ah, it.s been so long since i updated that i can.t possibly remember all the things in detail that we have seen and done. this is maybe for the best...i.ll just give you all the highlights so far.
oaxaca was dry, desert, sun. color and parades. calm colorful colonial areas blurring into hectic markets. elotes. GAS DE OAXACA (a truck drives by fiona.s house daily, shouting this out along with a catchy tune). giant quesadillas filled with potatoes, quesillo (stringy cheese), and margaritas that, after one, cause blurring of vision. and a twelve-person band (raices) playing folk music on lute-like instruments, varying in age from 16 to 65, with this occasional intricate tap dance to the music. one of the best things i-ve seen so far, for sure. and a night of salsa dancing, mescal and margaritas and blurry embarrassing dance moves. on my part.
mazunte - winding terrifying van ride up and then down a mountain. and then the beach. blue ocean, orangey sand, huge crashing waves all night. cuccarachas in our palapa. a scorpion in our palapa. eating swimming eating swimming reading reading reading. warm pacific ocean. a boat ride, our guide harrassing turtles, pelicans carrying human babies off to sea... (well...) nights sitting out in skirts and tank tops under the stars, bad electronic music exploding from the hostel all the way down the beach nightly... ocean love.
san cristobal. 3000 m above sea level. freezing first class bus ride. freezing mountain town. cloudy day, for the first time since landing in mexico. chills. fresh baked bread and huevos rancheros, browsing book stores, a night of blurry wine drinking, 1.50 glasses of wine (dangerous). a boat ride down the canon de sumidero - crocodiles, pelicans, vultures, and one shy owl hidden in a cliff-side cave, and a boat-ride through a rain storm. cold, chills.
palenque, down the other side of the mountain into the jungle. hot, humid, our hotel room is a tree house. we have to climb a ladder to go up, and we have a rusty slide to come back down again. more cuccarachas. las ruinas... magical. huge huge stone structures coming right out of the jungle. the sound of howler monkeys all night last night, eerie and pretty damn magical. jungle sounds. thinking about summers spent camping, sounds that are not city sounds. keep thinking it will be summer when i get home, and then remembering...
SIGH.
this country is incredibly beautiful - the cities that pulsate and meander, the beaches, the jungle, the desert, the mountains. i.ve been to like 5 different ecosystems in the course of a few weeks. it-s pretty neat. it.s flown by though, can.t really believe i-ve been here for three weeks already. and school starts in three more!
and now, christmas eve, waiting for my turn to use skype to call the family.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
oaxaca
...
Fiona and Hector had Sunday off, so on Saturday night we took a very windy bumpy road right up a mountain to a group of towns called the Pueblas Malcomunados, which means something along the lines of the co-operative (or communal?) towns. They are all working together to create an economy from ecotourism, with lots of hiking trails, zip-lines, horses to ride, etc. Hector talked with someone in one of the villages who told him that everyone must put in a year of volunteer work in the community; our waitresses who served us lunch, for example, were working on a volunteer basis, in order to help out the communities. Very interesting. It is quite nice to have Fiona and Hector here to show me around and to speak spanish with the people we meet - i am learning so much more this way, and getting a deeper understanding of this area. We spent our first night up in the mountains in a cabana in the woods, and it was COLD. we kept a fire going for hours but still i woke up shivering in the night. However once the sun came out it was fairly warm, sort of in a Vancouver summer kind of way; a cold breeze but a hot sun. Took a beautiful hike through the forest, up through a little canyon, into a cave, up to a mirador, where we could see all the way down to the oaxaca valley. Beautiful.
We went back to Oaxaca sunday night, and the next day Fiona and I took a trip to Monte Alban, the biggest archaeological site in this area. quite impressive, with beautiful views. we didn't get going until about 1pm though, so it was quite hot. but we took lots of breaks under the mesquite trees scattered around, where we ate papaya and coconut and pineapple. yum.
