A walk in the woods

Darby and I took a four day weekend and went camping out on the Pacific coast in Olympic National Park. We took the ferry over to Bainbridge island and then drove north up the Olympic peninsula past Sequim and turned left out towards the most northwest point in the Continental USA, Cape Flattery. Just before the Makah Indian reservation we took a small road southwest to Lake Ozette and the Olympic rain forest. And we're talking real rain, up to 4 meters a year... A real jungle but with cold weather! Nice park campground, everything is wet, the ground is squishy, and more rain is forecast for the weekend. We set up camp, erected our rain tarp and went for a walk. Beautiful lake shore, lots of frog eggs and birds. The lake is 7 kilometers from the beach, there are two paths out to the coast, from the lake you can hear the ocean breaking on Cape Alava to the north and Sand point to the south. From 7km away... Long ago the Makah Indians who lived here made the paths, following the sound of the huge Pacific waves crashing ashore. Where the paths passed through particularly wet and boggy areas they laid down wood planks as sort of a walkway. When white settlers came out in the 1850's they added more planks to wheel their carts full of stuff from the beach where they landed to the lake where they lived. In the 1970's the national park service finished the project, now each of the two paths is a continuous wooden walkway for 7km!! We walked out toward Cape Alava, the western most place in the Continental US. Moss and lichen covered every surface, mushrooms grew on the moss and it started raining... We kept walking, deeper into the forest, more rain, we were getting wet now. Put on all our rain gear and kept going. Strange fungus and weird moss covered everything, the walkway was slippery and treacherous, and still more rain. We were getting wet inside our raincoats! The closer we got the louder the surf sounds, the forest opened up into a sort of half prairie half bog, full of unusual plants. Water everywhere. by the time we made it out to the beach it was pouring rain and the wind was howling. We sheltered under some cedars on the beach and had a quick lunch then turned around and went back. Just in time as the rain really started to come down. 7km later we are back at camp and soaking wet. This was a real test of our gear and it was better than no raincoat but we still got very wet. A nice campfire (dry wood from home!) and all was good. The next day we took explored the lake shore and then took the second walkway out to the southern beach. Nice weather and more amazing jungle on the way. The beach had more flotsam and jetsam than any other beach I have ever been to. Fishing floats and every type of plastic junk imaginable. All the stuff I could find with lettering on it was in Chinese... On the way home we went to the Makah reservation to their excellent museum of Makah history. Strange country, all that part of the Olympic peninsula is very poor, downtrodden and bleak. Logging communities with no logging left and no mills. So different from Seattle just 150km away...

What's this white crap?

So... a long two months since we last blogged and we've done a lot! Partied with family and friends in PV, blasted north to the border, moved my sister in Las Vegas, camped in Death Valley and made it home! We made the decision to come home early for several reasons that we will be happy to share over a bottle of red wine with all of you! Please give us a call at (Nick)206-436-9563 or (Darby) 206-436-9562.

