Finding Birds in Forests

Different speeds, different distances...

2011-02-04T10:07:00.003-05:00

Felt so strange, loading our back packs into a trunk. Seat belts on (even in the back seat). A stereo? My last 3 or 4 trips through Mexico have been lugging my too-old, too-small, very uncomfortable back pack from one side of a city to another, and then from where the colectivo won't go any further to where you might have a snowball's chance in hell of being seen by a car speeding by at 80 - 100 kilometers per hour, and then sometimes a few kilometers more because the spot just doesn't "feel right." Hitchhiking: intense realizations, ground-down-on-the-pavement perspective, long days, dehydration, truck drivers, desperate appreciation of shade. Now, I was in a 2-door Cavalier with all new tires, sometimes the driver, sometimes the passenger, trying to take photographs with a camera I don't understand at the scenery moving way, way too fast outside the window. We didn't even see any hitchhikers the entire ride from el DF to Puebla to Oaxaca to Puerto.

5am we left el DF one Monday. The car was freezing. Turns out the fuse that was thought to fix the heat just wasn't that one, I suppose. It brought back almost-painful memories of fall fruit picking, of every single vein in your body aching for the sun to push the blood back through it, and the utter magic when the first ray shoots over the mountain. Never mind that it will still be another hour or so before the sun's warmth reaches your bones, that is THE SIGN. We got to Puebla, and as we were running on approximately 2 hours of sleep, we took a nap at Tio Miguel's house, who had driven us to Puebla, ostensibly so that we could sleep in the back seat. Only the cold!

Back on the road. We're not good, serious road-trippers yet. We stop after about 15 minutes to eat. Luckily, we did. Quesadillas that made one forget about the proximity to diesel fumes, oh my that flor de calabaza, can't get enough! Sufficiently enchilados, we got back on the road. Don't want to drive at night. We do anyway. After all the curves and the sunlight that seems to be funneled directly into our eyeballs by a poorly designed windshield (thanks GM) and the dust and the sometimes sticky, stagnant, serious calor, we arrive to Oaxaca, late. Tired. That kind of tired where someone talks AT you, and you don't even know if your eyes are open or if your jaw has dropped to the floor and you have distant, wispy thoughts that maybe you're too old for this, in complete disregard for your lack of sleep, food, water. Our host, a couchsurfer, very friendly, very hospitable, soon realized this and lights out.

What alegria the next day to find a dear friend, Claire. Suffering under the beady-eyed gaze of the same Lebanese boss in San Cristobal, we became friends quickly. What was first a survival-mechanism became the basis of our now 3 year long friendship. And here she was, finally outta San Cris! I was happy to see her and even happier that it wasn't in San Cris and almost in tears happy that we could travel together like we'd always talked about, even if it was only for a day and an hour out of Oaxaca City. We took pictures of the Arbol de Tule outside the gates. Why pay 5 pesos to go inside when the tree's so big it barely fits in its fence?

We nearly choked ourselves on thick dust winding through houses with fences out of cactuses, up up up into a mountain, back down the mountain, where the hell is HIERVE DEL AGUA, and suddenly we were there. It's surreal, I don't think I could aptly describe it, but when Claire said it felt like it was the end, a place where you simply couldn't go any further, the end of what she didn't know, but the end...I had to agree.

Tlayudas in the belly, deep sleep.

quepo

2010-12-30T00:14:00.004-05:00

A veces olvido que el mundo sea tan grande. Que por cada vez que cierro y abro mis ojos todo el mundo se muere y vuelve a nacer. Que por cada vida hay estrellas infinitas. Que mi corazon late con el ritmo de la luna. Al olvidar esto, me siento enorme, sin posibilidad de caber en ningun lado, y cuando me doy cuenta que el mundo es tan grande quepo perfectamente bien.

Winter

2010-12-15T00:37:00.003-05:00

Winter is only beginning. I can't imagine what the rest of it will bring. In a few short weeks, cold has begun to seep into my bones, pushing all my body warmth into my heart, which now is beating with a new determination and speed. My mind is unsure about this new rhythm and wants to understand, because, ultimately, all decisions come from the mysterious and faithful heart. So where are we going? Brain awaits an answer. Heart beats ever faster and stronger, almost like laughing, doesn't respond, looks up at the sky. Brain can't even follow her gaze because now she is looking beyond the sky and no one else can follow.

And in the blood, cells carry the simple message, "Everything will be okay. Everything is always okay."

strange winds.....

2010-09-22T00:15:00.000-05:00

Last night, many people couldn't sleep. Tossing, turning, vivid dreams, all that wind mixing up the energy, mixing up our minds. Today the full moon keeps a peaceful watch over a still valley, things are changing so fast. I'm struggling to stay focused on "now," when the future seems too rapidly approaching and the past peeks out from everything like a dark color under a first coat of paint. I don't know how much, honestly, I will miss this place. How that can be when it's a place I've put my hands deep into the dirt, my breath into the trees, my sweat and tears into the rivers, I don't know. I'm leaving so much of myself here, maybe I'll miss it more than I realize. Ah, this restless fall.

soul/sol

2010-03-28T13:50:00.002-05:00

I spent 3 weeks in an orphange/ashram in Tepoztlan, Mexico. Fresh air, healthy food, yoga in the mornings, surprising mountains, children's and childlike smiles, odd jobs.

Then another month in Mexico City. Smelly air, lots of traffic, surprising volcanoes, los Simpsons, sweets and excessive amounts of delicious/not-very-healthy food, art making.

I'm not born for the city. After a few weeks there I developed a horrible cough and a tiredness in my body that I couldn't kick. Let's get out! I said...

And we did. At (adopted) mom and dad's insistence we took a bus to Puebla, staying with Miguel, Omar's uncle. I immediately liked him for his jokes and generosity, especially when he pinned down Omar, letting me tickle him until he was about to explode. I wish we could have spent more time, but there's always the return trip.

From there we hitched to Oaxaca. A series of rides picked us up. The first, which only took us about 10 minutes up the highway to the toll booth, was a pair of women, one middle-aged, and one older. We chatted with them, carefree and excited about our trip, and when we get out the older woman handed us 100 pesos, wishing us well. Our angelito was with us, for sure. From there we got a couple more rides, one with a truck driver who proudly displayed a "Amo a mi gorda" bumper sticker on his dashboard, and another with a serious man who sells vaccines for chickens. The ride that actually got us into the city was with a Portuguese/Mexican couple who live in Spain and were also taking their first trip together. Nice folks, all of 'em.

Oaxaca is a city I love but never have adequate time to stay in. I had far too much desire in getting to the beach and so we only stayed one night, graciously accepted into the home of hard-working activists. Early the next morning, we talked with Diego, a friend of mine now for a couple of years, about community radio, conflicts, and hopes in Oaxaca. As always, I was impressed by the dedication of people there to create and improve and fight without ceasing.

We caught a ride to the beach in one swoop. We waited for about 5 minutes, decided we needed water, went to the store, waited another 15 seconds or so and boom! A ride straight to the beach! Though, straight isn't the most adequate word, because we wound 'round and 'round and up and down the Sierra de Oaxaca in the back of a pick-up for about 7 hours before feeling our skin start to get sticky, feeling the ocean breeze.

Again we were received in a way that makes me humbled to have such amazing friends. How does a gal get so lucky?

It was late when we got in, so my first thought in the morning was to see the sea. Finally. Months and months of dreaming didn't prepare me at all, I realized, when I saw the immensity of the ocean stretching out before me. We've been on the beach for 2 weeks now and I still feel the same way every time I see it.

Como tú

2010-03-02T18:32:00.000-05:00

Yo como tú
amo el amor,
la vida,
el dulce encanto de las cosas
el paisaje celeste de los días de enero.

También mi sangre bulle
y río por los ojos
que han conocido el brote de las lágrimas.
Creo que el mundo es bello,
que la poesía es como el pan,
de todos.

Y que mis venas no terminan en mí,
sino en la sangre unánime
de los que luchan por la vida,
el amor,
las cosas,
el paisaje y el pan,
la poesía de todos.

--Roque Dalton

2010-02-27T10:09:00.002-05:00

One of the nicest things about Mexico is how warmly people receive you wherever you go. Abby and I got to Mexico City a few days before New Year's Eve and were immediately adopted by Omar's family. Omar's mom welcomed us with enchiladas in green sauce, yummmmmm.

New Year's was a nice change from the typical party-all-night in the streets to which I'd been accustomed in the States. It was more of a family affair. We all ate dinner together (pozole! yummmmm) and when midnight struck we drank a tiny bit of wine and ate 12 grapes. That's not to say that we didn't party all night, because we did, but it was all at home with cousins and aunts and uncles and brothers of all ages. At around 6am we were too tired to salsa dance anymore and went to bed.

It's been cold in Mexico. January and February are always cold months throughout Mexico but this year was much colder than usual. Even when we tried to escape the weather by going to Cuernavaca, normally much warmer than the city, we found grey skies and cold rain. Eck.

Our first few weeks we spent relaxing in and out of the city. I sought out foods I had missed: quesadillas, gorditas, tlacoyos, licuados, tacos...Aaahhh, so delicious and so abundant.

We also made a trip to the Caves of Cacahuamilpa, enormous caves in the state of Guerrero, just across the border of the state of Morelos. The guide told terrible jokes and led us deep under the ground, where she assured us that if an earthquake were to take place we would be safe.

Making it across the border

2010-02-08T19:00:00.002-05:00

So, after banging on the doors of a Greyhound bus that was pulling out of the station, Abby and I were able to board and relax for the ride to the border. Border procedures are simple. We were the only non-Mexican citizens on the bus and all we had to do was get off, get a piece of paper that is our "tourist visa" and the advice that we "have to pay the visa fee when we leave the country" and then, back on the bus. Crossing the border, our bus driver turned on the radio loud and I sighed, relieved to finally be in a place where music in public is not forbidden.

Our bus got us as far as Nuevo Laredo, just across the border. The bus station we arrived at didn't accept credit cards and neither of us were carrying cash so, with our backpacks and smaller-but-still-heavy food bag, we walked 3 blocks to another bus station that let Abby charge our tickets and off we were to Monterrey, where we arrived to one of the most beautiful sunsets I'd seen. Clouds hung low over the distant mountains and in intermittent holes in them, red, orange, and yellow sun rays fell onto the peaceful, outstretched desert. In Monterrey, we got tickets for the next bus to Mexico City, deciding to just make the whole 12 hour trip in one night, and, still without cash, we ate what resembled a dinner out of our food bag. I finally talked to Omar, who assured us he would be meeting us at the bus station in the morning.

We boarded the bus, watched a dubbed-version of Ratatouille and soon fell asleep. The ride was long, but I've gotten used to bus travel and didn't have much of a problem sleeping. Still, in the morning I was really out of it and it wasn't until we were walking away from the bus that we remembered: the food bag! I ran back onto the bus, but, alas, all of our Michigan food goodies were gone. Eh.

We waited beneath a giant Christmas tree for Omar, who arrived about 20 minutes after we did because his dad's VW beetle wouldn't start and they had to push it up the street to get her started. We crammed our backpacks and us in the back seat and Omar's dad drove us home, making jokes the whole way about how his house was high in the mountains and very cold, with only the stars for the cieling, and that we had better like living there.

New year, nuevo ciclo....

2010-02-05T19:02:00.003-05:00

Again I let time slip past, until a dear friend asked me about this here old blog. Funny, because the other day I was mentally preparing a letter for her in my head. Before I start, Abigail did a nice re-cap of our first month in Mexico with some of our photos here: http://www.adventuresofawanderingprincess.blogspot.com/

So, I woke up Christmas morning, not with the childish excitement for gifts and candy, but with excitement for finally heading back down to Mexico, my winter home. I woke up before sunrise and flipped on the back porch light, a little worried about the predicted weather. What I saw was even worse than what I'd expected: Freezing rain hurling itself down onto the already partially-flooded lawns. Deciding I couldn't control the weather but I could control whether to remain calm or not, I got into the shower, almost hoping the weather would just go away. After I got out, I quickly checked the Megabus and Amtrak websites to see if they advertised any delays or cancellations. None. I checked the weather and saw a big blotch of storm stretching basically from where I was sitting over to Chicago and down the whole train route that was to take us to Texas. Lovely.

My family reluctantly drove me to Ann Arbor anyway and I waited to board the bus with other Christmas Day travelers in the rain. After about 20 minutes, the sun came out and we actually got into Chicago early. Whew!

There I found Ms. Abigail waiting with a huge bag of food and we were both relieved that we'd both made it. The train ride down was nice, though the train was packed with folks who'd had their flights cancelled and had to make other holiday travel plans. There was also the part where we were woken up at 2am, told we'd be getting off the train to get on a bus, actually got off the train at 4am and onto the bus and later back onto a train sometime around 7am. All of this happened somewhere in Arkansas, some place I'd probably never recognize.

We finally made it to Texas and were happy because weeks before we'd made the decision to couchsurf with someone to have a little break in the trip down. Imagine how happy we were when we called our couchsurfer and she informed us that she was not, in fact, in San Antonio, Texas, but in Las Vegas at a huge party. We did some quick thinking and within an hour another couchsurfer picked us up and took us to a (couchsurfing) party of our own. We were exhausted, but managed to keep up.

The next day we left bright and early (ok we almost missed our bus) for Mexico! More to come.

Alright.

2009-12-12T17:42:00.004-05:00

My writings and energies have been directed elsewhere, and it's been almost a year that I've written something here. This year has been surprisingly volatile. San Cristobal was warm and colorful at times and confusing and desolate at others. Our one room apartment was never lacking multitudes of travelers and friends who were passing through, and who sometimes stayed for many days or weeks. It was so nice to have a place of my own, which are few and far between on my path these days, and I tried to open it to all as much as possible, growing and adding to my sense of hospitality. It was hard to leave San Cristobal. In just a few short months I felt like I had a whole life there. Yoga classes, morning coffees, friends and music and art, concoctions in the kitchen, bicycle rides and gossiping with my fellow waitress and friend. All of those things made up for the insane workplace I had to put up with 6 days of the week, ha.

