American State
with a government run by the priestly
class. Its economy
was based on tributes
(taxes) paid by the
outlying communities in
the Valley of Oaxaca.
It is thought that the
ball game helped
resolve legal conflicts
and land and tax
disputes and that the
ball was hit with the
elbows, hands and knees.
We were intrigued by the difference between this ball court and
that of Wupatki outside Flagstaff, Arizona, built some 600 years
after Monte Alban. Wupatki's ball court is the northernmost
known ancient ball court, and it is elliptical rather than
rectangular. It is thought that the game there was played with a
curved stick. So it seems the southerners played a soccer-like
game which the northerners transformed, years later, into
hockey!
The ruins are dramatic.
They squat in quiet
splendor around a central
suite of buildings, all
spaced apart by a large
flat open area.
Some of the
buildings are
thought to have
been either
religious or
administrative
buildings and
others may
have been
residences.
Visitors from all over the world ran up and down the stairs of each
building, taking photographs and saying "Wow!" to each other.
Meanwhile the school
group got quite an
education that day. I
asked the teacher if the
kids were of Zaptotec
descent or were from a
Zapotec community
nearby. He said no, they
were just from a local
school and the kids
probably had mixed
Mexican heritage,
although of course
some might be
Zapotec. But these ruins are part of the rich legacy of all Oaxacan kids,
whether they trace their routes to the Zapotecs or the Mixtecs who moved into
Monte Alban once the city went into decline, or even the Spanish who came in
later and crushed all things indigenous.
Interestingly, the signs were all in Spanish,
English and Zapotec, including the little
phrase "you are here."
In one area we found the carved stone replicas of the
stones we first saw inside the museum. Created between
350 and 200 BC and now called "Los Danzantes," these
once formed a wall. Today the replicas stand side by side
out in the harsh elements while the originals are inside the
museum. Oddly, the characters are mostly heavyset men
who appear to have been castrated. It is thought that
perhaps they were the leaders of outlying communities who
were captured and then offered up to the gods in sacrifice,
perhaps using the stunning Meso-American method of
carving their still-beating hearts out of their chests and
holding them up to the sky.
Wonderfully gruesome imagery like that will get any kid excited, and the school children were
suddenly let loose and told to run around and get the wiggles out. They ran up and down the
stairs of one of the buildings, shrieking excitedly until they were all tuckered out. Then they
sat obediently for a class picture with their teacher.
Having walked up and down the
very tall stairs of these buildings all
day, we wondered why the small
indigenous people had made
buildings with such tall steps.
Watching the kids line up with their
teacher one possibility became
apparent: they make perfect stadium
seats. The stairs of all the buildings
face the main plaza, so perhaps it was
a good place to watch an event -- or
just eat lunch like the tourists do
today.
As we left Monte Alban we passed one of the buildings that is still in the state in which it was first discovered, before the
archaeological digging and reconstruction began in the 1930's. It made a dramatic contrast to the fully restored buildings that fill
the site today. This suddenly made me realize that what we see at Monte Alban now, like Wupatki and all other restored
archaeological sites, is at best a recreation of its once former glory and is subject to the interpretation and knowledge of its
rebuilders.
The center buildings were in the process of being restored, and it was amazing to see the
scaffolding, the pile of carefully numbered stones, and the newly restored wall filled with
numbered stones. It is a painstaking process to bring the site back to its original
magnificence, but you have to wonder at the same time if what we see today is really how it
looked in its heyday. Archaeologists claim the walls were covered with stucco at the time and
were smooth, unlike the raw rock facing we see now. But what else? Was there
landscaping, was the open plaza filled with market stalls and people? The silent stones are
coy with their secrets.
Back in Oaxaca we checked out the
Cultural Center that is located in a
former monastery in back of the
Santo Domingo Cathedral. The
building alone is worth the price of
admission.
It not only has a grand courtyard
but has an even grander double
staircase that, together with the
walls and ceiling, is ornamented
with gold leaf.
If you walk through the rooms of
this museum in the correct order,
you are taken through all of
Mexico's history -- from the
Oaxacan perspective --
beginning with the first
indigenous peoples and going
right through to the new
millennium. It is a terrific visual
presentation of the very
convoluted and confusing
history of Mexico, from its
indigenous states, to the
Spanish conquest, to the
revolution, the war of
independence and the world wars. Of course all of this happened
right alongside the technological advances that have brought
humanity to where we are today, and the domestic tools and weaponry of
the last 500 years are all finely displayed.