A frisson of guilt

There is a wonderful word in German that I can´t quite put my finger
on, essentially it means to take a subtle pleasure from the misfortunes
of others... Every letter we have received in the two weeks we have
been in Melaque has mentioned the oncoming winter, rain, cold, grey...
Well if it makes you feel better we had rain last night... Otherwise
the weather has been that typical pacific coast Mexico fall stuff, mid
80´s and lots of sun...
Melaque is situated on a 4 mile long sandy curve with a rocky headland
on each end, it forms 3/4 of a circle, to the south down the beach 2
miles is the town of Barra de Navidad, the Christmas bar. Not a
reference to holiday celebration, it refers to a sand bar there that
forms a lagoon behind the town. Once famous, Barra de Navidad was where
the Spanish first sailed across the Pacific to the Philippines in 1565
proving Colubusus´s theory that it was faster to go east by going west.
Only a few decades later Acapulco with it´s easier road access to
Mecixo City superseded it and it faded into a quite fishing village.
There is a small surfable break of the town jetty but nothing remains
to indicate it´s history. The two headland that form the bay extend
back into the coast range forming a fertile farming valley behind us.
The only disconcerting thing is the ghost town aspect of the pacific
coast at this time of year. Like bicycling in Brittany out of season we
are left to wonder though a landscape obviously designed for huge
influxes of tourist but they are not here yet. We are usually the only
guests at our hotel, a place with 45 rooms... On the weekends there are
a few others but generally it´s just us... The migration is starting,
we took a field trip on Friday 20 miles up the coast then 5 miles west
out to the small seaside village of Tenecatita. At the end of the road
we turned right and at the end of the beach side palapa restaurants
headed up a short steep dirt road over a small headland. On the other
side we found an isthmus of sand maybe 200 by 30 meters connecting the
headland we had crossed with what would have been an island without the
isthmus. On the left was a series of rocks and reefs forming a
breakwater protecting a calm bay with coral reefs and on the right was
a narrow rocky cliff enclosed bay open to the ocean but oriented in
such a way as to avoid most of the big swells. An idyllic spot. The
early birds where already setting up camp, building palapas and
claiming their spots. We meet a couple from Vancouver who had been
coming for 32 years, a man from Port Townsend on his 15th year and a
couple from Colorado coming back for the 17th time... They had nabbed
the prime spots, big shade trees located where they could the sea
breezes and where busy improving the places. They all said the 4-6
months was normal for them and that by December the place would be
packed, maybe 75 people... There are good things about traveling out of
season, we enjoyed an afternoon of uncrowded snorkeling and sitting in
the shade reading... Did I tell you it rained last night?

The photos are of the hotel in Melaque...

Relaxiation

Two weeks in Melaque and two to go. We are loving it! Reading all the time, walking into town for a fish dinner, exploring the country. Yesterday we took a field trip to the itty bitty town of Tenacatita, lovely. A muy bonita barre with Tenacatita Bay on one side and open Pacific on the other. A beach made up of chunky bits of coral. The reef is almost up to the shore, filled with interesting fish and dark coral. We met winter campers from Colorado, Seattle and Canada. The most interesting people with their converted school bus, a custom bumper with, of all things, a commercial pizza oven strapped to the back... Turns out they spend every winter along the coast of Michoacan, they befriended a widow and her disabled son who both bake to make ends meet and they were bringing the oven down as a gift for her. Most campers here hire a team from the little town to rebuild the big palapas, often large enough to park their vehicle under, dig a toilet, and basically set up camp for six months. The folks from BC have been camping here for 30 years, they had to hack the road every year with machetes when they first started. We feel like we are just starting to explore, more adventures to come!