Canada. I feel like I've talked enough about Canada to folks, probably too much actually. I don't have any more to say here. Instead, I've started writing it all down in a deeply personal way, to myself, but perhaps one day it will turn into a book or at least some stories and poems. We'll see.

Michigan is giving me some much needed rest. Lots of alone time to think and wonder and plan and dream and deal with things. My body, too, is resting, and finally working out the dull and mysterious aches and pains that popped up after a couple weeks of no hard labor. I am staying semi-active but not pushing my body past its limits, like I did for most of the summer and fall. As always, it's nice to see friends and family and familiarity.

I am looking forward to Mexico, though I also foresee it as being a huge challenge. A challenge in finding balance, in living even more freely but with purpose, in bettering myself so that I can better the world. Though it certainly won't be a challenge to soak up some warm sun rays after these few weeks of snowy, blustery cold. Brrrrr.

De vuelta...

2009-02-20T19:45:00.002-05:00

I've been in San Cristobal for about a week and a half and have found many old friends. One of the things I love most about San Cris is that phones and email aren't necessary. To find friends, a walk around town is all that a gal needs to do. Everything is left up to the moment in which you happen to find a friend that happens to be going to go play music or eat or dance. Nice.

A friend from the Casa del Pan gifted me a kombucha mama and a taste test is scheduled for Sunday.

Honey-ginger-hibiscus wine is also brewing...

...as well as many ideas swirling around in our heads about how to make next month's rent: salsas, jams, parties, tourist-aimed activities, what else?

2009-02-19T15:57:00.002-05:00

Weeks are flying by. I did escape from Mexico City, after only a few days in its clutches. This time I just couldn't handle it, perhaps it was the timing, perhaps it was me. Either way, I went to Queretaro for a couple of days, back to el DF for my things, and then to Puebla for a few days. Lots of African drumming, fresh bread and tortillas, friends of Abraham, tired and hot days hitching south, poco a poco. In Puebla, I went through a period of mild anti-sociability, where I could only effectively interact with children. Luckily, Abraham is like a big child, but unfortunately I couldn't get to know his friends as well as I would have liked. We hitched to Oaxaca with a friendly truck driver who invited us to lunch, but from Oaxaca, exhausted and eager to get to San Cristobal, we made a deal with a bus driver and took two of the last seats on a bus at a discounted price. After about 20 minutes, going up a slight hill, the bus broke down, but they sent another, more comfortable one and in the morning we made it to Tuxtla. We grabbed a couple of tamales and a combi to San Cris. Just coming over those mountains made me remember why I love this town so much. Beauty, beauty, beauty.

Ah, San Cristobal. Things have changed, died down since I left, but at the same time everything feels the same.

Constant traffic, where are the tortillas?

2009-01-30T00:00:00.002-05:00

Mexico City is always a monster. At times I've really enjoyed it: the museums, the art, the music, things you can't find anywhere else, lots of movement and extremity and the history and society, etc., etc.. But right now, I just want to be able to see the stars and moon, to walk to the market and come back with armfuls of fresh fruit and vegetables and warm, non-Maseca tortillas, to smell pine tree breezes, not traffic fumes. I want my coffee options to be more expansive than Starbucks on one street corner or Nescafe from the Oxxo on the other corner. 15 pesos an hour for internet?!

I feel trapped by all the cement and steel. If I want to move around, I have to go under ground....rather than follow the sun or my intuition. If I want to find a friend, I have to find a phone card and a pay phone and a moment when a diesel truck isn't roaring by so that I can actually hear the conversation...rather than just strolling by a couple places I think they might be.

Yep, I'm a gal that belongs in small towns. My first night venturing out of the house here in the Distrito Federal, I tripped on a dark sidewalk and fell down so hard that I ripped one of my only two pairs of pants, and both my knee caps, open. Ow.

It's sort of funny to think back, though, to the first time I came to Mexico City and was convinced that no one should walk in the streets at night, ever. And now I'm not afraid to walk around the city on my own at night at all, realizing it's just as dangerous as anywhere else. Now I'm just annoyed and discouraged by all the noise and hardness and impersonality.

Peregrinacion, preguntas, perdidos...

2009-01-28T01:36:00.004-05:00

So, it turns out we didn't head for Morelia as soon as we thought we would, and at the end of the brief trip with Abraham, I only got a basic djembe lesson, but all in all it was worth it. I left Guanajuato one sunny afternoon, met Abraham in Celaya and after a quick lunch we headed for Queretaro to the apartment of one of his oldest friends. It was strange to be back in Queretaro, a place so familiar to me but now with very little meaning, and I hadn't expected to even pass through, let alone pass a few days there. We got in touch with a friend from Canada, who I'd worked with on a small, organic tomato/pepper/squash farm. He, like the rest of us, has completely changed all the plans he had the last time we all saw each other in Canada. It's funny how all of us had these grand plans and now, with everything completely turned upside-down, we're still all content and growing and making more plans. We had a few Noche Buenas and then left to meet up with Abraham's friend and another african percussion ensemble, the Queretaro group. It was good, not as inspiring as the Celaya/Irapuato group, but I was also exhausted and that contributed to my eagerness to get out of there.

Saturday was a good dance party in Guanajuato and a couple days later we passed through Celaya for our things and headed for Morelia. The rides came easily and were extremely generous. The first was an older man who took us about half way, handing us a 100 peso bill as we stepped out of his mini van. I just looked at Abraham until he nodded at me to take it. Thus, our blessed luck began. Ay, gracias a la vida. Our next ride was in a pick-up with 2 young biologists. We talked with them the entire way to Morelia and they invited us to a couple of beers and horse-back riding if we're ever near the village where one of them lives. In Morelia, we headed straight for our mutual friend's house, only to find that he was in a city an hour away working (he's also an African drummer with a group and they play often around Morelia), so we waited, very tired at this point, but still very happy to see him and be received so well in his home when he did arrive. Next time, a little warning would help, I suppose.

We wandered around the city the next day, drank coffee in the sun on Carlos' roof, watched the Morelia drummers play in a city park until the sun went down, among our wanderings through the market (wow wow wow the breads in Michoacan!!). We got information on the Monarch Butterfly Refuge, determined to head there early the next day.

And, we started off okay. We got up early, went to the market, bought tortillas and cheese and ate them on the sidewalk with some nopales we'd bought the day before. With a banana and some water, we were ready to go. We took a combi, as recommended by Carlos, to the salida towards Mil Cumbres. There are 3 different ways to get to the Refuge and by sheer accident we took the least traveled, oldest, curviest federal highway in the whole state. Again, our amazing luck came to our aid and, poco a poco, 15 minute ride after 15 minute ride, folks picked us up, surprised to see us on the side of the road. Every single ride, and we must have had at least 6 or 7 that day, warned us about the local situation, "muy peligroso," "muchos asesinatos," "la gente no esta acostumbrada que personas piden aventon aqui," cosas asi. In September of last year some bombs went off in Morelia and since then everyone assured us that the situation with the mafias and the narcos has only gotten worse. If we'd been out there after dark, we would have had to sleep by the side of the road, they told us. People are wary right now. It took most of the day and we'd advanced only a little more than half way when a vibrant, older woman who called herself La Senora Sara picked us up. She told us there was no way for us to make it to the Mariposas that day, so she suggested we stop in Tuxpan, climb a 900-something stair staircase to a top of a hill, come down and by an ice cream cone, and then head to a near by pueblo to sleep. At this point we had no other ideas so we told her that was fine and she left us near the base of the hill. With the altitude and the condition of our bodies, we made a slow ascent to the top of the hill but the view of the surrounding hills, farms and village were worth it, besides the motivation that came with physical activity. At the top we ate some fruit, rested on the ground, and, legs rubbery and shaky, made a comical descent back to Tuxpan. As Senora Sara told us to do, we got ice cream cones and the oldest ice cream shop in Tuxpan, where they offer flavors ranging from rose petal to tequila to squash to avocado. I got squash and "pasta," which I think is a mix of honey and nuts. Abraham got mamey and "chongos," which I believe is the cream on top of warmed milk (or something to that effect).

We got to Zitacuaro, picked up by a couple of off-duty police officers (no se preocupen, vienen con la ley! they told us, laughing), one fully dressed in a soccer uniform, and the other awkwardly hunched over the steering wheel of a car that was clearly too small for him. A strange duo but at least they got us to the pueblo before dark. We found Senora Sara in the parking lot that she owns in the center of the small town and we chatted with her and her daughter for a while. She told us about how she dislikes her daughter's partner but loves her grandson, Siddhartha, and that he has that name because she's become a buddhist in the past year. She gave us a lot of advice: Take lots of water into the mountains and bananas and a dulce. Smile at everyone, it's the best way to disarm someone. Don't provoke those that provoke you. Lay down and listen to the enormity of the sound of the butterfly's wings. Watch the butterflies dance and be careful not to step on them. Avoid the hotels "de paso" if you want to sleep. Etc, etc. She appeared to be a very strong women, ready to partir la madre de cualquier pendejo that gets in her way, even at nearly 60 years old. We thanked her and found the cheapest posada we could for the night, planning on leaving as early as we could to get to the refuge.

We rose early, looked for and found the town market, and stocked up on fruit, rice, beans, tortillas and bolillo. On a little stoop we stopped and made some absolutely perfect tacos for breakfast. An old man with a bag of limes and bleary eyes asked us if we wanted a couple. We accepted and he told us he'd been "pisteando por 3 meses," as he handed us 2 limoncitos. Ay.

Again the rides came easily, first to San Felipe, then to Angangueo (one of the funnest pueblo names I've had to say so far). Almost arriving we were stopped at a checkpoint where easily over 40 police officers were visible, and who knows how many others were beyond our sight. They only searched Abraham and, finding nothing, sent us on our way. At Angangueo we were immediately bombarded by men offering their guide services (only 450 pesos para subir y bajar! ha!). We told them we had no money and at the tourist office asked how we could walk up to the refuge. An easy 2 hour walk up the dirt highway, we should even be able to hitch easily, we were told. At the first curve in the highway, a man in a pickup truck asked us if we wanted his services as a guide. We repeatedly said no, explaining we were flat broke, and eventually the man seemed to believe us. Then he offered to tell us an even quicker way up to the refuge, through trails in the mountain rather than along the highway. Abraham jumped at the idea of this adventure, I was hesitant, knowing how many trails are often found in these types of places and how easy it is to get lost. Still, Abraham won me over with his talk of adventure and I figured walking under cool, shady pines would be better than along the dusty, hot carreterra.

We made it easily to where the man told us there was a pozo de agua. A little stream neatly ran down the mountain and there we refilled our water bottle. We continued, slowed a little by the rapid increase in elevation and then stopped by multiple paths and the realization that maps just don't help when you're trying to find your way in the mountain. We got frustrated with one another but pressed on, eventually finding a lone log cutter with his burro and two nervous dogs, who told us to head toward the sunshine until we found the highway again and continue from there. At this point we literally had to climb, pulling at pine needles and tree branches to pull ourself up toward the sun. The forest was filled with hierba buena, spearmint, and the air was intoxicatingly sweet. Already monarchs and hummingbirds were swirling all around us. We made it to the highway, looked out at the country side far, far below us now, and headed further up, up the mountain. The altitude and weariness got to us and, after over 4 hours, we were close to giving up. A family by the side of the road told us we still had hours more to walk. Abraham and I argued and walked in opposite directions, him back towards the mountain, and me further up. In 10 minutes I found myself at the gate of the refuge and a few minutes later, Abraham was there. We talked calmly and patched things up, and finally, finally went into the refuge.

On the way up I'd had a lot of time to think about the place and our reason for going. I realized that this particular place held a lot of personal meaning for me, being that the monarchs make their annual migration from north to south, actually even many from Michigan to Mexico (though the same butterflies never make the entire trip, but rather in trips and generations), and so I felt quite close to these incredibly strong, yet incredibly fragile creatures. No one knows why they make this migration, yet it is a fact and something in them drives them. Is there any better justification for migration? If the butterflies don't need one, do I?

Another 30 minutes up the mountain and bam. A cloud of butterflies signaled that we were near. A little bit further and we found fir trees coated with quivering black and orange wings, layered over and over one another. When the sun appeared from behind a cloud, the butteflies erupted into an energetic burst of flight, first up, then down to the ground to drink water from a trickling stream. They danced and landed on people's heads and legs. Their shadows and wings in the corners of my eyes were dizzying. We were inside of a living, breathing Monarch cloud, no end in sight.

We gave many thanks, ate a bolillo stuffed with rice, and headed back down the mountain, knowing we had to get a ride back to Morelia before dark. And we barely did. Just as the sun went down and we were standing outside of a Pemex gas station, a man in a fancy car pulled up. "By chance are you going to Morelia? Could you give us a ride?" The man looked at us suspiciously at first, but to our surprise said yes! I fell asleep in the back seat while Abraham happily talked with the man the entire ride back. "You saved our life!" But the man was modest, and clearly happy to have helped us.

And so, our adventure in Michoacan ended. It had elements of magic to it that I can't explain. I really felt that every person we ran into was intended for us, a true blessing and guardian for us, especially given the difficult situation in the state right now. There was also the strangeness of seeing 3 dead horses in separate places. I never felt that they were any type of omen, though, but more of a sad indicator of the area's condition. And there were other things, small details that I have to consider more. We were lucky, though, that's for sure.

Un nuevo ciclo...

