WiFi=fotos!

One never knows exactly what order these will appear but I will describe briefly and you put together, comprendes?
The turgoise cross covered with fresh greens for upcoming fiesta in San Juan Chamula was an early Mayan symbol before the Spanish arrived. Must have really pissed them off to see it desecrated with plants and stuff.
You see the church I told you about, and some detail of how the indigenous folk have painted it.
Sunset on the streets of San Cristobal. Looking into our hotel courtyard with a cool mural map of Chiapas and Guatemala.
Other crosses and funny looking saint.
A solid amber Marimba (complete with insectos. Think about Jurrassic (sp) Park) at the Museo del Ambar.
So. We're both feeling like we will try the 6am, 4 hour bus ride tomorrow for Palenque. It is my 55th birthday. I believe San Cristobal is the patron saint of travelers among other cositas.

C

Church

We have visited a bunch of churches over the years, Christian and otherwise, but our trek into the "country" from "town" the other day takes the cake. We spent a good hour with a very knowledgable guide walking up one "road" just taking it all in as he told us about the local idigenous people.
It is notable to mention here that no photos may be taken of the people themselves, and that coincidentally we cannot find any WiFi signal to upload what photos we do have. We will post some at some point in the future.
Of course you hear about all the incredible churches of Mexico, of all sizes and shapes, but the bright sunlight leaves you quite blind as you walk into this (one and only) church in Chamula. It is an old Spanish church on the outside so you are umprepared for what you see when your eyes adjust. First, the light of THOUSANDS of candles...on the floor. No pews. The entire, rather dark interior quite smoky with incense. Ancient banners hang from the ceiling, and after a moment, you hear a low chanting sound of prayer. Many families are on the floor (covered with fresh pine needles), with their candles, rum, coca-cola (as holy water) and maybe a chicken to have it´s neck rung in the ceremony. You walk around in quiet awe, and you see the vestiges of the Catholic church, pushed off to line the walls with. The many saints in their wood and glass boxes symbolize other deities now. The priest comes to town in once in awhile for baptisms but otherwise....
I could go on with details but I think I´ll stop here. Anne and I were in tears more than once later in the day.
Yesterday I had a fever and though I felt better today, I´m still not quite right this evening. We have cancelled a 4 hour bus ride (in a van with no bathroom)for tomorrow and hope to maybe do it on my birthday on Monday.

C

From Chiapas...