Why I hate Canadians

After seeing the ruins at El Tajin we drove on out to the "emerald
coast", a stretch of beach on the gulf (east)coast of Veracruz state.
The mosquito coast would be a more apt name... Millions of the little
buggers and an outbreak of dengue fever in the area... Dengue is a flu
like illness transmitted by mosquito's. It was also hot and very humid.
Not what we had in mind when we left the highlands for the beach... So
after a few days of battling the bugs we packed up and headed for the
west coast. Driving inland in Veracruz state we visited the state
capitol, Jalapa, a place referred to as the Seattle of Mexico. At 4000
ft in the jungle foothills the climate was perfect, bananas, palms and
roses... we visited the most amazing museum, the anthropology museum,
just the building was worth the trip, a cascade of indoor/outdoor rooms
down a gentle slope in a verdant green park. Lots of Olmec heads and
other wonderful stuff from Mexico's rich pre Hispanic cultures. We
decided to make a couple of long driving days and get to the beach in
short order. Our first night was in Puebla, one of Mexico's largest
cities. One thing we always see in our travels are street vendors by
the side of the road and at stop signs and lights, selling whatever the
regional specialty is. In the hills of Veracruz, a land of green
pastures and pine forests, the vendors sold cheese... In Puebla the
vendors sold... Puppies! Yes that's right, a puppy in each hand and a
squirming bag over the shoulder... We thought about it but decided not
to... Our campground on the outskirts of Puebla was a large walled
compound with a Canadian couple from Alberta and their three sons on
the way to Costa Rica to volunteer at a school. There were also a few
houses in the walled in area, very fancy cars even a brand new
Maserati. Being so close to Mexico city we really noticed the wealth in
this part of Mexico. The next day we drove down to Acapulco on toll
roads, Very fast and not much traffic and found a place to camp on the
beach in Pie de la Cuesta just north of Acapulco. Very nice to see the
sun set over the sea, we were both a little disconcerted on the gulf
side by being on the ocean and having the sun set behind the hills. We
stayed there 5 days and decided to head up the coast a bit. We camped
at Barre de Potosi, a lagoon on the beach (Barre means sand bar) an
mistake as we were attacked by mosquito's again... Fed up and just a
little grumpy we decide to go where we know and head up to the Puerta
Vallarta area where the weather is cooler and dryer and there would be
fewer bugs. We hoped. Driving up the coast thru the states of Guerrero
and Michiocan made us a little nervous, it is a very remote area with a
large drug growing and shipping culture. The road reminded us of
highway one north of San Fransisco, narrow, windy, scratched into the
side of cliffs... We averaged 25 miles an hour.. Like highway one there
are very few towns and very few places to camp. The pacific coast at
this time of year is like our trip to Brittany in France, very few
people and lots of infrastructure. In a few months there will be a huge
influx of tourists but for now we have the place more or less to
ourselves... Camping by ourselves at the few beaches we passed didn´t
seem like a good idea so we stayed in a hotel in Caleta de Campos, a
pretty town on a rocky outcrop. Normally when we stay in a hotel the
first room we are shown is not the best one, we don´t understand it,
there will be no one else at the hotel and we will be shown a room on
the ground floor in the back. Just by asking and for the same price we
get a upper room with a view... Strange. However this was not the case
in Caleta de Campos, the very nice owner showed us to a top floor room
overlooking the red and white striped lighthouse and the waves crashing
on the black rocks far below... We got a roast chicken for dinner and
watched TV (what a concept, a box with moving pictures... endlessly
fascinating) as dusk fell the lighthouse turned on... Boy was it
bright... Our room was right at the same height as the top and about
100 feet away... This is a light that can be seen 20 miles out to sea
in a hurricane... Every 4 seconds it would sweep past... we used the
second beds sheets and our towels to make a second layer of curtains
and managed to reduce it to mere disco levels...
The next morning we stumbled out of bed and and drove north the roads
getting better each mile north. We drove into the small state of
Colima, an anomaly on this rocky coast. It seem to be an agricultural
paradise, coconut and papaya as far as the eye can see like strange
version of Kansas... A well watered and fertile river delta, prosperous
towns, very different than the rugged and poor coast of Guerrero and
Michiocan. Late in the afternoon we reached our destination, the small
town of Melaque, about 90 miles south of Puerto Vallarta but a world
away, PV is an America mega resort, giant multi national chain hotels
and towers of condominiums line the beach, chain restaurants and
tourist shops abound. Melaque is a Canadian resort, a prosperous
Mexican town with lots of small family owned hotels and bungalows, a
real town square and a functioning business area. Canadians always make
me feel slightly soiled, as if rapacious capitalism and fighting terror
was not as grand as we make it out to be... To add insult to injury
every time I explain to people where Seattle is (most Mexicans don´t
know) I have to say "in the north west corner of the USA, just below
Canada" Below Canada!! You can imagine how I feel about that!
We have found a small hotel that Paul recommended, the hotel Santa
Maria, on the beach with a swimming pool and a nice room. We were
shown a dark room on the ground floor but asked and received a top
front room overlooking the beach. We are at the end of the hall and
each room has a table and chairs out in this wide shaded area. We use
it as our kitchen/dining room... The price can´t be beat, the people
are friendly, the beach is nice, Darby is happy... We will stay here
and explore the bay.