2009-01-14T16:12:00.002-05:00

Wow, I had a great time in Texas, mil thanks to Angie who made my stay not only enjoyable but pretty amazing. Salsa dancing was fun, even though there was no one to dance with who actually knew how to dance. Thrifting and ice cream and tearing up the garden was all made even better by the sweet, warm Texan air. I found that with the sun and warmth, I didn't even consider needing a cup of coffee in the morning. Even though I missed my city bus that was to take me to my Greyhound bus, a friendly bus driver and Greyhound attendant later I made it to my bus just as the last boarding call was announced. I should be more careful, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a picture of a "washateria" a few blocks from Angie's house and that's exactly when the number 4 rolled on by. Ah, well, things work out.

The bus trips were long. 14 hours from Fort Worth to Monterrey, typical Greyhound nonsense, mainstream media in dirty, overcrowded stations, dehydration, no stop at immigration, comical border crossing, all that. Another 11 hours from Monterrey to Leon and then a short 50 minute ride to Guanajuato, where both Abraham and Jonathan were waiting. I tried defying the exhaustion and dehydration (me vale!) and went with Abraham to Bar Fly. But after 2 beers, I just couldn't anymore and we went back to a friend of Abraham's place to crash. Still, it was nice to be received with hugs and kisses from my very favorite bartenders in all of Mexico.

My tongue is still trying to wrap itself around Spanish words. It's a process, but it's going well. At least I'm confident that there's no going back into not understanding and speaking just requires practice.

Yesterday Abraham and I hitched to his house in Celaya. My, I love Mexican families, everyone joking with each other but in very loving ways, a complete sense of security and warmth, beautiful. Mom made us rice and picadillo and Dad was curious and asked me a lot of questions about the food in the United States. One sister kept talking about my eyes and the little brother showed me a new trick he learned with some magnets he bought at school. After a completely necessary nap, we went to Irapuato with a friend of Abraham to their african percussion ensemble's practice. I was practically muerta of exhaustion but the music was great. It let me meditate for a while, made me even more intrigued by rhythym, tones, the songs. I met a Saudi Arabian fella at Bar Fly last night who gave me a necklace with a little clay djembe on it. I told him it would be my inspiration to actually learn some drumming. So, today I called Abraham and told him if he would give me classes, I would take him to Morelia to visit some other drumming friends and it looks like we'll go tomorrow. Good, good. Todo va bien.

Resolute.

2009-01-08T16:32:00.002-05:00

One day all the snow in Kalamazoo just up and melted. This year I didn't get to go sledding. I did, however, discover new and old friendships, dance a whole hell of a lot, conspire, derive epic poems from our lives, capture some images, listen to my friends play beautiful and silly and loving music, bang on a drum, eat breakfast at the Blue Dolphin not once but twice, experience multiple slumber parties even at the age of 24, free wrestle until I couldn't anymore, and become reacquainted with a town I wasn't sure I loved anymore. I spent a lot of time at the new coffee shop Dino's, as well, and felt quite at home.

I met so many new, great folks and I am looking forward to developing even more meaningful friendships with them. Old friends are everything that poets say of them. How can a gal be so lucky to know so many talented, lovely, damn cool folks? Of course, no one's perfect but in my friends' faults I see the things I want to change about myself and if I can't change myself, I've got no right to tell them so, no?

My family was also amazing and frustrating and I am happy I stayed longer than I had intended. All of my friends from Mexico were saying, "How can you just leave your family if they want you to stay?" They were right, of course, another lesson from the south. One thing I've noticed among travelers is a disconnect, whether by necesity or choice or simply neglect, with their families. I don't want that and in fact, I consider it an abuse of the privilege of coming from a culture where youth are not expected anymore to maintain ties with their family, especially if they might compromise one's "freedom." Chale. If I'd listened to my own, selfish desire to take off, disregarding the folks who gave me a life and home, I never would have gotten to dance polka with my grandma. How silly I can be sometimes.

My last night in Michigan was spent with some truly incredible folks in a yurt on a farm in Bangor, MI, a very nice transition from the city to the solitude of traveling alone on the train. Thank God there was a guitar and the dinner was amazing, the poems and the stories and the smiles and the laughs and our dear little Forrest.

The train ride to Texas went surprisingly fast. Now I'm wondering if I need to find an even slower way to travel. Hitching, I suppose.

I did have a bit of time to think, though, and I'm getting close to a clear formulation of my resolutions for the new year. They involve a continuance of last year's theme "honesty," a new theme related to assertiveness or being very aware of exactly what I want and how to communicate it, and investment in people and places. Many other things, too.

Now I'm in Fort Worth, Texas with Angie, who I met and lived with in San Cristobal. We caught up on our ever-dramatic lives, ran around the FW Botanical Gardens, drank margaritas and rode bikes, played tag (normal and freeze) and danced- all in one night!

something I've learned/decided as a result of traveling...

2008-12-13T14:07:00.002-05:00

...I don't want to be defined by a place.

In a book I found a Mexican dicho (saying) that I could identify with:

"Donde es tu tierra? Donde la pases, no donde naces."

Where is your land? Where you pass your life, not where you were born.

2008-12-11T14:07:00.005-05:00

I find myself once again in the snowy palm of Michigan. I swooped down from Montreal a few weeks ago, hesitant and impatient, excited and bursting with energy, stories, ganas to see folks that are dear to me. In Petersburg, there isn't much to do. That's where the beauty lies, I suppose. Simple and lacking charisma, my village of birth is seemingly unaffected by the development carrying on with neither rhyme nor reason in the neighboring village of Dundee. Yet at the same time that it seems so utterly far from "civilization," Petersburg is also an acute reflection of the political, economical and cultural changes taking place in the U.S.. It's not a place where decisions are made or where folks in suits carefully construct and orchestrate projects of massive size and significance. It does, however, change as a result of these acts, like a ripple in the pond, so far from where the stone actually lands. Farms go up for sale. One of the town's two gas stations closes. Dundee gets a Wal-greens at the expense of the small shops which used to make up the small, triangular downtown. Farmers shake their heads. Ex-factory workers sit around my kitchen table, angry about the white-collars that sit behind desks all day while complaining that retired factory workers don't deserve health care. More and more young people leave the state, leaving swampy Michigan for higher economic ground.

Kalamazoo, despite the obvious deterioration of its downtown, somehow retains that almost silly optimism about just about everything that is sometimes refreshing and other times annoying. At the same time that there are less places to consume in Kalamazoo, there are projects and ideas and music and art continually popping up, sometimes in the least-expected places. I like the idea of people investing in things that hold no monetery value: friendship, enriching experiences, brainstorms, collaboration.

I've started researching farming in Michigan, both organic and non- (to mix both reality and my ideals), with multiple intents: to understand the state I was born and raised in, to assess the potential for Michigan to become a major organic ag. state, to assess my own potential in starting a organic farm here some day. Plus, it's fun!

Kalamazoo is keeping me busy though. Potlucks and book swaps. Dance parties and house parties and birthday parties. Work shops and discussions. Bicycles and coffee and music music everywhere. When Abigail Kinas strolls into town, all will be complete.

I didn't write anything about Montreal, I've realized. Nothing truly out of the ordinary happened there, minus one intense instant in a metro station. I saw wonderful friends in the city that I'd known only in the out-of-doors, in the country. We spent many a night wandering the same streets of the city. I made Shephard's Pie for the first time with my hilarious, cribbage challenger JP, who loves Queen more than anyone I know. One morning I beat him 3 times in a row at Cribbage, but he still let me crash on his couch when I needed to. I danced. I sometimes pretended I spoke French in order to get people to repeat things to me, annoying them but fascinating me. I barely made it out of the city and had to remind myself again and again I'd be back if the time was right. It's not a bad city. It's a city. Next time I'd like to be speaking French.

2008-12-04T21:06:00.000-05:00

A new project

2008-12-04T11:07:00.003-05:00

To better organize my interests, I'm going to keep this journal for travel-inspired/personal writings and a new one that I want to dedicate more-focused energy toward.

It'll still be rather personal, as it's born out of my own desire to learn, study, create, to investigate and document and work on a plan for my future. It's about me wanting a farm, a community that is both local and global in its scope, some answers about how we can slow and stop the destructive forces on the planet. I want to ask questions and not find answers or judge, but still reach conclusions. I just wanna live and want others to be able to, too.

Hence: Radicals require roots

2008-12-03T02:00:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I find myself with the incredibly difficult dilemma of having to justify my migratory ways to people who have grown up and accepted a sedentary lifestyle. Perhaps they don't see themselves as sedentary, but for me, having a permanent address that you actually live at is akin to having a chain wrapped around one ankle with the other end looped around a a large tree. True, the tree can be beautiful, with many birds and fruits, but for me the chain outweighs all the lovely things that may dwell in the branches; it also outweighs the roots.

I know other migrants face these questions: When is the time right? Where should I go? By which route? How long should I stay? Will I see so-and-so again? Money?

And migrants with privileges must ask: Should I take advantage of my passport and flee the country of my birth? Do I have any connection to the land where I was born, to the land where I am headed? Should I try to give up my privileges to live more honestly or try to use my privileges in a positive way? How do I balance freedom and responsibility?

For me these questions only further justify my need to throw the little things I need on my back and move, south then north then west then south, a lopsided circle, but always in a circle. Answers, to me, come in movement, in flight, in seeing the same places continuously through new eyes. If I stay in the same place, I stay the same person and it's difficult for me to learn that way. I understand this way of life isn't for everyone, but I think the world was made for many ways of life. And my way of life takes me to many worlds.

e pty

2008-12-02T04:00:00.002-05:00

I guess we all should have seen the demise of Kalamazoo's downtown coming with the closing of Athena's Bookstore...but Dragon Inn? Come on! Now I've seen the financial crisis up close and personal.

It's time to head south again.

ciao

2008-11-26T13:16:00.002-05:00

I think some people get the idea that the more you travel, the easier it is to say good-bye. Perhaps it just gets easier to evade them, but it's never easier to say them. But really I think we begin to realize that good-byes aren't necessary anymore, only "see you soon"'s.

pensamientos de los ultimos meses....

2008-11-24T21:38:00.006-05:00

So much has happened. Luckily I took to writing things on paper. Here are some bits and pieces, some all the way back from summer:

6 August 2008: A few nights ago, as I was trying to fall asleep, I was closing my eyes for just a few seconds and then opening them again. Robert Frost was right! Every time I closed my eyes I could see a jumbled mass of branches, laden with cherries. Each time the same, only the cherries changed- sometimes with long skinny stems, or in big, thick clumps, bright red or deep purple. Ah, cherries. I even dreamt of selling cherry tacos.

22 August 2008: Except for the few hours a week that I spend in the library, I spend all of my time outdoors, working, eating, playing, sleeping. It's easy to forget what hot water and a non-stiff neck feel like. Flush toilets and mirrors have a novelty to them that I hadn't known before. My picking barely improves because I am so distracted by the beauty of the mountains, the trees, the sun, this life. Also, it's impossible to believe that money is more important than these moments.

21 September 2008: The community of pickers, so small, is one of the most gossipy groups of folks I've ever gotten mixed up with. I suppose there's only so long you can talk about cherries or ladders or snakes and people are undeniably fascinated by the lives of others. Eh. I really like walking between Vialo and Dawson orchards: tall grass, endless amounts of fresh, organic apples to sample, a feeling of hiddenness and solitude, if only for a few moments.

23 September 2008: He said it was like looking into a mirror. I am caught off guard and slightly astounded by having found him and by the fact that we have so little time and then there's life. I hear a heart beat and can't tell if it's mine or his. How nice that there is no awkwardness between people who have never been strangers to one another.

28 September 2008: Fall arrived exactly when the calendar said it would. Leaves are browning on the trees and the sumacs are already bright red. Snow fell on the mountains, folks not used to the cold are getting nervous. Thank God I have this little toasty cabin.

29 September 2008: Last night Sergio and I made a real, sweet, picker soup: #2 butternut squash that I picked at the Mariposa, carrots that another picker left behind, ginger, garlic, chiles that Abraham won as 3rd prize in the annual chile pepper eating contest in Keremeos, cayenne, parsley + thyme + chives from Seth and Melissa's garden, a cucumber also left by a past picker and some coconut milk. Making it even more wonderful was that we got to share it with friends as we laughed and leaped and stumbled over language hurdles and stomped the cold out of our feet.

The trees here are old, with birds' nests and gnarled trunks. I'm much happier working in these trees than in rows and rows of pesticide-laden "fruit twigs," as Seth calls them.

3 October 2008: At first I was tired and not feeling social but by the end of the night they had to swear to me that it was the last ride leaving for Dawson to get me go. If there'd been more cumbias on the pub jukebox, I probably would have stayed anyway. The partying allows us to open our hearts and minds in extreme bursts where suddenly torrents of camaraderie and love push through us, like dams bursting and when the cruda comes, the down, we are unsure. For brief moments we are allowed an incredible freedom of expression but afterwards we are left with wild, tormenting, beautiful, vibrating emotions and thoughts, all dammed up again, we feel damned.

4 October 2008: I've spent a lot of my working hours pondering my place in the system of agriculture, the food system. System, system, that word always appears. I'm an agricultural work, a fruit picker, a migrant. We have a little community and we joke about our meager and ever-changing lives, we share stories of hitch hiking and bosses and the lives we've had in other places, in other times. We even laugh together about the discrimination we collectively face by local business owners and employees. We talk about our families, our friends, our homes, desperate to share company, we fall in and out of each other's arms, cry on each other's shoulders, dream together, taking every moment in our hands, taking each other's hands, swinging around, jumping, dancing, weeping, falling, always laughing, all the colors and the time passing so fast.

I am such a small piece of this agricultural mosaic. I feel momentarily guilty for picking only the perfect cherries that are sent to wealthy consumers in Europe and Japan while perfectly good cherries rot in odorous mounds. But my place is so small and here the sky is so big that, with the stars and the mountains, one can't really feel personally responsible.