We arrived in San Cristobal de las Casas, a town at about 7700 ft in the center of the state of Chiapas, after flight to Tuxla Gutierrez and taxi through the winding mountain roads. Soon after leaving the large city of Tuxla we were in hills that looked like the dry Sierra foothills of California, with different kinds of pines and cedars. Corn is planted on the steep slopes, women and young children in walk along the roads carrying wood or backpacks from school. Immediately we notice the bright woven cloth of the women and girl´s dress, each color and design signifying a different village or community or language group. ¨Curvos peligrosos¨ read the signs, every mile or so, and our driver has to slow down because I (no surprise here) am getting woozey. We pass small communities with more traditional mud brick houses and tile roofs, and newer homes made of the cinder block and aluminum roofing that is so common. Stretching in a valley below us, we see what look like large warehouses, actually greenhouses of frame and plastic where many local flowers are grown for market (like the calla lilies of Riveras murals...). As we enter San Cristobal I am amazed to see the population is over 100,000 (I had thought much smaller) and that there is an SUV next to us at the traffic light with Minnesota plates and a canoe on top! This is our first indication that we are not actually at the end of the world, and that in fact, we are in a place that is known especially throughout Europe and Latin America as a popular eco-tourist destination. The center of the city is filled with narrow, cobble-stoned streets and homes, shops, small hotels that are all connected with one block-long facade. Many have interior patios and courtyards, as does the hotel Casa Margarita where we are now staying. Rooms are simple, a bit small and rustic, but clean and adequate. It is a relief not to be fighting the night-time mosquitos (how much "Deet" is really good for you, I wonder...) and heat of Puerto Escondido. We are several blocks from the town "zocalo," the plaza where their are government buildings and a gazebo in the center where we hear live marimba music in the early evening. SC has 22 churches, and the one in the center has a large plaza in front of it where the Sandinistas arrived and held forth back in ´94. There has been no visible military force evident in town until yesterday, when we spotted a big green humvee with several soldiers near the zocalo, and noticed a big crowd in front of the church. A taxi driver told us it was a special saint day but he couldn´t say which (or my Spanish was too limited!), but after talking with a young waiter later in the day I learned that it was the national ¨Dia del Banderia," Flag Day, and the schools were out. The teachers of the region had come to SC for a large demonstration against the governments current push to privatize all education in the country. The waiter explained that the private schools are of better quality and there are more of them, and the government wants to farm-out the rest of education, which the public school teachers obviously don´t want. There was another rally later in the day, as I walked back to our hotel, with banners and speeches (the speaker spoke "muy rapido" - I could only make our a few words like better education, parents, teachers, children as I walked by. We have learned that many of the indegenous local people feel that classroom education is only a small part of their children´s necessary education needs, and that learning about their indegenous Mayan culture, religious rituals, spirituality and history is at least as important as ABC´s. The other very interesting piece here is the impact of ¨evangelicos¨ from the US who began coming here in the 1950s, started a language institute to translate Bibles and have caused quite an uproar in the indegenous communities. Converts are basically cast out of their communities, and have drifted into town where they no longer have the strong community connections of their pueblos. What is really disturbing is that many of these evangelicos are now converting to fundamentalist Islam....which is not surprizing if you feel uprooted and disconnected without community in a city of 100,000. One of our guides (when we went to Chamula, which we will describe later) informed us that these Islamic fundamentalists are coming from Spain, obviously speaking Spanish and appealing to these people. He said that he believed that this will become quite problematic for the city in the future. This all reminds me of Karen Armstrong´s insightful book, ¨The Battle for God,¨ in which she compares the common authoritarianism and ¨black-white¨ thinking of fundamentalist Christianity, Judaism and Islam. We hope to add more later...think we have located a wifi site where we can add photos, as I am on our hotels computer and can´t download our pictures from our laptop. We are doing well, are overwhelmed by the beauty and complexity of this region (I´m ready to keep going, and board a bus to Guatemala!) and feeling so blessed to be on the journey together.

-ASG

The Birds

I wish I could show you all photos of some of the birds we've seen. But how? They flit hither and yon. Excepting Los Grandes Negros...I called them Skuas in an earlier blog. ..they are Magnificent Frigatebirds. Not to be confused with the Greater Frigatebird, which is smaller. And then, the Yellow-winged Cacigue, the White -throated Magpie Jay, and the Social Flycatcher, all fairly common and avaiable for viewing.
Here you see us with our friends Gina and Sheila at the Manialtepec Lagoon, having breakfast. We just picked Gina's Place off of a website, and after a few emails, decided we would rent a place from her. We had no idea she would be so fabulously knowedgable about Puerto. In fact, she runs a tourist info. kiosk on the main drag "downtown". Friends of hers have set up a party tongiht (our last) with a grand piano (quite out of tune but a Steinway and...it's a party!) and dinner.

More from San Cristobal next Sunday.

C

ASG here: Somehow C's photos didn't upload to the site. Signal waxes/wanes here; we will try again tomorrow. This being our last day on "Mar del Sur," I am feeling a bit overwhelmed by how much I do not yet know about the Oaxaca coastline and its complicated history. Gina is both well-read and curious about the indigenous past, and has been a wonderful resource. Shared a haunting book with me called "The Edge of Enchantment: Sovereignty and Ceremony in Huatulco, Mexico" written by one of the staff with the National Museum of the American Indian which C and I visited last month in DC. The displays we saw there of life in Latin American "Before Cortes" (a different kind of "b.c") have come to life as a I read and listen to people down here....of a coastline that has been a thoroughfare for peoples long before the Spanairds. Rich in resources of gold, silver, cochineal (red dye the Spanairds later sold to all of Europe...think "Red Coats" of the English infintry), blue dye from mussels, pearls, seafood carried by hand by relay runners to Moctezuma in Mexico City, a coastline visited by traders from Peru and out in the Pacific (along the helpful currents), later sacked numerous times by European pirates....the lush coastal strip and high mountains have endured boundary disputes and been the subject of litigation for eons. Zapotec, Mixtec, Nahua peoples (to name just a few...so little known about them now...Spanairds destroying temples,records, art, etc), all with different languages, finally subjugated (and paying tribute/taxes) to the Aztecs and then quickly descimated within decades by European illnesses after Pedro de Alvardo (one of Cortes cohorts) arrives in 1523. Now to hear of the expropriation of lands for tourist development...and how to maintain ties with your young people who must migrate Norte to seek employment that pays more than 50 pesos a day (about 50 cents). Our current host Sheila, who is now a citizen after living here 16+ years and runs a language institute, tells of bright, former students of hers who have needed to leave, as there is little sustainable work. Gina explains: it's as if our government does not recognize a middle class; only the big companies and the lowly people who work for them for nothing. So, I watch and listen and ponder these things....and realize my adult education about this vast country has been so limited. I will stop there for now..