Crossing the road

So since we last wrote, we've spent time on the Gulf Coast in Veracruz, drove across two mountain ranges, both named the Sierra Madre, sat on the beach near Acapulco and had some VERY interesting experiences. Many of these involve driving in Mexico. For instance, we now know what it's like to drive through a swarm of bees (not pleasant, sounds like gravel hitting the car at high speed). We've also seen many interesting creatures crossing the road, including a variety of brightly coloured iguanas, a tarantula with bright orange stripes on his legs, not to mention pigs, hens, goats and burros as standard fare. Luckily we avoided everything with the bees and only got one sting from them so we count ourselves very blessed.

How not to speak Spanish

Well... We are driving from the middle of nowhere to Huejutla de Reyes,
a small town in the foothills of the gulf (east) coast. Its been a long
drive and we are a block from the hotel. We get to the last
intersection and watch the other cars/pedestrians/dogs/etc that are
milling around the roadway. It gets to be our turn to go through the
intersection, I look both ways and off we go... Except the nice cop
with the whistle is motioning us over for some reason... Can I see your
license please? Turns out that there was a stop light at that
intersection. Nobody else was paying attention to it and I was paying
attention to everyone else so... Now the nice police man is explaining
to us that we have broken the law! Suddenly we forget all the Spanish
we know... Huh? What? No habla Spanish senior... No senior, none at
all... We he didn¨t speak any English so we resorted to sign language
and he spoke very slowly and clearly in Spanish that we had gone though
a red light and that the ticket would be 300 pesos (about $30) and it
would be much simpler just to pay him... We just sat there and looked
confused. Every time he said "bolleto" (ticket) we nodded and made sign
language indications that a ticket would be just great. This seemed to
make him frustrated... After going around in circles like that for 10
minutes he asked for a piece of paper and a pen. Handed him one and he
laboriously wrote out in Spanish exactly what he had been saying...
Well Darby and I held that piece of paper up to the light and looked at
it one way and another and still couldn´t make much sense of it. We
even got out our dictionary and tried to translate it but after a few
minutes more standing in the hot sun outside the car window the nice
policeman said he would just let us off with a warning this time and by
the way could he have that incriminating piece of paper back? I looked
at him and looked at the paper and noticed it had a very important
grocery list from last week on the back so I said I was sorry but no, I
had to keep it. We thanked him (in perfect Spanish) and drove the rest
of the block to our hotel...

wierd shit in the jungle

Las Posas, Xilitla

Extraordinary. A purpose built ruin in a steep jungle valley. Edward
James, an eccentric Englishman built this. Stairs into the jungle, mad
ruins of surreal vision, doorways in the cacophony of plants, riotous
growth, pools, rooms, towers, a giant folly in the jungle of Mexico. We
walked of into the back of the garden trying to find the top of the
waterfall, a small path then dwindling down to a goat trail, up the
side of the mountain. Around a bend and a very steep section appears...
with stairs... then on up over the crest and a doorway, a moon gate in
the jungle. Through the gate and down to the river above the falls,
only to discover a perfect hand laid stone set of stairs on the other
side going?? Huge iridescent blue butterfly's, more butterfly's than
seems possible, bromeliads and vines cover the trees and the outlandish
buildings. Pillars standing in the middle of the jungle a now giant
stands for plants. It is hard to tell the natural from the constructed,
a whole stream with a 200 foot waterfall has been turned into a series
of swimming pools, perfect concrete diving boards built in at just the
right spot...
[http://www.junglegossip.com/pozas.html]