5 October 2008: Hard work is a miracle cure for anxiety and despair. By the end of the day I just wanted to keep charging up my ladder, thrusting myself into branches, twisting my aching thumbs around stems, pulling down bag after bag of golden delicious apples. I became immune to the scratches and the bugs, completely immersed in thought.

The moon is perfect and crescent-shaped tonight. Snow fell on the mountains to the north. Everything looks perfect and blue and purple and smoky, the taste of winter on every breath we take. Work is becoming ever more unpredictable.

6 October 2008: Today the cold bit so hard in the morning. My fingers burned and ached, every apple was a struggle, I really wanted to cry. Every day is getting colder, things are settling and I feel like I have to resist in order to stay awake, stay on top of things. Otherwise I'll fall into a dreamy hibernation for the winter.

16 October 2008: A couple nights ago Melissa and I both dreamed of bears. Both of the bears were big and neither of us were afraid. I feel quite connected to this place now. And though I've been a week without work and stressed out, the sunset gets me everytime!

In small towns like this..

2008-11-08T17:49:00.001-05:00

..the woman who works in the liquor store will recognize you hitchiking and tell her husband to pull over, telling him "Oh I know those kids!"

..a chihuahua dressed in a pink dress keeps the post office lady company, and dances on command.

..everything is closed on Sundays and Mondays, and Tuesdays if they're able, and all signs that post a places hours say -ish

When the mountains are covered with snow,

2008-11-08T17:37:00.002-05:00

it's time to head south. I've spent the past few months in a small town called Cawston, so named due to the local crow population (the murders!). I've been living and working on orchards, in garlic, tomato, and pepper fields, packing organic squash and carrots, watching the sun's rise from and fall behind the mountains grow ever quicker with each passing day. And now, I'm heading east!

Hopefully when my computer usage allotments are greater than 15 minute public library blocks, I will be able to recount some of the many, many stories that I've heard, been a part of, and found in the strangely beautiful and magical Similkameen Valley.

2008-09-10T18:36:00.004-05:00

Ironically, 2 months after my first visit to Keremeos in which we worked on a farm called the Mariposa, I now find myself on another farm in Keremeos of the same name. There are a lot of farms in this area, true, but it's still strange that in this tiny place there are two with the same name and that I happened to have worked on both of them.

But besides their name and the fact that they both have employed me, they couldn't be any more different. The first was large, with fruit orchards both in Keremeos and in Cawston, and the owner was callous and cold, a typical businessman/farmer, always in a rush. The second, where I am now, is a small organic farm mostly dedicated to squash with a few other ground crops thrown in and the farmer is very friendly and warm to us, and if the squash don't get picked today, well they'll only be riper tomorrow, right?

A WWOOFer and a couple other workers share the land with us and I can honestly say that it's the most beautiful place I've ever worked in. A river runs right next to the old 5th wheel camper that Lucero, a 19 yr old Mexican girl, and I share. A few ancient pines give us shade and it's so quiet that even when every one is working at the same time, the loudest sounds are the flocks of red-winged blackbirds and the buzz of bees tending to all of the flowers. The pace of work is much slower, so I'm not making as much money as in the demanding fruit picking orchards, but right now I wouldn't trade it for anything.

On our side of the mountain we can even see the moon at night, who would want to give that up?

So far I've gotten know, whether by picking or packing or both, spaghetti squash, orangetti squash, red kurris and funny-looking turks, pie pumpkins, and tomatoes. I've gladly come to the realization that I am much more of a ground crop gal than a fruit picker; for whatever reason I work better the closer to the earth I am.

looking back and forward and up and down

2008-09-04T15:06:00.003-05:00

When I left Creston a couple weeks ago, I piled into a camper with 9 other pickers and headed for Nakusp, BC to the hot springs! During one of our many stops (for food or gas or beer or cigarettes or coffee, with so many people, someone always needed something), my eyes happened upon the newspaper stand. 'Ah,' I thought, and said to my friend standing near me, "Hey, Georges, remember that there's a whole world out there?" He gave my a funny look, as usual, and I picked up the only newspaper left on the stand, The Globe. "Uh, Georges, I think we missed something," I said, as I showed him the front page: a photo with a burning orange and red background and 3 Chinese soldiers in the foreground saluting a flag, with everything tilted at an eerie and disturbing angle, all above the headline: "China's Totalitarian Success." There was no other explanation to be found on the front page and I decided it wasn't worth flipping through to find one. Perhaps the world is best left "out there." Until I'm ready, at least.

The hot springs were beautiful. From the camper we walked a path through a mossy pine forest and then stumbled and slid and ran down a ravine towards the river. Alongside the river, some in small rocky enclosures and others with sandy bottoms, we found the hot springs awaiting us. I even found a bottle of white wine tucked into the roof of a small shelter. Nothing like drinking a bottle of BC wine in a warm natural bath under a sky so filled with stars there's no room for the moon. At night we couldn't see a thing but we ran through the forest, ducking under fallen trunks and breathing an air so fresh it made our lungs new again. We left with everything wet, there was no way to avoid it.

And now, back to work. Apples aren't the most motivating crop for me because I actually really enjoy the picking. I could spend all day delicately lifting each apple, snapping the stem, and placing it in my bag, or atop my ladder watching the valley fill the space between the mountains with green and purple and red. But that's no way to make money, which is what I need to do in order to get to Quebec in a few weeks and learn French, so I might try looking around and seeing what other work is available.

I tried plums for a few days and my arms still bear the wounds of those prickly trees who fight to keep their fruit and give long scratches and bruises to those who dare to pick it. Tomatoes were nicer to pick but instead of scratching my arms, they scratched my hands to burning pieces. Ow.

And, it could be anything from a plant, to the air, to pesticides, to just plain coincidence, but as soon as we got back to Keremeos my skin erupted into an itchy allergic reaction. Eh. I like the constant sunshine and clear skies at night, but I really could use a little more moisture in the air.

2008-09-02T18:31:00.003-05:00

I'm staying at an orchard right now, but working in another because after Creston I have such a desire to share coffee with people before work and food afterwards. And bears!

A couple nights after Marie and I awoke to a bear running straight for us and we ended up sleeping in a Honda Civic, today at breakfast I just couldn't come up with the name for the animal plodding slowly past us, a mere 15 meters from our breakfast table. Sputtering in half English and half Spanish, people finally just followed my finger and watched a good-sized black bear amble away. Bears follow me, why?

2008-08-28T18:46:00.003-05:00

Cherry season has ended! And so has my time in Creston. The last couple of weeks were filled with a little working, a little partying, some inter-orchard volleyball tournaments (we made the finals!), and going to the river, watching sunsets, playing cribbage, etc.

Now, Keremeos again!

cambios

2008-08-19T13:25:00.002-05:00

In the morning the air is frigid and by mid-day sticky and hot. When we first arrived to Creston we would hear helicopters in the morning flying low to dry the night's rain off of the cherry trees. Last week we watched the helicopters in the afternoon flying high to spray water over the dangerously dry pines. Dry, hot, cold, wet. Last night it finally rained again.

j'aime la cerise

2008-08-14T15:43:00.003-05:00

For the past 2 weeks I've worked as a fruit picker, cherries to be exact, on a few different orchards in Creston, British Columbia. My days have gone more or less like this:

4:30 - 5am: Wake up to shouting and murmuring in French (we finally found out that the howling owlish sound actually means something: Where are you? in French). After grabbing picking clothes, stumble out of tent to waiting coffee. Grab harness, walk or jump in a car, depending on where we're picking.

5:30/6am - 8:30am ish: Pick pick pick! Crew boss runs around, shouts at us, hands us stickers, punches holes in a card for each 25lb box that we fill. Muscles warm up, some old aches stretch out and some new aches show up suddenly. Up and down and up and down the ladder, always making sure to set it right and not fall off. Pick pick pick!

8:30 ish: Coffee break! The first day they only shouted it in French. Alex and I are the only ones who don't speak French so when we were the only ones to not show up for the coffee break that day, they started shouting it in English (and sometimes Spanish) too. Lots of sugary things with the coffee: muffins, cookies, brownies, sometimes struedels or little quiches (one orchard owner that we worked for used to have a bakery, yummmm).

9ish - 11 or 12 or 1pm: Pick pick pick! Ivan, our crew boss, runs around and makes sure everyone is smiling and has water. The sugar slows me down a bit but the coffee helps. The sun starts to come out so we have to pick faster before the cherries turn soft and burst in our fingers and we have to stop. Swampers run around and pick up boxes dumping them into large wooden bins, 11 totes per bin, soon to be scooped up by a tractor.

Afternoon: Freedom! People leave the orchard filthy, tired, covered in pesticides and in a sort of stupor that doesn't allow you to do much until the sun starts to go down. An icy shower perhaps or a cold beer or a trip to the river. I can rarely eat after I work, after all the movement and sugar and coffee, my stomach is too tied up. So I usually drop down in the shade and wait for the heat to subside. The river is beautiful and deep down in a canyon so when you sit on the rocks or sand all you've got is cold river and big blue sky.

Night: Typically a little beer drinking but most people go to bed a little before or after the sun goes down because picking starts so early. Sometimes games. Living with Quebecois is like living in a circus, someone is always juggling or throwing fire or hula hooping, I'm surprised that I haven't seen someone ride through the camp on a unicycle yet and it wouldn't surprise me one bit if it happened.

I'm struggling to learn French but it's going slow. Today I learned some Quebecois swear words, they all have to do with the church, which the folks from France find absolutely hilarious. Words like chalice, tabernacle, the bread that you eat in church..all of these are swear words! They sound so grandmotherly, I like them a lot. Tabernack!

pilgrims

2008-08-07T19:41:00.003-05:00

The first person to pick us up as we hitchiked out of Keremeos was a born-again, self-proclaimed "radical Christian" in a green 1975 volvo. To make the 50 km ride to Osoyoos more fun, I told him how interesting and wonderful I thought Islam was and asked his opinion. What could have been a meaningful conversation about the challenges and benefits of differences in religions and just what those differences are instead turned into a tirade about terrorists and the unquestionable and utmost sanctity of Christianity by our driver, his steering wheel suddenly turned pulpit. Eh.

In Osoyoos, we were lucky and got picked up by a engineer in a new rental car and since he liked to speed, we got within 50 miles of our destination before it got dark. Just as it got dark and we were contemplating how many bears our smelly leftover tacos would attract if we slept on the side of the road, a Swiss restaurant owner picked us up and dropped us off in downtown Nelson.

Nelson is kind of like Ann Arbor, similar size and pretentiousness and number of organic co-ops and hemp clothing stores. We knew our money would be sucked right out of our pockets if we stayed to enjoy the food, live music, etc., so after a couple nights couchsurfing, we were again out on the highway with a sign reading: CRESTON.

A DJ from the Shambhala festival picked us up and let us off at the entrance to the festival, where he was going to set up a stage. Within 5 minutes a car stopped, headed right for Creston. We rolled into town just as the sun was setting and opted for a campground rather than lugging our stuff around from farm to farm. Things would be much easier without that electric stove.

K-K-K-K-Keremeos.....

2008-07-31T15:26:00.006-05:00

We spent 2 weeks in the village of Keremeos, nestled in the valley at the feet of K mountain, alongside the Similkameen River. At the Mariposa orchard, we were given a little plot of land under an enormous willow tree to pitch our tent and even a place to plug in our electric stove ($5 garage sale find!) and the discman. Within a few days we met our neighbors, four solitary men who live in separate cabins in front of where we camped: Joe, a former convict, current "Peace" officer with a booming voice who works in the village of Osoyoos, about an hour from Keremeos, and deals primarily with people's complaints about their neighbors or their neighbor's dogs; Gee, a French Canadian with a 12 year old chihuahua named Titchi, who let us use his stove and bathroom and entertained us with stories about bears and selling Xmas trees in Queens, NYC; Wayne, who we didn't talk to much but saw often talking to himself and rushing around, he was rarely home; and Hart, who we never talked to but saw occasionally crouched down and smoking a cigarette next to his cabin. He's Joe's brother and, according to Joe, highly anti-social. Outside of our neighbors, our interactions with other people were almost completely with other pickers, all either Quebecois or Mexican. I've yet to meet another picker who speaks English as their mother language, but we all manage to communicate whatever our respective levels of French, Spanish or English are.

In Keremeos the laundromat, due to the fact that the owner lives an hour away and is never around, became the hangout place for the small community of pickers. On any given afternoon you could stop by and listen to a Quebecois playing the piano (yep a piano in the laundromat) or take a shower gratis, since no one ever showed up to charge anyone. People would usually move the chairs outside and buy cheap cans of beer around the corner and sit for a while. That's actually how we met the group of pickers we became friends with and got plenty of tips about Keremeos ("shampoo and soap are cheaper in the pharmacy," "this farm's owners are jerks," "Wednesday night is 25 cent 'wing night' at the pub," etc., etc).

We picked cherries almost every day for several days, struggling to get up at 5am, usually getting up at around 7am, and finally filling a few boxes, making a pittance, but gaining experience all the same. Experienced pickers can pick between 30 and 60 boxes a day. We were lucky if we made more than 7 each, but the fact that we're completely new to picking and only worked for a few hours each day actually meant that we weren't doing that bad. Around noon it gets too hot and the cherries turn soft, so picking can be dangerous to the cherries. I had no idea what a fragile fruit they were. You have to move them and drop them carefully as to not bruise them and make sure they are never left in the sun. If they get wet and then hot, they split and are no good. They have to be packed within hours of picking so that they stems don't dry out and fall off. Picking requires lots and lots of patience and care, to not rip leaves off with the cherries and to keep the stems on the cherries and, preferably, the cherries still in clumps. Once you get good, you can get fast, Gee told us. Ay, but by the time we starting getting good we got tired and sick. Allergic reactions and infections are common among pickers, both of which we got, but we were lucky at least that we didn't fall off a ladder (also pretty common and it happened to a couple pickers we met).