We managed to go through the
museum in zig-zag order, passing
through most rooms backwards, from
later years to earlier years, thus picking
up tid-bits of history in a rather jumbled
chronology. Oops. It really didn't
matter, though, as the museum is
absolutely fascinating no matter what
order you go through it.
Over at Monte Alban archaeologists
discovered several tombs that were filled with fantastic
Mixtec artwork. The word "Mixtec" comes from the
Nahuatl word for "Cloud People," which gives a
wonderful image of the people that moved into Monte Alban after the
Zapotecs. They remodeled some of the buildings and created lots of
delicate sculptures and jewelry. One tomb in particular, Tomb #7, was the
richest discovery of artifacts in Meso-America to date. The Zapotecs had
used the tomb in their time too, but the Mixtecs buried one of their most
prominent leaders in that tomb and sent him off to the afterlife accompanied
by a boatload of treasure.
From fine filigree gold jewelry to cut crystal glass to endless sculpted clay
urns, this leader met his maker surrounded by worldly wealth. What great
fortune that this one tomb was not robbed and emptied by the conquering
Spanish like so many other tombs in other places.
It was a dizzying day of culture and history and relics from an era and from
peoples we had known nothing about. I came away shaking my head, trying
to get it straight in my mind. "Okay," I said to Mark, "So first it was built by
the Zapotecs. Then they were later replaced by the Mixtecs. And those
guys eventually succumbed to the Aztecs…"
"Yup," he added. "And then came the Discotecs and
last of all the Village People."
So goes our anthropological education in Oaxaca,
which we continued with a trip to the ancient Zapotec
palace ruin, Mitla.
Find Oaxaca (Monte Alban) on Mexico Maps.
Oaxaca – A City of Vibrance, Color & Soul
Cobblestone colonial walking streets of Oaxaca.
A band plays pops tunes.
Balloon vendor outside the
Cathedral.
A marching band shows up out of nowhere.
Kids proudly show off brilliant
Mexican costumes.
Not a hair out of place.
A street vendor strikes a deal on her fruit.
Schoolkids play McCartney's "Yesterday."
Happy teenagers.
9-year-old Chiclet vendor
Julia has a priceless grin...
…but she has been taught it's
worth 50 pesos.
Etno-Bontanical Garden entrance.
Bird of Paradise.
"Sunburned Tourist" tree.
"Monkey's Desperation"
tree.
"Air cactus."
Organ Pipe Cactus.
"Marriage Tree"
"Marriage" has nasty thorns and poisonous fruit.
Valentine's hearts show up all
over town.
A wedding at the Santo Domingo
Cathedral!"
The gracious bride invited the
onlookers into the church.
This little Chiclet-selling girl was transfixed.
Oaxaca, Mexico (2)
Mid-February, 2012 - Oaxaca enchanted us. We were visiting during the
week that includes my birthday, Valentine's Day and our anniversary, and
it was a special treat to be staying in a delightful little hotel in such a
spirited and radiant city.
The Zócalo is where it's at in this town, and every time we wandered over
there we found something -- or many things -- going on, especially in the
evenings. A little orchestra was playing in the bandstand one night to an
appreciative audience. They weren't the Berlin Philharmonic, and they
sounded much like any small town band, but they played with enthusiasm
and did all the old standard pops favorites that get the little kids around
the bandstand jigging and jumping and running.
A few steps away, the balloon
vendors were lined up, and behind
them the juggling clowns had their
audience in stitches.
Suddenly we heard the loud music of
a marching band in the distance.
They paraded right past, sweeping
us and everyone else up in their
wake. The band in the bandstand
seemed to try to raise their volume a
little, but it was aural pandemonium
as the two bands played their
hearts out just 100 yards
apart.
Behind the marching band
came a dizzying array of
young kids in brilliant Mexican
costumes. The girls had
primped for hours, getting
every hair and ribbon in
place, and even the teenage
boys got into it, with brilliant
satin shirts and classic
sombreros on their heads.
Meanwhile the band in the
bandstand kept on going, and the jugglers did their
thing, and the street vendors bumped through the
crowd selling their wares. Fresh fruit snacks are a
popular item to sell, and across from us an old man
bought some munchies for himself and his wife.
A stunning young girl wandered towards us on the arm of her very
proud boyfriend. I couldn't resist snapping a few photos of her,
which she enjoyed, and then I asked her what the parade was all
about. She explained that it was the 50th anniversary of the
founding of her school, Instituto Eulogio Gillow. There was a
stage set up and proud parents filled all the folding chairs and
stood in rows behind and around them.