El Taijin

Ruins... I like "archeological site" better, for they are so impressive and in such amazing shape that to call them ruins does them a dis-service.
Off in the flatlands, muggy morning, we visit our first archeological site, el taijin. It's 10 square kilometers of city, buildings and ballcourts, pyramids and temples. Started by the Olmecs and finished by the Totonacs, it wasn't discovered until the early 20th century. They are still uncovering the site and several hills, remarkably pyramid shaped, stand covered in jungle and banana trees waiting for careful hands to remove the growth. The more recent excavations were the most interesting, still retaining detailed surfacing complete with bright paintings of gods and daily life. Every now and again we would round a corner and the inscribed stones would be intact, dramatic images of the gods, rituals, and dreams. One of the more dramatic images is on a ball court showing the ritual killing of the losers by the winning team. This ain't no superbowl! And El Taijin is only the beginning, when we get to the Yucatan we'll see many more sites and more complete ones. But this first one was pretty amazing and if anything only whet our appetite for more.

sur real

So yeah... It's hard to know where to start with Las Pozas, cause half the stuff we write, you won't believe (cept Julia and Stuart) But here it is... There was this wealthy guy (Edward James), who may or may not have been the illegitamate child of british royalty. Anyway, he was a huge patron of the arts and really got into surrealism, I mean really got into it. In fact, he liked it so much he decided to live a surreal life in the lowland jungles of San Luis Potosi near the town of Xilitla. One of his good friends was Salvador Dali who said Sir James was the real surrealist thing. Sir James began to build, basically a surrealist playground, filled with structures and stairs and columns and brightly painted things surrounded by the flowering jungles. In addition to all the crazy buildings-sculptures, he also built fantastic pools in the river with amazing waterfalls, stairs, deep pools for swimming and more. This whole garden is now a magical park that is ever so slowly reverting to jungle. We found as we explored many more structures,pools areobjects other than those in the official park, who knows how far his surrealism spread? It was a magical experience, swimming in a cool jungle pool watching the enormous butterflies float by on the breeze. Exploring little used paths off through the jungle to a forgotten round gate and through it to more pools in the river and a huge set of stairs on the other side covered in vines and who knows where it may have gone...

Sniper teams

So the sniper teams gave it away. Sniper teams for an opera? Even Carmen? we got to the free seats 2 hours before the show and sat in the sun waiting, all kinds of people, campasinos, city slickers, lots of family's and picnics, kids making out and flirting, the seating area got more and more packed and the people watching better and better. We kept noticing lots of guys with those clear coils going up behind the ear then we noticed the sniper team on the roof across the plaza and realized that the security had to be for something other than an opera... It was the Cervantino festivals opening night, so who else but President Fox who is from Guanajuato should pull up in a motorcade and walk to the podium and give the opening speech? The opera was wonderful, a cast of at least 60, the Mexican national opera company. We walked home with the crowd, everywhere we could here people humming snatches of arias...

Today we heard the main cathedral bells ring and went to investigate. As we reached the main plaza trumpets sounded from the roof of the cathedral and then the bells answered, back and forth, what a crazy ensemble, cathedral and trumpets...

Cervantes

The Cervantino is terrific! We saw the national operas´production of Carmen. It was outdoors at one of the City's central plazas. With the sun just fading and the swallows ballooning across the rooftops of the colonial town, it was simply wonderful! A full orchestra behind a scrim onstage and a cast of at least 100, it was mesmorizing. As we waited for the opera to begin (we had to wait in line for an hour), their seemed to be a high level of security including a sniper team. Before we know it El presidente Fox arrives to great applause and opens the show! He really is incredibly presidential. Tall, elegant, handsome and well spoken with a deep baritone voice, if Bush had even a little of his gracious nature I probably wouldn't hate him quite as much.
Anyway, the show was truly Mexican with fireworks coordinated for the end of the third act. Like most mexican fireworks, some went up at least part of the way into the sky but several exploding right on the rooftop, the crowd seemed to like these the best...

