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).