In our free time in Keremeos we went down to the river and watched eagles fish or stopped by the free store to see what we could find or tried to get the pizza place to give us free slices of pizza late at night. The local employment office let us use the internet for free so we usually stopped by there every few days. But, finally the work ended and we both felt the need to move on from Keremeos. Our farmer wasn't the nicest either and instead of inquiring about our health when we were sick, he told us we weren't cut out for farm work. Eh, whatever. So, with one last grand story by Gee, this one completely invented for the effect it gave, about him befriending the son of the president of a South American country and going to buy old Soviet missles in Europe, we took off with the advice: Anything can happen if you just believe. Thanks, Gee.

2008-07-27T13:24:00.002-05:00

Ah well, somehow I got roped into the exciting rumor that everyone can go to Canada, pick fruit and camp and earn a glorious living. Easy, fun, lucrative. This rumor is running like wildfire among young kids in Mexico and we got caught up in it and here we are.

We arrived in Calgary on the 1st of July and were thoroughly interrogated by immigration to the point where we had to go to a special waiting room while the officers called to verify our Canadian friends' contacts. They asked a lot of questions, even absurd ones (like why Alex's mom would give him money to travel), and checked our bags one more time until they were disappointed to find that they just couldn't find a good reason to send us back to Mexico, thanks to God. Whew.

Thanks to Couchsurfing, a nice Polish lady and her daughter were waiting to pick us up at the airport and take us to their huge home in the Calgary suburbs. Like everyone else in Calgary, Dad works in the oil industry, hence all the luxury. They welcomed us with a backyard bbq (even though they don't celebrate Canada Day, just happened to be the day we arrived) and we stayed for a few days in their house, enjoying the luxury but not the long bus/train commute into the city. So, for our last couple days in Calgary we stayed in another CSer's place who was right downtown, next to the river.

Getting out of the city was nice. We "hitched" a ride off of Craigslist to Kelowna, where another Couchsurfer opened his home to us, despite the fact that he already had 4 other folks crashing with him. Kelowna is much smaller than Calgary but still too big of a city to move around by foot, so a couple days later we moved on to the village of Keremeos. The first night we camped in the city park and the next morning, with some luck and a tip from a Quebecois, we starting working at the Mariposa farm. First some weeding, then some cherry picking. The air is hot and dry in the Similkameen Valley, so the work that we weren't accustomed to was a bit more difficult still. Our fingers turned black and ached and when we tried to sleep we couldn't close our eyes without seeing cherries and stems and leaves and branches. Ay, the life of a migrant fruit picker. I'll never be able to think of cherries like I used to.

el dedo gordo...

2008-07-05T22:44:00.005-05:00

Tips for folks who want to hitch hike in Mexico:

1. Traveling as a guy-gal combo is not only safer and easier (in terms of getting folks to pick you up), people are even friendlier and may buy you a snack or drink.

2. Get used to semi-trucks or the backs of dirty pick-up trucks- you'll see plenty of folks in fancy cars who are traveling alone, but apparently they've got better things to do. Either that, or they're afraid- one of the two has to explain why they quickly look in the other direction as they pass.

3. Bring just a little bit of money to offer to bus or combi drivers in the event that you get stuck somewhere, but assure them that these are the absolute last pesos to your name. They probably won't believe you but they'll let you on anyhow. Sometimes they're interested in trades.

4. A sign helps, preferably large and lettered by sharpie.

5. When someone picks you up, ask them where they're headed and if it's not your final destination, ask them kindly to drop you off either at the entrance or exit of a city, or somewhere else on the high way so you don't have to walk really far to get a ride again.

6. Chat with everyone- you never know who might just hand you 50 pesos or pay for your bus fare.

7. Truck drivers will know the best places to camp.

8. A week will feel like a lifetime.

sensory

2008-06-12T12:58:00.002-05:00

The other morning, the gas truck rolled by, dragging metal chains through the streets and playing that familiar high-pitched and generally annoying recording over and over. and over and over. and over and over. Typically, they pass by for the first time in the morning at around 7am. And typically, I think "Pinche gas truck, who needs gas right now? No one! Who needs sleep right now? Me!" But a few days ago, when I heard that sound, waking me up a good 20 minutes before my alarm was set to go off, while my dreams were still disintegrating images at the backs of my eyes, I immediately thought, "Oh, dear, I am going to miss this place."

My time in Mexico is winding down all of a sudden, and very, very quickly. Though I've been here for about 5 months, now it seems like I just arrived on the OCC yesterday, blinking into the early San Cristobal sun, slightly disoriented and lost and confused. I'll probably leave town in a similar fashion but I've gotta lotta faith, at least.

because i don't respond to emails like i used to...

2008-06-10T12:31:00.002-05:00

here's some photos instead:

San Cristobal de l@s Crazies

A trip to the jungle

de raiz a hoja...

2008-05-30T10:51:00.004-05:00

Today I was chatting with a dear Nicaraguan friend online and he was telling me how a hurricane hit his city and the neighbors are telling each other, "Oh, my orange tree fell." or "Ay, the poor pecan tree." My friend lamented the fall of the almond trees, which he said he had watched grow up and they had watched him grow up, as well. I told him he should write a poem about it, that the love for trees is as inspiring and powerful as the love for another human, being that we're all part of the natural world anyway.

A few minutes later, a middle-aged man who has been coming to the restaurant every morning for the past week and occasionally making small talk with me excitedly showed me a children's book that he had just bought, La Boda de Chimalistac by Elena Poniatowska. The book was about a lemon tree that fell in love with a Jacaranda and eventually they get married. Ah, tree love.

And my friend was very happy because today is Mother's Day in Nicaragua and I told him that my family always buys trees on mother's day.

Just when I thought the day was already filled with trees and love, I looked down at the bottle of red wine our German couchsurfer left for us and there on the bottle, a little grape vine that looks just like a little tree.

So, in honor of trees and love and beauty, I want to share one of my very favorite poems by Juana de Ibarbourou:

La Higuera

Porque es áspera y fea,
porque todas sus ramas son grises,
yo le tengo piedad a la higuera.

En mi quinta hay cien árboles bellos,
ciruelos redondos,
limoneros rectos
y naranjos de brotes lustrosos.

En las primaveras,
todos ellos se cubren de flores
en torno a la higuera.

Y la pobre parece tan triste
con sus gajos torcidos que nunca
de apretados capullos se viste...

Por eso,
cada vez que yo paso a su lado,
digo, procurando
hacer dulce y alegre mi acento:
«Es la higuera el más bello
de los árboles todos del huerto».

Si ella escucha,
si comprende el idioma en que hablo,
¡qué dulzura tan honda hará nido
en su alma sensible de árbol!

Y tal vez, a la noche,
cuando el viento abanique su copa,
embriagada de gozo le cuente:

¡Hoy a mí me dijeron hermosa!

de repente

2008-05-30T08:44:00.002-05:00

Today, as I was getting on my bike and adjusting my bag and scarf to prepare myself to bajar on one of the cobbly streets that connects the neighborhood of el Cerrillo with San Cristobal's city center, I had a sudden rush of remembrance. Kalamazoo, the hills, my bike, the cool weather of fall, even Western Michigan University- I could feel it all so deeply in one profound second, I almost expected to look up and see a familiar Michigan face stroll or bike by. Ah, but then I remembered that I am in a city that I also love, where it is also beautiful to float down hills on a bicycle and feel the wind on my face, where every couple of blocks I do see a familiar face.

I'm going to miss San Cristobal. But, I know I'll be back because it's one of my eternal homes now. I'm very lucky to have so many.

thursday

2008-05-29T10:54:00.002-05:00

I like when the restaurant is filled with familiar faces. I like when people tell me exactly how they like their coffee, so I don't make it too strong (as usual) or too weak. I like that today in the morning it rained for about 8 minutes and now the sky is filled with large, white clouds but not grey. I would like to remember many of these things.

verduras

2008-05-29T09:50:00.004-05:00

A taxi just pulled up really fast and stopped in front of the restaurant. From the passenger seat, a short, elderly man leapt out and ran to the trunk, hoping not to stop traffic too long, I suppose. The taxi driver flew around from his side of the car and opened the trunk. The old man then lifted a big bag of cauliflower out and quickly set it on the sidewalk. In a few seconds the two men took several smaller, black bags from the trunk and set them on the sidewalk beside the cauliflower, all filled with fruits and vegetables, for our store. Small moments have so much meaning for me here. Across the street two women are leaning against a wall and chatting, now they've parted ways. Next to where they were standing, a small, grey-haired woman with glasses puts a key in the padlock to her store. She looks like the ideal, typical abuela and I know that now she will start to hang a selection of Guatemalan clothes between the doors. Calle Real de Guadalupe is like its own community of shop keepers, bartenders, waiters, receptionists, sidewalk sweepers, wide-eyed tourists, bleary-eyed youth. We all see each other on a daily basis, a living portrait of our lives, and we see each other head for our homes late at night. The electronics store on the corner usually is blasting some type of dance music, whether it be cumbia or American music from the '80s, making the mercadito of a few small vegetable stands feel almost as lively as the main market. I am lucky to live just around the corner. Around another corner live dear friends, around another memories, around another a place I think about trying, around and around and around.

fidel castro responds to barack obama

2008-05-27T13:06:00.002-05:00

The English version

"Is it right for the president of the United States to order the assassination of any one person in the world, whatever the pretext may be?

Is it ethical for the president of the United States to order the torture of other human beings?

Should state terrorism be used by a country as powerful as the United States as an instrument to bring about peace on the planet?"

- F. Castro

Barack's Comments

a sad story

2008-05-27T11:04:00.000-05:00

Good-bye, Bananas

flight..

2008-05-21T14:35:00.002-05:00

The hills in San Cristobal are even more wonderful when experienced from bicycle handlebars and I imagine the whole city can hear my excitement.

se cayó

2008-05-21T13:21:00.006-05:00

The rains have started in San Cristobal. At first they were sporadic and happened every few days. The past few nights, however, it has started to rain at about the same time, starting with a few splattering, fat drops and eventually growing into a deafening torrent, even drowning out Michael Jackson on the kitchen cd player. The rain can be isolating, trapping one in a cafe or a bedroom when not prepared, or it can be drawn around a group of folks like a warm, shared blanket bringing out stories and revelations. Last night we had such a moment, originally brought together for a cheap and warm meal, we then found ourselves stuffed with Joe's handmade tortillas and unable to leave the kitchen for the relentless rain, sounding much like billions of nails and tacks being flung onto our aluminum roof. We were all quite pleased to have each other's company and were all in happy agreement when Joe said one of his favorite things in the world was making and eating good food with good people. Can life really be so simple?

Lovely.

This past Sunday, after so many years wandering around Mexico, I had my first Mayan steam bath experience. We just happened to be walking down the street when some friends ran by and shouted, "Hey we're leaving for the temezcal, come on!" and it didn't take long for us to grab a towel and jump into a taxi with them, headed for a little mountain just outside a city. El Viejito was our guide (and he really wasn't old at all) and 14 of us crawled into a very low tent covered in plastic and cloth and crowded around a little hole made in the dirt. There were so many of us that it was impossible to sit without leaning a little bit on the people to either side of us and we had to be careful not to accidentally bump the steaming stones with our feet. Outside 2 careful fire tenders brought our guide hot stones and water and soon sweat was streaming in rivers from our pores in an amazing and deeply cleansing, not at all disgusting, way. Some folks played instruments and sang or clapped and others said brief prayers of thanks and by the time we all stumbled back out into the cool air of the outside we felt such a deep bonding among us that we all hugged and kissed one another, thanking each other just for sharing each other's presence. We shared fresh fruit and cool water and afterwards I took a long, peaceful nap. It was a beautiful experience, something I'd truly needed, and I'm hoping to go back again before I leave San Cris.

a few weeks ago....

2008-05-16T15:02:00.002-05:00

i went to the caracol of Oventic, a Zapatista autonomous community, with a few musicians from Puebla...

gigantic...

2008-05-15T21:37:00.003-05:00

Today a group of students came into the restaurant to look at the roof garden. One gal was wearing a dark-blue t-shirt with the familiar words "Western Michigan University" on it, so I immediately exclaimed, "Hey! I went to Western!" "Oh," she said, "actually this is from my ex-boyfriend, we're from the University of Michigan." Well, well, I thought. Of course if I'd waited a few more minutes I would have noticed that these kids were not from WMU, in the way that they quickly ascended the stairs, eager to see the garden, despite the fact that their guide hadn't even arrived yet. Ambitious. And I'd already blown my cover.

I can see them now, sitting around a table in their hotel, studiously going over their notes and scribbling ideas furiously or reading Zapatista comuniques outloud to one another, and as they take a small break, to lighten the mood, someone comments, "Yeah, well thank God we aren't going to Western, or all that we would end up doing is working in some coffee shop in Mexico." Maybe the years of hearing the disdain and condescension in the voices of U of M kids in regards to WMU kids has led me to believe one of those students would make that comment. Either way, I would reply, "Yeah and if I would have gone to U of M, I'd have ended up a lonely and cynical academic bound to desperate attempts at being at the vanguard and making incredibly vain gesticulations in order to impress people that other people assume are important."