Guanajuato 2

Yes, we are still here! We stayed so long to see this incredible arts festival, the Cervantino! This evening we will be attending the national opera's presentation of Carmen in the main square. Should be a good show.
We've been enjoying our long stay, finding all kinds of interesting places and nooks and crannies. We've also enjoyed hanging around our cool campsite that looks over the City, reading our books and relaxing. We realized that in Zacatecas we acted like tourists on a one week vacation and we can't keep up that kind of touring for a whole year (neither can our budget!). So we are taking things slow and easy, studying our spanish and making most of our own meals at home (a la VW).

Guanajuato part two

So each town has a distinct flavor, Guanajuatos is noise. Dogs on every roof, like cheap car alarms going off when anything pass´s. One dog sets of the next and it´s a dog symphony. All night. Through the ear plugs. Louder than Burning Man. Then there was the Saturday night we went to a local pub with our neighbor Dave the Canadian miner, got home around 3 (remember that things don´t start here till midnight... Dinner is served at 10...) and where woken at 5:45 by the church bells/fireworks/drum and bugle corps for what we don´t know. A mystery. At 5:45. The joys of travel. Otherwise the town is great, very pretty, set in a deep valley with as many tunnels as roads. not much car traffic on the visible streets, lots of pedestrians, Guanajuato has Mexico´s preeminent college for arts, music, theater and mining... Lots of students and it is also the capital of the state of Guanajuato, so lots of government types too. Many more foreign tourists than Zacatecas and lots of foreign students, mainly euro and Japanese... A flip side to this is that the locals are not as friendly as other places we have been, I think part of that is all the day trippers from Mexico City and San Miguel Allende. San Miguel is a super Americanized town, property values have shot up and out of the reach of locals, lots of resentment and grumpiness. Guanajuato must see that they are next on the list... A 18th century home on a square in the heart of town is 150K$... A little further out and its 40k... The same thing in San Miguel is 10 times that... We are only an hour away... Starting in about a week is yet another festival, this one is one of Latin Americas best art festivals...
(http://www.guanajuatocapital.com/ingles/Fic1.htm)
So we may stay a while... Despite the dogs...

Guanajuato

We are now in Guanajuato in the state of the samename, an eight hour drive south and 2,000 feet lowerthan Zacatecas. It's warmer and sunnier and it's our
first day exploring the town and getting our berrings. The town is in so steep a canyon that streets are almost impossible. Big items are delivered by burro,
including sacks of flour and groceries. All the streets are cobblestone and steeper than you would imagine. The had a river that they put underground in the 1800's but they had a devastating flood in 1905, damned the river and turned the underground tunnels into streets! All they did was string lights and let the cars go! I'll have to check but I believe there are more walkways and stairs than streets.
We stopped in Aguascaliente on the way here and soaked in some fabulous hot springs, the building had been in operation since 1808! It was a great break from driving in Mexican traffic, which is not a low stress exercise! Darby

things that are illegal in the usa

so... Mexico's Independence day was amazing, a band sand was set up in the main plaza, fireworks strung across the plaza and the fronts of buildings, even the bufalator cables had hundreds of feet of fireworks hanging from it... The small plaza in front of the Santa Domingo church, about 100 x 100 feet had huge mortars set up , like the ones week have at the fourth but instead of a barge and the coast guard to keep everybody safe there was a few feet of yellow safety ribbon.... The plaza itself is tiny and surrounded by 3 and 4 story buildings... think Ivar's 4th of July display going off from half of westlake plaza... In the main plaza where we were (zacatecas produced 25% of the worlds silver for 250 years, a very rich place, there are many churches and plazas...) a huge burningman sized tower thing had been set up in one corner with a little fence around it, maybe 10 feet from the tower. strings of fireworks hung from the governors palace, the cathedral (built in 1748) and the hotels across the street. The bands played, the people danced and chatted, vendors roamed the crowd selling snacks, more and more people arrived till about 11:30 the mayor came out on the balcony the do the "grito" or cry of freedom, a famous part of the Mexican revolution, by midnight the place was wall to wall people, then the fireworks tower went off... WOW a huge tower of spinning pinwheels and random explosions, things flying off into the crowd, a torrent of wind blown sparks driving all the people that had been crowded around the tower base back into the street, more pinwheels and explosions, it spelled out "Viva Mexico" at one point before the head exploded and the crown spun up into the night sky... Then the stuff hanging from the buildings and bufalator cable went off, huge showers of sparks and debris while the really big stuff in the next plaza started to go, enormous Ivar sized fireworks directly overhead, then a counter barrage started from the top of the cathedral, launched at an angle over the plaza, great except for the ones that hit the steeple and bounce down into the crowd!!! One of the things we love about Mexico is the all ages aspect, kids running around, grandmas sitting on the side lines chatting, babys, adults, all partying like crazy at 1 in the morning...