Suddenly some kids got up on the
stage, the girls with recorders and the
boys with guitars. The announcer said
they would play "Yesterday" by "John
Lennon" (apologies to Paul
McCartney). Mark's ears perked right
up, since he is a Beatles fan from way
back, and we were treated to a
charming rendition of the song.
Just beyond the
circle of school
anniversary
celebrations the
madness of the Zócalo continued. The
juggling clowns had lost some of their
audience when the parade went by, but they
had won it back with their crazy antics. The
outdoor sidewalk cafes surrounding the
square were filled with happy folks imbibing
and eating, and the band in the bandstand
forged ever onwards, slightly out of tune but
so very charming to watch.
The kids from the school milled around in
animated groups, waiting their turns on stage. Once up there they danced, sang songs and made music, while the parents'
video cameras took it all in. It was amazing to me that a group of young teenagers would be so excited to wear traditional
costumes, strut around, and follow the instructions of their teachers who hustled them into groups and lines and got them up on
stage at the appropriate moments.
The vendors seemed well used to all this action. The Zócalo has stuff like this happening every night. Sure, it was a
Saturday night, but the press of people, the cacophony of music and noise, and the sight of couples ambling hand in
hand, kids smooching under the trees and prim and proper waiters serving patrons at the more elegant restaurants
around the square were all just part of the scene.
Many of the street vendors had their kids in tow -- kind of. The babies were strapped to
the moms' backs, alternately sleeping and looking around. The older kids were on their
own -- but with a job to do selling items out of their baskets. These ultra slick saleskids
are really well trained. They sell boxes of Chiclets, candies, bobble toys and cigarettes.
More than one patron at a restaurant bought a cigarette from an eight-year-old kid, getting
a light from the kid as well. Cigarettes are 10 pesos apiece (about 80 cents), and earlier
we had seen the moms buying the cigarette packs at the little convenience stores around
town. No wholesale pricing there, but they mark up their product pretty darn well.
Money is what its all about with these kids. A little brother
and sister stopped by our table as we sipped on a beer.
They were very cheeky and lots of fun. The boy was 9 (I
couldn't quite catch his name) and his little sister Julia was
7. They were absolutely insistent that we buy some of their
very grubby looking candy. How long it had been dragged
around town in their basket and handled by their dirty
fingers I have no idea. We snapped a few photos of them
and they instantly had their hands out. "50
pesos!" ($4). We laughed. I put my camera up to
take another shot and Julia covered here face with
her hands. I clicked anyways and she shoved her
hand at me again. "50 pesos!"
I teased her and said that she had to pay me 100
pesos for talking to me. Her little lopsided missing-toothed grin got even bigger and she
rolled her eyes in exasperation, laughing. I don't know if any other gringo tourist ever had
ever challenged her like that before, and she was stumped to find a response. "50 pesos!"
she said again, seriously, hand out. We went back and forth like that for a while, giggling. I
asked her when she was going to finish working in the Zócalo and go home to bed. She
shrugged. Things wind down around 9 pm, but she was a street urchin and was probably
used to staying out however long mom needed her to be selling Chiclets.
They hung at the edge of our table for a while, refusing to let go of a potential sale. Mark
finally came up with the perfect compromise on the 50 peso issue. He pushed the remains of our little dish of peanuts in Julia's
direction. "Have some peanuts!" he said. Like greased lightning, she leapt into action. She grabbed a napkin, spread it out on
the table, scooped up every last peanut with her sticky fingers, snatched a wedge of lime off another dish and plopped it on the
peanuts, wrapped up the napkin, and shoved it in her basket. In a flash she and her brother vanished into the night.
The Zócalo is the heart of the action at night, but all of Oaxaca's
historic district is wonderful by day too. We wandered through the
Zócalo the next morning and it was perfectly neat and tidy without a
single trace of the mayhem that had gone on the night before. The
stage was gone, the chairs for the audience had disappeared, the
entire square was completely swept, and just a few people milled
around with coffee cups in their hands. But by nightfall the whole
thing came to life once again. The stage was set up for a different
performance by a different group, chairs were set out for the
audience, and street vendors wandered through it all.
The Santo Domingo Cathedral has a beautiful botanical garden
behind it, and we decided to take a tour. Mark loves photographing
flowers, and he got some wonderful shots.
English tours are two hours long and happen just a few
times a week while Spanish tours are an hour long every
hour every day. We opted for a Spanish tour, but
because there was just one other gringo couple and an
Austrian who spoke fluent English (and Spanish and
French), the guide spoke to us all in English. What a
lucky break for us. When our tour finished there were 50
gringos waiting for the next tour which would be officially
in English. I wondered how this huge group would
manage on the tiny garden paths.