Anyway, this past weekend I went out of town to a small community about an hour and a half from San Cristobal. We stayed in a cabin, swam in a river that was about 2 meters from our cabin, ate delicious homemade vegetarian food with handmade tortillas, and walked around in the forest until we found the source of the the fresh spring water that flows from all the taps on the land. It was a refreshing break from the city and so close that we could even leave early on Monday morning and I made it back (only slightly late) for work. The people were all amazing as well and each of them in their own way reinforced the same idea, "Live well and happy and simply."

perspective

2008-05-08T14:30:00.004-05:00

If there's anything that has affected me by living in Mexico, maybe something that has had the biggest impact on me has been the realization of the beauty and value in the small things that life holds. Or, maybe it's the realization that the so-called "small things" in life, like human connection and expression or natural beauty or divinity, are really not so small after all. I see in the U.S. a society where humanity is denied and repressed and thus, ideas such as faith and spontaneity must be marginalized. Ah, the small things in life, if only we had more time, more money, more of them, wouldn't that be nice? People say this to themselves and continue on, wanting more, being afraid of losing what they already have, and never really questioning: Why do we choose to deny ourselves the things that are truly fulfilling to us in exchange for pursuing a course of life that we perceive is "acceptable?" Where does this idea of what is acceptable come from? Why are people rigidly defined early in life and reprimanded or isolated if they deviate from the expectations of others? Do I really need a resumé to be happy? I've met so many folks these past couple of years who would simply laugh at the latter question.

And just because you know that opportunities exist, does that mean you should take them? or even consider them? Does the privelege of knowing equal an obligation of accepting?

Sorry folks, I won't be working at a big-name corporation or NGO soon. I'd like to keep my life simple for now....and enjoy moments like when one of the Casa del Pan regulars, a young French lady, says, "Can you make the orange-papaya juice the way you always make it? Siempre queda riquisimo." Or days that revolve around hunting down a certain ingredient, or nights that revolve around finding the right onda, or relationships that revolve around something more than just geography and responsibility.

Ok, I have a resume. Will I use it soon? Can't say. But I'm happy. Nothing like descending on one of San Cristobal's city hills, seeing the sun drop zig zags of gold on the stones in the streets, the red-roofed homes and flowers and relative stillness of a still-small city, all surrounded by green hills and clouds, breathing in air that is always cool and fresh, sometimes moist and sometimes not, thinking "I could live here forever, couldn't I?," feeling very alive and then laughing at yourself when you slip on the steep sloping sidewalk. I'm not sure I could ask for more, or if I even should.

word of the day

2008-05-08T14:11:00.005-05:00

tergiversar: to distort

spinning...

2008-05-03T11:33:00.002-05:00

I learned it in college, enjoyed it for several years, and was reminded of it last night: Activists know how to party. We almost didn't go, wore out by ping-pong and Josue's incredible chard, corn, potatoe, calabacita, onion, tomato soup, but we pumped some coffee into our veins and the walk woke us up a bit. When we show up to the party, memories from WMU come flooding back: low-lit dance floor, loud echoing conversation, good music that doesn't stop, dancing, young folks dressed up and down. Salsa dancers occupy the middle of the room, observers the edges and smokers on the roof. The party is well set-up, packed, and only growing. Soon it's hard to make it from one side of the room to the other. Some friends of ours show up, "So these are all the NGO folks?" and I remember how hard we worked as activists in Kalamazoo, thus the necessity for such extravagant parties and mad dancing.

Well, I haven't been doing much activism lately. Didn't stop me from staying until 6am, oof.

all these little things...

2008-04-26T23:03:00.009-05:00

My life these days is composed by many distractions, fragments that, when I piece them together, make some sort of semblance to an ordinary life. I am not simply living a life that is defined by societal and cultural norms, laws, and the expectations of others, but a life which I am composing with the materials that are available to me. It requires resourcefulness and a dedication to imperfection, as well as a good amount of faith.

Weeks move even more swiftly with a routine. A middle-aged academic type who frequents the restaurant told me my expressos are "excelentisimo," and I appreciated his compliment, all the more so because of his use of the word excelentisimo.

We recently obtained a ping-pong table. A tournament is in the works. I may also introduce beer pong to Mexico, just because I can.

I organized a screening of a documentary and not many people came but it was fun, in a nerdy sort of way, to organize something again.

the depth of perception

2008-04-21T17:17:00.003-05:00

Last night my roommates and I were walking to a party at our friend Alex's house, an outdoor backyard full moon party. Just as we were passing la iglesia de la Merced, a large, fluffy, white dog rounded the corner and almost collided with us (or us with it). It was quite an impressive dog too, clean and groomed, a rarity around these parts. We didn't slow our walk but as we moved around the dog, we all made comments something along the lines of, "Wow! What a beautiful dog!" A split second later, at the other end of the leash, the owner came around the corner. I thought he would be proud of his fine animal companion and our obvious adoration so I glanced up to give him a quick smile. But when my eyes met his, I saw that his entire face was curled into a sneer. With a mix of matter-of-factness and disdain, he said, simply, "Hippies," almost spitting the word out at us. The unexpectedness of his comment made me laugh out loud, and especially because none of us were wearing anything that would identify us as "hippies." No colorful, loose Guatemalan pants, no long, swaying cotton skirts, no excessive amounts of beads or woven bracelets, not even any dreads or tye-dye. I even thought we looked more clean cut than usual, I mean I was wearing a black blazer after all. Though perhaps this fella (who, in my opinion, looked a bit like a yuppie himself) has the ability to see into our inner beings and thus see our deepest identities. And if so, apparently we are hippies, who knew?

I already knew that there is a considerable amount of hostility felt towards so-called "hippies" in San Cristobal. For example, a grafiti I've seen spray-painted on several walls shows a machine gun between the words, "Comando, mata hippies" Kill hippies. Still, I'd never been personally accosted, nor even accused, until last night. Strange, but certainly not the strangest thing to happen in this town, not even close.

rain rain

2008-04-12T15:30:00.003-05:00

I'm getting used to this routine. Wake up at 7am, breakfast while waiting for the water to heat up, shower, ride bike (quickly) down early and almost empty streets to la casa del pan..get out piña, papaya, and zanahoria and usually limones and manzanas too...turn on music...spend the day making coffee, tea and juice, and answering questions and translating..3:30 always comes much sooner than I expect. And considering that I am at the restaurant 6 days a week, you would think I would be in a hurry to leap back onto my bicycle (well, it's borrowed) and fly home, down and up and past the strange lighthouse-looking building that is so far from any sea. Instead I like to linger in the shop and smell and touch all the neat organic products. Today I am waiting for the rain to making bike-riding home appealing.

I met a gal from Michigan, which was nice in a sort of unidentifiable way. Sure I've got some roots and attachments there, but is finding someone from your land of birth in a farther-away land really a cause for celebration? Either way I got her phone number because she works at Promedios and I would like to learn about film editing if I can. I want to learn just about all I can, in fact, while I have what for now I will call a "brief separation from reality." Meaning, I am living how I want without others telling me how to use my time (i.e. bosses, professors, the president) and I am not-so-quietly pleased about it.

In fact, maybe on my day off tomorrow I will stroll downtown and shout about my absolute pleasure with life. Probably not (gringos draw enough attention eh?) but I'm happy, something that is seemingly criminal when one doesn't succumb to the confines of a capitalistic, elitist, hierarchical power structure. So, call me a criminal.

just like spring......

2008-04-09T13:20:00.005-05:00

The weather in San Cristobal is warming, slowly but surely. Spring is identifiable in the sudden and brief sicknesses of several people that I know and in the alternating brightness and stormy rains of the days.

Despite all changes and newness, I have myself wrapped up in a tranquil and steady life, which involves work, puppy, roommates, books, and the occasional film. Excitement comes in the form of Tuesday 2 for 1 sushi day and Samba's ever-rounder belly, or the occasional bottle of caña.

I like my new work. It's quiet but with enough unpredictability to make each day worth getting up at 7am. I like making carrot juices for people who display such open eagerness when they ask for one. I also like the staff breakfast that we all get around 11am and which is always a complete surprise. There are nice little surprises too, like today when a woman came to drop off a granola sample for the restaurant owners and she gave me my own little bag to try too. A little later an older woman asked me if it would be safe for her to take a taxi after dark in San Cristobal and I assured her completely that it was.

It's nice. And home is also nice too. My roommates are becoming quite dear to me and I much prefer staying at home to going out these days, a sentiment we all seem to share.

It feels very good to just wake up every morning, breathe and smile all day long, and fall into a warm bed at night. Sooner or later I'll get restless but for now, it's just what I could want.

ain't no fool...

2008-04-01T19:19:00.002-05:00

Today I spent a hot, perfectly cloudless day harvesting wheat with nothing more than a common kitchen steak knife. At first I started out with scissors, but the knife let me move more swiftly and our little cream-colored wheat piles grew and grew. Later we bundled them and tied them with pink string but even after six hours, among eight people, we were still only half finished by time we left for lunch.

Though I would be very happy to return to the garden tomorrow and finish the harvest, instead I am going to start working at the restaurant that receives the garden's bounty. The atmosphere is bright and airy and laidback, I already feel very comfortable there.

But, at the moment, I feel uncomfortably full, having just over-enjoyed the Casa del Pan buffet..crema de chayote, ensalada, gnocchi, y pastel de zanahoria. Time for a nap.

And, our home has swelled quite nicely in the past week. We added an Argentinian gal and a couple from the States to what was before only Josue, Samba (the boxer puppy menace), and I. All of us found jobs on the same day and are looking forward to sumptuous home-cooked dinners in the near future. Speaking of home, it's really time for a nap.

night snacks

2008-03-30T19:24:00.004-05:00

In the corner of a park, just down the block from where the mariachis practice and wait patiently (despondently?), there is a small, wooden quesadilla stand on wheels. Last night we visited, I unfortunately without hunger, and while the couple inside the stand prepared mushroom and chorizo quesadillas, they told us about how the police have been trying for the past couple weeks to remove them from the park. The first time the police came, there were a lot of people waiting for quesadillas and they began to shout at the police, "Get out of here!" "We want to eat!!" Since then, the police have returned several times, each time without success and the couple have gone to the city to see what sort of deal they can work out. "Either way, we're not going anywhere," says the woman, with a huge smile on her face.

I just have a blackberry atol and watch the incredible loyalty and comraderie among this one lone stand's clientele and among the vendors themselves, as lovely and sweet as the thick purple atol in my hand, which is also the perfect amount of warm on a chilly San Cristóbal night.

bad seeds

2008-03-27T12:41:00.006-05:00

News:
Mexico allows planting of genetically-modified crops
La situación de los presos políticos en huelga de hambre en Chiapas
What is happening to our dear bats?

More from Nicaragua:
Change of luck in Leon
Bureaucracy and beer
And finally, leaving...

Nicaragua

2008-03-25T13:09:00.006-05:00

Well, I want to be able to write about things that are actually happening currently, so here's the rest of our Nicaraguan adventures:

On to the Isla de Ometepe
Volcano Climbing, Volcán Maderas on the Isla de Ometepe
One more day on the Isla
Bad luck
Visiting the police station

home?

2008-03-22T18:35:00.003-05:00

Well, after almost a month on the road I am back in San Cristóbal de las Casas, México. More stories from Nicaragua to come, and following will be my adventure in finding paid work (HA).

Fotos from Nicaragua, uploaded graciously by Abigail.

Departure, for now

2008-03-20T14:12:00.002-05:00

Leaving is always hard, I should know this by now, right? Yet, I also knew I had to get back to Mexico or I wouldn't make it out of Nicaragua ever (though actually, and unfortunately too late, now this idea appeals to me). I said good-byes, bit my lip, and got on any bus I could find heading north, north, north.

My exit across the Nicaraguan-Honduran border was very surreal in its contrast to our arrival. Rather than being on a noisy bus with films and a large group of people, it was just me, my bicycle taxi driver and his companion, and an eerie silence only disrupted by the soft sound of gravel under the bicycle taxi tires. Over a bridge, Honduras. The Nicarguan immigration attendant is coincidentally also the attendant for Honduran immigration and doesn't hesitate to charge me twice. When I accidentally and unsuccessfully attempt to steal his pen and am caught, I am indignant and feel that by this point he owes it to me. Whatever.

More buses, more dry and dusty countryside, more solitary travel, more swindling money changers and I arrive at the border of El Salvador, not having eaten or drank water the entire day. I am covered in sweat and dust and begin asking how to find a bus to the capital, San Salvador. People point at the grandiose King Quality coach that is parked at the border, going through the immigration process, and I figure I may as well pay a little bit more and actually get to San Salvador today rather than wander around by myself at night in this unfamiliar country. The luxury of the bus astounds me after being on chicken buses all day, do people really live like this? I feel out of place even though it's just as likely that I would have taken a bus like this had I had the money. A young bus attendant offers me a pillow, blanket, coffee, juice- do people really live like this? Of course they do, I know that they do, but after such a long day, I am struggling to take all of it in.

In San Salvador, my communication with my potential couchsurfers falls through and I spend the night in the bus station. Rain! I haven't seen rain fall in a long time, and it makes for a nice background to the mild chaos unfolding in the early hours at the bus station. It reminds me of how I'll miss taking cold showers in the middle of a brutally hot day. At 6am I board a bus direct to Mexico, missing Nicaragua already, but knowing I'll be back. That land of lakes and volcanos took bits and pieces of my heart at every turn, so of course I'll be back.

Migración

2008-03-17T13:50:00.000-05:00

Well, to wrap up her trip in Nicaragua, Abigail apparently wanted to spend several more hours involved in bureaucratic nonsense, because once again we found ourselves (this time three of us, Abby and I and our dear law student friend Carlos) in Managua, in a big office, waiting in line. We were lucky, though, that when we got to Managua, the hostel we planned on staying in was full and Carlos once again displayed his endless generosity by offering us beds in his family's house. Mom fed us again and Carlos helped us navigate the madness of Managua.