Late the next day when we got up we walked down the hill into town and hung out people watching, around 8 at night we were in the main plaza and 2 groups of musicians gathered and started to play different songs, kinda competing. we watched for a while and noticed a crowd growing, it turns out to be a strange Zacatecas tradition of almost random street party, groups of musicians gather, then a crowd, then the musicians wander around the city, playing from park to park, plaza to plaza... 3 boys about 14 were wondering around the crowd with 4 liter bottles of tequila, filling little clay cups on Mexican flag colored ribbons that a very well dressed matron was handing out. we were given cups and the boys started filling them every time they where empty as we danced from plaza to plaza with the crowd.... Met some people who told us this particular group was largely a 5 state bowling league celebrating the winning team from Zacatecas!!! They invited us to the awards ceremony in a fancy hotel, more tequila and lots of food, bowling trophy's, a great adventure... Turns out the kids with the tequila where on the soccer team one of our new friends coach's... There parents had been the ones handing out the cups....

A lovely culture, wonderfully different than ours.

Nick

Musicians, mezcal and bowling?

The strangest things happen when you follow your instincts...
It was Saturday evening, we were tired but not too tired. So we head down into town for an ice cream. We wander for a bit, seeing several competing musical groups with crowds preparing to wander the town. We had heard of this particular sponteneous party, specific to Zacatecas. We don't find any ice cream that we want, so we decide to walk along with one of the musical processions. We think, "we'll just go for a few rounds then head home"... The party who is hosting the procession hands out small ceramic shot glasses on a ribbon that we wear around our necks, young teenaged boys come by and fill your glass with mezcal and off we go. The traveling party goes from plaza to plaza, stopping to play 3 to 5 tunes while the crowds dance and drink. There is a whole mix of people, young and old, families, couples and singles. Grandmas dancing with their grandkids and smiles everywhere. The teenagers pour the drinks and sneak one or two while Dad isn't looking.
We reach a central plaza and the musicians play for an hour or more. We get talking to a father and son standing next to us, Arturo and Martin, who tell us they are from Zacatecas and come to these processions every Saturday. When the music stops, they tell us that everyone is is heading up to the Hotel Parador for some food and ask us if we want to tag along!
Sure!
Preparing to walk, they lead us to their car and off we go up the hill. During the ride we find out that Arturo is an accomplished tenor and he gives us one of his CD's! We get to the hotel and it turns out that the big dinner in the main dining room is for the regional competition for bowling leagues! Little did we know that both Martin and Arturo are accomplished bowlers and their leagues are at the top of the list! We thank them profusely and they refuse any payment for dinner.
The kindness here is immeasurable. They even give us a ride to our camp spot, it's 2am, and we didn't even get the ice cream we had started out for...
We didn't miss the ice cream one bit.