Yesterday i took a break from sightseeing, had a nice three hours in a cafe in the morning while fiona worked, read a book about the history of the color red that fiona lent me - all about how the search for the perfect red dye changed history and structured economies and class structures. very interesting, especially reading it in this place where crafts are so alive, old traditions continue in the form of woven rugs, bright green or deep black pottery... and of course mexico is where they eventually found the perfect red in the form of cochineal.
anyways. being somewhere sunny is beyond nice. it does me good. i don't know how we in canada are expected to get through winter after winter after winter of rain, grey skies, cold bones. i guess we do it, but my mood has certainly lifted since arriving in this hot sunny place. but maybe that's also just because i'm on vacation, far far away from all the bureaucratic buzz that's been around lately, what with dealing with an accident, an injury, a student loan that needs to be paid, a school that requires a ridiculous amount of brain power and paperwork just to get accepted and registered. sigh. not going to think about any of that right now.
This afternoon Fiona and I are going to head to a little town called El Tule, where apparently the (supposedly) largest tree in the world (diameter-wise) is growing, and also slowly dying due to decreasing amounts of water around...
Fiona and Hector had Sunday off, so on Saturday night we took a very windy bumpy road right up a mountain to a group of towns called the Pueblas Malcomunados, which means something along the lines of the co-operative (or communal?) towns. They are all working together to create an economy from ecotourism, with lots of hiking trails, zip-lines, horses to ride, etc. Hector talked with someone in one of the villages who told him that everyone must put in a year of volunteer work in the community; our waitresses who served us lunch, for example, were working on a volunteer basis, in order to help out the communities. Very interesting. It is quite nice to have Fiona and Hector here to show me around and to speak spanish with the people we meet - i am learning so much more this way, and getting a deeper understanding of this area. We spent our first night up in the mountains in a cabana in the woods, and it was COLD. we kept a fire going for hours but still i woke up shivering in the night. However once the sun came out it was fairly warm, sort of in a Vancouver summer kind of way; a cold breeze but a hot sun. Took a beautiful hike through the forest, up through a little canyon, into a cave, up to a mirador, where we could see all the way down to the oaxaca valley. Beautiful.
We went back to Oaxaca sunday night, and the next day Fiona and I took a trip to Monte Alban, the biggest archaeological site in this area. quite impressive, with beautiful views. we didn't get going until about 1pm though, so it was quite hot. but we took lots of breaks under the mesquite trees scattered around, where we ate papaya and coconut and pineapple. yum.
Yesterday i took a break from sightseeing, had a nice three hours in a cafe in the morning while fiona worked, read a book about the history of the color red that fiona lent me - all about how the search for the perfect red dye changed history and structured economies and class structures. very interesting, especially reading it in this place where crafts are so alive, old traditions continue in the form of woven rugs, bright green or deep black pottery... and of course mexico is where they eventually found the perfect red in the form of cochineal.
anyways. being somewhere sunny is beyond nice. it does me good. i don't know how we in canada are expected to get through winter after winter after winter of rain, grey skies, cold bones. i guess we do it, but my mood has certainly lifted since arriving in this hot sunny place. but maybe that's also just because i'm on vacation, far far away from all the bureaucratic buzz that's been around lately, what with dealing with an accident, an injury, a student loan that needs to be paid, a school that requires a ridiculous amount of brain power and paperwork just to get accepted and registered. sigh. not going to think about any of that right now.
This afternoon Fiona and I are going to head to a little town called El Tule, where apparently the (supposedly) largest tree in the world (diameter-wise) is growing, and also slowly dying due to decreasing amounts of water around...
Monday, December 07, 2009
i am safe and well and warm in mexico.
flew in on thursday night, stayed in a hostel in mexico city my first night. my cab ride from the airport was pretty exciting - mexico city is surpisingly beautiful, with colorful houses and all these flowering trees everywhere, and people wandering down the middle of the streets selling balloons and snacks... an organ grinder near my hostel, but no monkey. the city is huge though, overwhelming incomprehensibly so. i left the next morning for oaxaca, not ready to tackle such a giant city yet with my terrible spanish and jet-lag. bused to oaxaca friday morning - the city just went on and on and on as far as i could see as we drove out of it. 19 million people!