-ASG

Valentines day on Playa Manzanillo

Just had to add a few more photos...me eating oysters with lime at lunch, after watching several men hauling them up the beach dripping with seawater after they pulled them off the bottom of the bay and then seeing them cracked open by an older man feet from our table. We ate under an awning of the small restaurant in the next photo, enjoying the sight of familias mexicanos splashing, laughing together in the shallow waters, as fishermen brought in tuna off the boats you see. And the fish soup, sopa de mariscos, was pretty amazing...filled with whole shirmp, octopus pieces, tuna, and a broth that was like drinking the ocean...yum. Did some snorkling, seeing mostly dead coral close to shores, some colorful little fish...and also quite a few tiny jellyfish which left us with a stingy rash (an unusual occurance, which we hope has drifted out to sea today). That's when we retreated to other side of the beach for lunch!

-Anne

Finding WiFi...

Ah...it all seemed so easy when we thought of it...posting blogs daily and keeping you all in touch with daily doings. WiFi is quite scarce around town, and is needed in order to download our photos onto our blogsite. We dragged the laptop to supper last night, hoping to use the Santa Fe Hotel router again (long, dusty, hot trek across town) and somehow couldn't get a signal. Frustrating, when you are all ready to send news! And...it's all part of being somewhere that is mostly "off the grid." From now on we will attempt Sabbath Blogs on Sundays, so you all will not get too frustrated checking for us and will know when to visit the site!

The first photo is our beloved "palapa" above our first residence near Playa Carilizallilo, accessed by an interior spiral staircase up to the roof. It is there that I sketched and painted daily, until we moved across town to our new dwelling (photos soon). I would go up there early and watch the sunrise, for quiet reading and reflection, then retreat in the heat of the day after morning swim for artwork and writing.

The second photo is "un artista" (same for male/female) who spreads his wares on the street, holding a painting of his we purchased. Notice, if you can see the details, the ubiquitous skeletons (this time playing saxaphone!) which are so much a part of Mexican folklore, spirituality and art. I met a woman artist from Chicago who was working on a wonderfully bizarre watercolor of dog skeletons (inspired she said by all the Crazy Dogs of Puerto, which run all around town).

Then you see me working on a small watercolor of some pinkish flowers I spotted in a poolside pot, and then a gecko inspired by the numerous geckos who skitter across the walls and night and eat mosquitos. They emit a loud "chirpchirpchirp" that sounds like a bird, and totally incongruous with their small size. They are actually almost "albino" in color (the green is "artist priviledge").

I am hoping that you each had a sweet Valentine's Day. Chris and I exchanged homemade cards near the beach at sunset....still in love, and so grateful to be here together.

Bienvenidos a Puerto Escondido

Oh boy.....it sure is lovely and warm here. Such a sweet little series of bays and lagoons. And birds galore of course. Excepting the huge skuas floating above, almost all of the birds are hues of yellow! And we haven't been on the birding tour yet! Our little casita has a palapa on the roof overlooking the hood and some of the ocean. Yes, we did watch sunset from our hammocks last nite. Wow. Our "landlord", Gina turns out to be a local gem and treasure trove of local politics, history and info in general.
Our routine doesn't amount to much, which was our plan. Down to our little beach (Playa Carrazalillo, 170 steps) while the sun is less intense, and body surfing. Then, resting for evening exploration. Superbowl on the fairly loud and uncouth surfing beach, Zicatela, was not near as interesante as Coretta's tribute with Maya Angelou, et al, that I happenned upon at a hotel TV one day while hunting for WiFi signal (Mac is tough for some reason).
We move from our beach casita into a friend of Gina's lower level in town soon, overlooking the Playa Principal and town proper. Anne will fill you in there. We hope all of you are doing well and think about you often.

Chris