More Zacomania

Wow, this is a fun town! In just a week we have been to four museums, including one in the ruins of a catherdral, one in an old convent that was converted to a prison, and now it is the modern art museum! We've eaten more good food, including the fresh buds of prickly pears, buckets of gorditos, fantastic mole, and pozole (great spicy soup for those rainy days).
This past weekend was the big Independencia fiesta. The tradition goes back to Miguel Hidalgo, who shouted "Viva Mexico" from the town square in 1810 at the very beginning of Mexico's break from Spanish rule. So we followed the crowds to the main Zocalo here in Zacatecas (we are only a few hours drive from the City of Dolores Hidalgo where the cry (grito) originated), we find a place on the stairs with the others and wait. They have a huge stage covering one end of the square and shortly many singers and bands take the stage and the crowd builds until the whole square is filled. By 10 pm, the crowd is getting excited! The other end of the square is a 40' tall tower of fireworks, a contraption of metal framework covered in fireworks, and in the square just to the north of us, one block away, they've set up HUGE mortars in big steel tubes, just like the ones we see on the barges in Seattle. At exactly 11pm, the governor comes out on the balcony to great applause and flag-waving. She shouts "Viva Mexico" and the crowd answers, "VIVA", the whole square and half of the town is filled with people shouting and waving flags! It was amazing. The school band is on stage and played the national anthem and soon the fireworks start up! We are about 100' from the main display and as soon as they atart up the crowd surges away from them as the sparks start to fly! Mexican fireworks are fantastically dynamic, powered by loud whistling crackers, they spin and whorl in bright colors and shapes. Like a ferris wheel on fire! They filled the square with smoke and ash but deterred no one! The crown of the display swirled and twirled until it completed flew off in a blaze of white sparks! Everyone cheered and shouted for more! The whole side on the cathedral behind us was rigged with crackers at the top that covered the whole side of the church with a curtain of white sparkles. Then in the final show, the entire length of the teleferico (aerial tramway) above the town was strung with more! It went off turning the colors of the flag and then turning into an enormous curtain of white sparks falling down abopve the city! Stupendous!
Not to be outdone, the huge mortars go off right over the town and continue from ontop of the Bufa (the big hill nearby).
I think we like this place...

Zacatecas

The day we got here we walked out to the tramway station and looked
over the town, then walked down a block, then another and soon we found
ourselves in a crowd of people, many in costume, dressed as Turks or
crusaders, marching bands and wild Huichal Indian troupes
all milling around in the street, every once in a while an organized
group would come thru, tramping up the cobbled streets with a roar or
drums and bugles then it all stopped but none of the onlookers left so
we hung around waiting in the drizzle for the unknown... We could here
drums in the distance and sense from the crowd that the best was yet to
come... Around the bend came group after group, a band of "Turks"
drumming and carrying rifles, then some Huichal dancers then a float
drawn by a tractor with a statue of the virgin Mary. Many of the
"statues" were actually children dressed in costume, kinda spooky...
All this went on late into the night, food vendors selling potato chips
with lime and salsa, tall poles with huge bags of cotton candy in scary
bright colors, baskets with gum and soda and cigarettes... It all ended
well after midnight with the passing of the statue of the local virgin
on her way to the main cathedral. It was for "Founders" day, a citywide
celebration that happens once a year, part of a two week event. We are
going to the fair next Saturday with some teachers from the college we
met at the parade. Now that should be an adventure!

Zacatecas part 1

Sunday 10 Sept
We are in Zactatecas, at 8,200 ft the second highest city in Mexico, a
great change from the summer heat on the coast, 70´s during the day and
60´s at night... a big storm comes thru every day in the afternoon and
dumps rain then it sprinkles a little every night, like clockwork. We
got here Friday, found a campground in town, a parking space in a fancy
hotels main parking area, kinda weird but the price and location are
hard to beat, a room at the hotel is $140 and our "parking space" is
$15... The town is wonderful, locals have lived here mining silver for
millennia and the Spanish took over in 1548, very Euro, windy streets
and steep steep staircases connect the two hills that surround the
city, there is a aerial tram, gondolas suspended from a cable that
connects the two hills, our camp spot is 50 ft from one end of the tram
way, so we guess our camp spot is approaching 9,000 ft... The town
tumbles down the hillsides, the houses bright colors mix with the
church spires and amazing baroque architecture. We are planning on
staying a few weeks.