The Oaxaca region is very dry, so most of the
gardens were desert types of plants. The
botanists at the garden work hard to propagate the species, and
many of the plants they have are endangered. Those plants have
their flowers and seed pods wrapped in gauze so they don't
accidentally get cross-pollinated and hybridize with something else.
The best part of the tour for us was the funny nicknames of some of
the plants. The "Sunburned Gringo" tree has an outer layer of bark
that peels incessantly.
The "Monkey's Desperation" tree
looks like it would be a wonderful
tree for a monkey to climb. It is tall with long limbs
spreading wide. But the base is covered with hard
little thorns that would prevent even the hardiest
monkey from shimmying up.
The "Air cactus" is a "guest plant" (not a parasite or a
symbiotic plant). It arrives in the air and settles on a
tree, getting all its nutrients from the air without ever
bothering its host except for sitting in its lap.
The "Organ Pipe Cactus" is familiar
to us from Arizona, and in this
garden it had been planted as
fencing along two paths.
The "Marriage Tree" is a nasty
looking thorny thing. The needles
are razor sharp and plentiful, and it
produces poisonous fruit.
Everyone in our group got a good
chuckle out of that tree...
Speaking of love and marriage, we were in Oaxaca for
Valentine's Day, which is also our anniversary. Heart decorations
were everywhere, and love was definitely in the air.
As we came around the side of the cathedral we noticed a group
had gathered in front of the church. They were very well dressed
-- and there was a bride in the middle. "Wow!" I yelled, running
to get a good angle with my camera. A wedding in the cathedral!!
OMG. What a place to get married. For all you future brides and
past brides, this was the wedding many of us dreamed of at one
time or another, complete with a frothy, frilly white dress and the
grandest, most gold-filled, most magnificent cathedral imaginable as a backdrop.
I ran around like a madwoman taking photos. All the tourists on the plaza started
closing in on the church too. Most of us were enthralled little girls, seeing our princess
dreams unfold in front of us. Chiclet-selling girls, white haired heavyset women visiting
from foreign countries, and young girls on the eve of such an event themselves all
pressed towards the cathedral.
This was clearly a very wealthy family, and the father was the
image of pride as he shook hands with his guests around him.
The bride welcomed everyone warmly. Her friends, all of them
hot babes in stiletto heels and tight, short, brightly colored
dresses, emerged from fancy cars and exchanged kisses with
her. More than one was a young mom, walking up pushing a
stroller just to hand it off to an older lady waiting outside the
church, giving her instructions for how to keep the baby
entertained during the coming hours of celebration.
The music began and the group dwindled to just the wedding
party as the guests entered the cathedral. The throng of
enchanted women tourists and vendors hung back just enough
to give them a little space. All of a sudden the bride glanced
over her shoulder at all of us and waved us in. She looked
straight at me and motioned for me to come into the cathedral.
"Me?" I pointed to myself incredulously. She nodded
vigorously. I stepped over the threshold and received a strong
handshake from her dad. Holy Mackerel, I was in the middle of
a wedding at this cathedral, wearing shorts and a tourist hat.
The other tourists all filed in, many genuflecting as they entered,
and we filled the back half of the church. How totally cool. The
bride and her father made their way down this most splendid of
aisles and the service began. I didn't feel right about staying too
long, so I snuck back out once the priest got going in earnest.
As I left I noticed one of the Chiclet-selling girls outside the
entrance of the cathedral looking in. The invitation had been for
all of us to enter, but she had stayed back. The longing in her
face was touching -- and heartbreaking.
I found Mark at the
far end of the plaza
sitting on a wall. I
started talking a
mile a minute,
thrilled and amazed
by the whole scene.
He smiled and
listened patiently.
He just didn't get
into weddings like I
did. The princess
thing is a little beyond him, although I tried my best to explain it. He hadn't
really known how when you're a little girl wearing a full skirt you have to
spin around and watch it flare out. He hadn't ever dreamed of being
Cinderella, parading across a grand room in an elegant dress, nor of being
Prince Charming for that matter. But then, I've seen him ooh and aah over
muscle cars from the 1960's like they were the sexiest of pinup models.
How many old cars can you look at and get excited about? Apparently, all
of them. How many princess weddings can make a girl's heart soar?
Definitely all of them.
Oaxaca held us tightly in its clutches and we still had more to see, espeically the ancient Zapotec ruins of Monte Alban.
Find Oaxaca on Mexico Maps.