The immigration office is hot and jumbled and filled with confused and exhausted people, mostly Nicaraguans. Under the poorly translated sign that reads "Attention Foreign Visitors," we are relieved to find the line is very short. That is, until the stout clerk informs us that first Abby has to fill out a formulario, which must be bought at the cashier's window. The line for the cashier window wraps around itself many times in the sweltering and crowded building (it's so hot they even have an ice cream stand inside). Abby's face falls. Carlos sighs, and grins while softly singing the famous Carlos Mejía Godoy song, "Ay, Nicaragua, Nicaraguita." I am more or less accustomed to Latin American bureaucracy and, though I don't want to wait for another few hours in the trapped heat, I am quite fond of the company I am in and it's hard for anything to take a smile off my face these days.

After we escape with Abby's immigration exit stamp in hand, we realize that it is St. Patrick's day and we must absolutely have a beer. We knock back a few liters of Toña in a bar nearby to Carlos' house. And it was good that we drank, not only because of the relief it brought after the chaos of the morning, but also because the terrible Hollywood movie we saw afterwards in the air conditioned mall cinema could only have been tolerated with a healthy amount of alcohol.

Change of luck..

2008-03-15T13:19:00.000-05:00

We spent a lovely week in Leon, preoccupying ourselves only with how to fit all of our food cravings, pool time, and meeting new friends into our days. We met a funny and sweet Norwegian gal who introduced us to Leon's artesans (one of which gave me a beautiful pair of sea shell earrings) and a wonderfully sweet law student who not only hung out with us but graciously catered to all of our needs (not to mention our silly whims). We spent a beautiful, sunny, lazy day at the beach, wondering whether we should play in the sand, lay in the sun, eat fruit or drink beer first- what decisions we were forced to make! At night when the air no longer was suffocatingly hot, we would wander around, finding music or (of course) food.

One morning we discovered that the after-hours bar we had been drinking in the night before actually had been a Sandinista worker's bar, and also where the dictator Somoza was assassinated. Our Norwegian friend told us how her Spanish teacher remembers hearing the screams of prisoners being tortured and killed at the prison a few blocks from her house. All of Leon is like a living, breathing, historical monument and all of the movement and the stories and the people are quite addicting. Maybe I even left my heart there.

La policia.....

2008-03-10T15:16:00.000-05:00

3 hours making a ridiculous police report. We wait in the heat for a good 45 minutes before the officer asks us 3 times, "So, you want to fill out a police report?" No, sir, we just love hanging out at police stations while we're traveling through Nicaragua, clearly.

Finally, we're allowed in and the officer sits down very seriously at his typewriter and takes out a small Barbie notebook, where he tells me to write down my information and a list of things that were stolen and the total value of everything stolen. Abby does the same and meanwhile he asks a lot of questions about the circumstances, where we where, when, etc, etc. Every now and then he throws in a strange question and it's hard enough for me to hear him over the noisy air conditioner, so I have to ask him to repeat himself several times when he asks questions like, "Well, at what age do you expect to get married then?" These questions only add to the surrealeness of the experience.

Near the end he asks, "I sure ask a lot of questions, don't I?" "Isn't that your job?" I reply. Clearly this guy is bored and he must realize that he wastes a lot of his own time and that of others filling out police reports, knowing full well that there's no possible way any stolen goods will ever be recovered. He's also a bad typist and this wastes more time.

Mala suerte...

2008-03-10T14:55:00.002-05:00

In the morning we make a quick getaway from the island, declaring ourselves finished from its nonsense, and looking forward to a change in scenery. Part of me wants to stay on the island a little longer but the signs show that it's time to head out.

Because buses are already hard to come by on the island, and on Sundays only worse, we get ride in the back of an old man's pick up truck. He's reluctant to take all 3 of us because he doesn't have his tourism driver's license, but when we get stopped by the police, he just tells them that he's not charging us. Seems like a fine enough system to me.

We get to the ferry and for some reason the prices are twice as much and thus the robbery begins.

We toss our bags in the luggage area and climb straight up to the top level. The ferry is large, with several cars including a banana truck on board, and I am anxious to just sit in the sun and feel the breeze coming off the water as we glide back to San Jorge.

A few bus rides and hours later we arrive to the Hostal Albergue in Leon, yet unknowingly deceived by their clever and hip advertisement. We are exhausted, having traveled all day, and when the hostal worker asks for our passports, we move slowly. Even slower is our reaction to the fact that many of our things are missing. Most importantly, Abby's passport and my money, and then all of our jewelry and a number of smaller and more insignificant things, but silly things like my deodorant and contact solution. Disbelief, horror, and anger wash over us in waves as we figure out what to to do. The hostal employee is less than sympathetic and we realize we need a drink.

Drained and miserable, we head to a nearby bar, unable even to communicate properly or politely with the waitstaff. I neither want to sleep, nor wake up, nor be in Nicaragua anymore, nor leave the stop that I am sitting in ever. I haven't felt so bad in a really, really long time.

In the morning, after our "free breakfast" of white bread and butter (we didn't bother making the ancient-looking instant coffee), we find a new hostal a few blocks away. Lazy Bones offers us constant internet access, a pool, coffee and tea all day long, hammocks, and a pool table, and in the state that we're in, it seems perfect. Ok, I know I've said before that I don't care for the backpacker hostal atmosphere but honestly, after our bout of bad luck, it felt completely necessary and good to relax in the "luxuriousness" of this hostal.

In the morning, I realize that actually all of the rest of my money has been stolen and that hits me hard for a bit. But, it takes a lot to keep two gals like Abigail and I down, and soon we are relaxing and laughing over our misfortune. Today we will relax, tomorrow we'll take care of passport nonsense, and then we'll enjoy whatever days we have left in Nicaragua. But no more blaming, anger, sadness, or disappointment. As a dear friend, Vladmir, said to me afterwards, "Well, the most important things aren't the material things anyway, but rather the friendships and connections you'll make while traveling, and those are things that are far more valuable and which no one can ever steal from you."

One more day on the Isla....

2008-03-09T14:43:00.000-05:00

So, upon waking up we quickly realize that our original plan of leaving the island today is surely not going to happen. Abby is as sore as I am, with each step it feels like some large animal is grabbing onto our calf muscles with its claws. And the only part that might not have ached on me, my head, is slightly pounding from my alcoholic pain remedy from the night before.

Instead we rest and head to the Ojo de Agua, a little freshwater swimming hole with a cement bottom. Strange, but the day is nice and we can drink beer while letting our aching bodies soak in the cool water. Ok, so I didn't come to Nicaragua to drink but times (and pains) like these call for a change in attitude.

After a couple flings off the rope swing, we get in the back of Mel's pick-up truck and head to the Playa Santo Doming, an insect-ridden beach nearby. Gnats swarm all around us, trying to get into our mouths and our beers and we try in vain at first to keep our drinks covered but then just start casually picking dead gnats out of our cups. The fish we order is miserable, but the tostones (fried bananas) and cheese are perfect, and the breeze coming off the lake is nice. Aquiles and Mel tease Kari endlessly about her Costa Rican, "Tico," accent, and it feels good to just relax.

At night, Kari, Mel, and Aquiles go out dancing. Or attempt to, my body is still in a lot of pain and we get to the bar too late anyhow to do much dancing. Instead, we play pool for a little while and head back to the hotel. Unfortunately Mel gets a little drunk and irrational and that puts a sour end on the night, but I'm not too worried about it; I have my sights set on one thing: BED.

Climbing el volcán Maderas......

2008-03-08T13:55:00.000-05:00

It's suprisingly easy for me to get up at 4am and feel ready to climb a volcano. Piece of cake, right? The ascent up the Maderas Volcano is 5km and rocky, sometimes muddy, and at times feels more like rock climbing than hiking. Our young and agile guide, Omar, appears to be sprinting in comparison to us and he's usually skipping ahead of us and then waiting for us around a bend or up a steep hill. Probably helps to have boots, huh, instead of stretched out, worn walking shoes like I have. No one has enough water and us 3 gals (Me, Abby and a Californian named Kari) are just not quite in the shape that our guide is in, eh.

We come across some ruckus-making and curious howler monkeys and later a branch-throwing white-faced monkey. Omar says the white-faced monkeys are more intelligent and also more aggressive, but he doesn't say whether there's a connection between the two characteristics. Hm.

The trees are amazing and the diversity of the plants even more so- ferns, flowers, thick undergrowth and towering trees completely covered and filled with tinier, just-as-complex ecosystems. Birds scream and chirp and flutter all around us, denying even the thought of quiet in this forest. Yet, it's often hard to focus on the natural beauty all around us because one misstep can mean a nasty fall and if you look to the side, you'll probably get smacked on the head by a low branch.

Somewhere around kilometer 4, we 3 gals get delirious, laughing hysterically at nothing and slipping and sliding all over the place. At one point I even found myself hanging precariously from a branch over a low drop-off, somehow turned around and facing the direction we'd come from, without the slightest recollection of how it had happened. Omar must think we're insane.

After 4 hours, we arrive to a tranquil lagoon in the crater on the top of the volcano. I collapse onto the ground and Kari tries to wade into the lagoon only to find herself up to her knees in mud within seconds. At this point my weak ankles, made worse by my terrible shoes, are aching to the point of delirium. The descent back down is 6km because we take a different route and every step becomes a shocking blast of pain shooting up from my foot to my brain. After a couple of kilometers I consider just laying down in the forest and staying the night there. Instead, I bite my lip and clench my fists and stumble down the hill the best I can, walking freakishly like a Frankenstein-esque character. By the time we get to the bottom, I can't speak and just point to cold-looking beverages at the corner store and mutter about snacks while we wait for our bus. Omar drinks 2 beers while we wait, completely unphased by the day, despite his having only gotten 3 hours of sleep the night before. Whatever.

Abby ices me up at the hotel and we drink a bit to ease the pain. I should probably have just gone to bed but instead, wanting to drive the pain out of my mind, I slammed a few Toñas and a few cups of Flor de Caña. Ahhh.

On to the crazy Isla....

2008-03-07T16:05:00.000-05:00

Bye bye San Juan: Abby makes her specialty, pancakes, for the morning of our departure. They turn out more like crepes (yummm) and we smother them with sweetened condensed milk while downing several cups of strong, black coffee. Another healthy breakfast to get a day of traveling started, ha.

Movimiento: We're moving around a lot on this trip, something that is strange for both of us. In Mexico we would stay at least a week, and usually two, in each place but in Nicaragua we can only stay in places for a couple days at a time, unfortunately constrained by those all-too-familiar restraints: time and money. Yet, even at this point in the trip I feel certain that I will return to Nicaragua, hopefully sooner than later. Nicaragua is sunshine and warm smiles and fresh air to me- but at the same time I know that this isn't enough. Engels words still echo in my mind frequently, especially because I am really starting to love Nicaragua and I don't want to look back and see that all I did was take and take and let the beauty seep into me without giving anything back or properly expressing my gratitude.

To Ometeptl: So, we hop in the first cab we see heading to Rivas, I had completely forgot that only a few minutes before I had said I wanted to use the internet before we left. But it turned out to be a lucky, albeit absent-minded decision, because after about 15 minutes riding down the terribly bumpy and rocky road out of SJ, our taxi got not one flat tire, but two, and a few minutes later an older Canadian man picked us up in his pick-up and took us directly to the ferry, free of charge and with a half hour to grab some gallo pinto.

The lake is choppy and brown and the ferry plods along, sometimes sickenly slow and heaving and other times just slow slow slow. The breeze is nice though and so is the view of the island, which is gradually becoming greener as we get closer, while the two volcanos that created the Island of Ometepe get bigger and bigger. When we land, a bus is leaving and since we know absolutely nothing about the island, we just get on and watch farms and palm trees and the entirely imposing Volcán Concepción pass by our school bus windows until we end up in the small town of Altagracia. Fine.

Should we stay here? We are indecisive, a vulnerability that the clever young guy at the tourism office exploits, telling us the "only way to see the Island" is to stay in Altagracia. Whatever, we're tired. "And by the way, my dad's hotel is just around the corner and we have a tour guide and food and information, blah blah blah." I think normally I would have been annoyed by this blatant trickery but instead, I shrugged and we threw our bags down. He seems like a nice person anyhow and besides, no more time to waste, bikes and a sweet little beach nearby are waiting!

another day in san juan del sur

2008-03-06T01:53:00.000-05:00

The birds here are beautiful and I realize we haven't seen much wildlife on this trip so far. Gorgeous blue and green birds with long, azure pendulum-shaped tails swoop onto low branches and then let their tails switch back and forth mechanically, like clocks. They are the 'guardabarrancos,' Nicaragua's national bird. Other birds that look like giant blue jays with feathery curly cues on their heads make a lot of noise in the mango tree and are curious about everything it seems.

We finally get around to finding the beach. It is hot and empty, and the water is again cold. I'm not interested in swimming anyway and instead pick stones and shells and other things off of the beach, throw most of them back, and keep a few. We wander, have a beer here, and ice cream there, typical beach wandering. Except for at one point when our beach stroll was interrupted by a loud and irritated voice behind us, 'Man, they really f***ed this place up!' We look back and see a middle-aged man walking quickly and angrily and all the while talking out loud, mostly to himself, about how San Juan has been ruined in the past 20 years. Meanwhile, Abby and I feel a bit silly and out of place here anyway, maybe we should have been here 20 years ago? Who knows...It's a nice place, but we're not surfers and it seems like the whole town has been built up just to accomodate those folks. And there's the wild partying people have told us about, but I'm just not interested this time.

After a seriously satisfying dinner of fish, ceviche, and a couple of Toñas, I dropped like a rock onto a thin mattress on Sarah and Baldo's terrace.

movement......

2008-03-05T08:22:00.000-05:00

Leaving Tola "No lo creo," dad says, shaking his head. Mom is holding back her tears, "Every guest we have...I just start to love them so much." She gives me the family address, home phone number, and many reassurances that anytime we or anyone in our family want, this is our home. I promise to be back soon. With our bags packed full of clean clothes and a bag of still-green jocote (my prize for english homework translation), and my new flip flops on my feet, we head for la playa.