the ride to oaxaca was beautiful. the outskirts of mexico city went from suburbia to farmland. and then once we hit the state of oaxaca we were up in the mountains with these amazing views, and the hills were covered in cacti as far as i could see...cactus forests i suppose. stunning stunning mountains everywhere. i was so tired but kept forcing myself to stay awake and look at the scenery.
fiona met me at the bus station. we wandered the streets of oaxaca, stopped for an elote - this delicious cob of corn covered in mayonnaise and chili and queso fresco and lime. had some coffee, watched some fireworks which are i suppose a regular event here. went to fiona and hector's friends' house for fondue and wine later. sat outside in a tank top. i can't even begin to describe how nice it is to be WARM. sigh.
the next morning when fiona went to work i wandered to streets of oaxaca. communication problems are becoming commonplace already. my spanish sucks. accidentally ordered an iced espresso. yuck. drank a few sips, ordered an "americano CALIENTE por favor." sigh. ate a taco in the market south of the zocalo. lots of meat. yuck. sigh. wandered some more, lots of art galleries here. a beautiful photography gallery in a beautiful old building. the zocalo was full of pointsettias for sale everywhere. the market was incredibly busy; the touristy part of town with the old colonial buildings is super calm and quiet, and then all of a sudden you wander a few blocks and it's just jam-packed with people. i don't feel as conspicuous here as i did in india. people don't stare at me, for the most part. i do definitely stick out here like a sore thumb but i'm not a freak. but my bad spanish is embarrassing. fortunately i can understand much better than i can speak. all of fiona's roommates of various north american and european backgrounds speak spanish with each other. perfectly, to my ears. i want to speak spanish. SIGHHHH.
but anyways. oaxaca is beautiful.
more later.
flew in on thursday night, stayed in a hostel in mexico city my first night. my cab ride from the airport was pretty exciting - mexico city is surpisingly beautiful, with colorful houses and all these flowering trees everywhere, and people wandering down the middle of the streets selling balloons and snacks... an organ grinder near my hostel, but no monkey. the city is huge though, overwhelming incomprehensibly so. i left the next morning for oaxaca, not ready to tackle such a giant city yet with my terrible spanish and jet-lag. bused to oaxaca friday morning - the city just went on and on and on as far as i could see as we drove out of it. 19 million people!
the ride to oaxaca was beautiful. the outskirts of mexico city went from suburbia to farmland. and then once we hit the state of oaxaca we were up in the mountains with these amazing views, and the hills were covered in cacti as far as i could see...cactus forests i suppose. stunning stunning mountains everywhere. i was so tired but kept forcing myself to stay awake and look at the scenery.
fiona met me at the bus station. we wandered the streets of oaxaca, stopped for an elote - this delicious cob of corn covered in mayonnaise and chili and queso fresco and lime. had some coffee, watched some fireworks which are i suppose a regular event here. went to fiona and hector's friends' house for fondue and wine later. sat outside in a tank top. i can't even begin to describe how nice it is to be WARM. sigh.
the next morning when fiona went to work i wandered to streets of oaxaca. communication problems are becoming commonplace already. my spanish sucks. accidentally ordered an iced espresso. yuck. drank a few sips, ordered an "americano CALIENTE por favor." sigh. ate a taco in the market south of the zocalo. lots of meat. yuck. sigh. wandered some more, lots of art galleries here. a beautiful photography gallery in a beautiful old building. the zocalo was full of pointsettias for sale everywhere. the market was incredibly busy; the touristy part of town with the old colonial buildings is super calm and quiet, and then all of a sudden you wander a few blocks and it's just jam-packed with people. i don't feel as conspicuous here as i did in india. people don't stare at me, for the most part. i do definitely stick out here like a sore thumb but i'm not a freak. but my bad spanish is embarrassing. fortunately i can understand much better than i can speak. all of fiona's roommates of various north american and european backgrounds speak spanish with each other. perfectly, to my ears. i want to speak spanish. SIGHHHH.
but anyways. oaxaca is beautiful.
more later.
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