San Juan del Sur, my first impression Surfboards and bleached hair, tattooed youth in board shorts, people no longer expect or care if we speak Spanish, tourist prices, dusty construction, constant movement, walls of hanging bathing suits and surfboards, that certain sort of carefree energy and thinly-veiled desperation that saturates a tourist beach town, "un pequeño relax." I can see how people get stuck here but we're not really digging it so far. Perhaps we're just pessimistic because we haven't seen the beach yet and definitely haven't come close to eating the red snapper that Omantzin was telling us about. At least the air is warm and the ice cream cheap.

We have dinner later with our hosts, a young Texan woman who moved to Nicaragua at around age 11 when her family founded an orphanage, and her Nica husband, who works in the local real estate office and is also president of the national surf circuit (a huge deal in San Juan del Sur). They're nice, stil in their "honeymoon/new appliance phase" and they have a lovely house with a breezy terrace, only 500 meters or so from the beach. Abby and I trade stories with Sarah about how our family members back in the States insist that places like Nicaragua and Mexico are so dangerous, an idea we all find funny considering how dangerous most U.S. cities are. Ah well. Here's an interesting article about Nicaragua's safety. And Nicaragua doesn´t even make the list of the 62 countries with the highest per capita murder rate. They list the U.S. at number 24, right between Bulgaria and Armenia.

la moto

2008-03-04T01:36:00.000-05:00

Morning comes with gallo pinto (I will never, ever tire of rice and beans), egg, cheese, sweet orange juice, and, of course, big smiles and happy !Buenos dias! from the entire family. We hope that our gratitude is expressed in our wide-eyed, grinning faces and our scraped-clean plates. Keila will leave for Managua today for her job as a radio DJ with Radio Disney but mom assures us that she is "at our orders" for anything we might need or want, just ask her or dad. Lucky for us, we are completely content eating delicious home-cooking and then relaxing for the day; the heat really doesn't allow us to do much else, right?

Well, we did decide to use the internet for a few hours, and to do so we had to utilize a connection Keila has with the town elementary school's sub-director (her best friend's mom). Even after Keila leaves and around 30 second-graders come in for class, the computer teacher lets us use the computers until his shift ends.

Dad picks us up one by one on the motorcycle and while we ride through town he beeps, yells or waves at nearly everyone we pass. Everyone knows each other here and it's such a small, peaceful town that it's hard for me to imagine dad fighting in the war only 15 years ago, as he later told us.

As we're recovering from lunch (already?!) of bean and egg soup, rice and plaintains, dad comes into to tell us that when the sun lowers a little more, he'll teach us how to ride a motorcycle. So, a bit later dad takes us to the local soccer/beisbol field (in case we fall he says), where a couple dozen men and boys are kicking around soccer balls. I translate the directions for Abby the best I can. Here's the clutch, accelerate slowly while releasing the clutch, here are the brakes, etc. A lot of information for two gals with no motorcycle experience. Finally, a nervous but daring Abigail jumps on, with dad on the back to watch.

A couple stalls later and they're moving, but the moto quickly starts to weave, first to the right, then to the left, staggering wildly like a drunk. Uh oh. Suddenly (this must be the part where Abby blacked out), I hear a roar of acceleration and the machine and riders are propelled forward, now out of control, with poor dad on the back being tossed around like a sack of groceries. Dad tries to reach for the brake but the motorcycle lurches forward and falls over hard. Within seconds every player on the field is standing above a banged up Abby, dad and moto, but at Abby's fierce "Adios!!" they all scatter. A few scrapes and bruises, but nothing burned or broken, thanks to God.

Now that it was my turn, I decide to wait for my nerves to calm down and for the field of curious and amused spectators to empty. So, dad and I chatted a bit about his life until the players begin to leave. Dad carefully goes over the instructions again, telling me, "Don't think about the motorcycle. If you think you're going to fall just get out of the way and don't even think about what will happen to the bike, it's much more important that you don't get hurt." I stall a few times too but finally get going in order to ride around the field a few times, never daring to leave first gear. Next time.

It's so nice to be fussed over by a mother sometimes. Mom fills Abby up with medicine and puts cream on her wounds, she washes all of our clothes because she's worried about us leaving with dirty clothes and not being able to wash them later and, of course, she keeps us happily fed and asks us constantly how we are, what do we need, do we feel good, want to watch tv? Here's the only English channel. Dad usually just grins or laughs and gives us the thumbs up sign whenever he sees us. He's never upset, even for a moment, that Abby could have killed him. He just laughs and laughs and says "Too bad we didn't get a video of that!"

¡a la puchica!

2008-03-03T14:03:00.000-05:00

Arriving to Rivas, a taxi driver offers to take us to Tola for 100 cordobas. Silly guy. We go to buy water and ask the woman working for the best way to get there. She says don't pay more than 40 cordobas for a taxi and for some reason she gives us a huge smile when I told her we were going to Tola. Folks are so friendly here.

The taxi driver drops us off at the "parque central," a small square of cement with a few basketball hoops. Some big pigs roll around in the mud in one corner of the park and people sit around in rocking chairs and on porches. Our HC host, Keila, told us to get to the park and ask for her aunt, who sells vegetables there. So, I walk to the stand closest to us and ask a young guy working. "She´s the last stand in the park," he tells me and I look to see that there is actually only one other vegetable stand, about 10 feet away. Aunt looks at me for a minute and then suddenly brightens and shouts, "Keila!" and proceeds to call everyone in the family and let them know we've arrived. I immediately love this family as mom walks up and gives us a warm hug and dad rides up on a motorcycle with a huge smile. Keila is all energy, throwing our bags in the car and asking if we´re ready to see the ocean. "Yes!" After all, I did promise Abby the ocean on her birthday.

At the house we meet Grandpa and brothers and cousins and aunt and baby; everyone is so pleased to see us, even when they find out that were from the States and not from Argentina like they'd all thought (though we never really find out why). Oh my, and when the family finds out it's a birthday, everyone immediately starts shouting and clapping and singing all at once. A few minutes later "las mañanitas" is blaring out of a stereo in the house. Keila promises an unforgettable day and we embark for the ocean.

The air is thick with dust and the roady bumpy and rocky and nearly empty besides the occasional herder leading his long-horned cattle home, their ears flopping and necks swaying back and forth. We couldn't roll the window up for the heat, so dust filled our eyes and ears and mouths until we got to the sea. Always lovely and here the sea is heaving onto the filthy beach, which is popular for parties and family gatherings, especially since the water is too cold to be entirely inviting. At the end of the beach we climb some rocks and watch the ocean send tall sprays of water into the air via huge, crashing waves. Around the bend a pristine beach sits empty and isolated, barely accessible because of the rocks, and in stark contrast to the beach behind us, where an enormous pig is making its way through the litter strewn all over.

At home we get our first taste of mom's cooking. The best beans I've ever had in my life (for real), fried chicken, rice and a little glass of rum and orange juice. Mom sits and watches us eat with a huge smile on her face, truly content by our presence. I tell them that in Mexico everyone calls Abby 'Tinker Bell' and they both erupt in laughter, "It's true!! She is Tinker Bell!" Keila shouts. And when brother arrives with Abby's birthday ice cream, he tells us that the only flavor the store had left was "fantasia." "Ahh perfect! Fantasy ice cream for the Tinker Bell!!" Keila and Mom laugh and laugh.

Turns out fantasy ice cream is really just bubble gum flavored but whatever, I'm eating ice cream in flip flops (though mis matched now) and imagining that if I were back in Michigan right now I would be miserably cold and clinging to the hope that spring was actually going to come this year.

Capital-isms

2008-03-02T21:00:00.002-05:00

Prior: After our completely too-brief stay in Jinotepe, we decided to take advantage of a hosting offer and a chance to meet up with some young Nicaraguans and spend a day in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua. Mom tells us to be safe, Engels tells us to call him if anything at all happens and he or someone he knows will be there to help us, and Miriam tells us what a disaster the city is. Still, we hop on a microbus without even time for a proper goodbye and arrive at a shopping mall outside the city in a little over a half hour.

Our home: Valerie picks us up at the shopping mall, a place her husband, Sebastien, suggested because "it´s a safe place, it´s modern." So we try not to look completely ridiculous standing outside a "modern" shopping mall with our big backpacks and disheveled looks and we're soon taken to our one-night home in Managua.

As we pull in, Valerie tells us almost apologetically how when her husband was assigned to Central America and they decided to live in Nicaragua, they found that they could rent this enormous house (with swimming pool, house cleaner, groundskeeper and 24 security guard) for the same price as a 2 room flat in Paris. So, they took the chance to live in luxury for a while and, what I think is nice at least, they receive guests every so often. When Sebastien replied to my request he asked, "We only have one queen size bed in the guest room, can you share it?" We had a good laugh about that. And when we arrived, we were quite astounded.

Where are we?: Valerie makes us an incredible salad for lunch; I can't remember the last time I had feta cheese, and olives! Her and her husband refer to themselves as French diplomats, which is not the oddest thing about this couple. Still, they are incredibly kind to us. Valerie takes us to the market, a monstrous snaking thing, the vegetable piles in this market are the biggest I've seen, maybe 8 ft tall, papayas as big as my thighs, 2 ft high blocks of fresh cheese, an entire row of bright colored candies. I never really get tired of markets. Valerie says there's another market but it's too dangerous to go to, I read somewhere that you can get illegal abortions there even, but who knows.

Roll up the windows, lock the doors: Valerie gives us a "tour" of the city. Managua is a sad city, like a ghost without anything to haunt. People forced it into existence to end petty bickering and nature repeatedly destroyed it, with the city caught in the middle and without any say in the matter. Now it is an absolute mess of wide streets and shopping malls, with no center, no history, no beauty, and no sense. "People have to go to the mall just to be able to sit down and drink a coffee," Valerie tells us. People seem sad when they talk about this city. Even people who live and work here avoid it, which is surprisingly easy because it's almost as if it doesn't exist at all. We see monuments and flags and the National Palace, and a bizarre church with bubble structures all over the top with a lifesize Jesus inside who appears to be inside some sort of space bubble. We pass fragments of the old city, or rather of something that might have been a city had the earth not burned or shook violently.

Regalos: As we walk past the ruins of the old, once beautiful and impressive cathedral, children run up to us, pushing palm fronds that they have twisted into flowers into our hands. "I don't have any money," I repeat and try to hand a flower back to a girl, she had actually just dropped it into my bag. "I'm sorry, amiga, but not today." She follows me, insisting I take the flower, telling me it's a gift. "I really don't have any money today, amiga, sorry." But, oddly enough, she insists that it really is just a gift. She hands it to me and walks next to me for a few moments singing a song very quietly to me. The only words I can make out are, "Doy la rosa a la mas hermosa." Before she runs off I find out her name is Estacy.

Ok, where are we?: For dinner, we have an interesting psuedo-Nicaraguan experience. Meaning, we drink Nica beer, eat Nica cheese and nacatamales, and listen to a disc of a famous Nica folk musician, only we are from the States and our hosts are from France and we are sitting in a comfortable home that is carefully guarded from Nicas. During our dinner, a few couchsurfers show up to take us to a "summer party," so we toss the rest of the queso chontaleno in our mouths, down our beers and jump in the car.

The music is absurd and brings us hysterical memories of high school. The live band is much worse so we escape to a disco, where the music only worsens. How? At least we got to meet some cool folks. But, the night wears away slowly and the guard lets us in after a lengthy search for our home.

Departure: After a morning of dark, fresh coffee and toast with organic tamarind jam, Sebastien takes us to the bus station. "Rivas!" We hop on, hop off to buy enchiladas (not like in Mexico, here they're fried empanadas stuffed with chicken and rice with cabbage thrown all over the top of them), and look up to see our bus rolling slowly backwards, with our bags on it. We run and jump on while it's still rolling, a burning hot enchilada in one hand and the other to steady our balance.

"You girls laugh too much"

2008-03-02T01:52:00.002-05:00

Morning. I just want to write a brief note about my saving grace, my dear companion, my absolute crutch and cane and, at times, wheel chair. When I get stubborn and cross my arms and glare, she knows to just grab my hand. When I have not a penny to my name, she only says that someday I can repay her. When our eyes happen upon something we like (a piece of chocolate cake, for example, or a pile of cheese), we know better than to speak and instead just say "one, or two?" Most folks are confused by us, "Are you sisters, cousins, lesbians?" We shake our heads and laugh and refuse to care how people define us. Maybe the most accurate description so far, though not the prettiest, was offered to us by a couple Australian guys who share it as well, "heterosexual life partners." No use translating it to Spanish, here we can be sisters. We push each other's buttons, more often on purpose than not and then drink a beer and laugh about a moment that only we know and understand. It's a lovely thing, but, alas, my dear Abigail will board a plane soon and I'll go home to Mexico and we'll be forced to rely on lengthy emails and gmail chats.

Night. When we arrived to Jinotepe, this is something that I forgot, we were starving. Absolutely starving and tired. We called our host and waited in the town park, comprised of concrete and basketball courts, and wondered what to do about food. We didn't want to show up to our new host's house with such an obvious and fierce amount of hunger, but the streets were small and dark and certainly there are no quesadilla stands anywhere around. "Oh, mexican food," we groan, thinking more of availability than of taste, and we wander around the park, only seeing junk food snacks. We return to where we were standing in front of two older women who sit and only chat with eachother, but they have a cooler. "Do you have food?" I ask. They do, and imagine our surprise when one of the woman hands each of us a warm, soft tortilla wrapped around a thin, salty piece of cheese bursting with vinagery onions and crema. Sour and warm and soft and absolutely what we need.

Even though I can write about moments like these, only Abigail and I truly understand what it means to actually be in the moment and only able to look at each other and laugh and laugh.

What's in a journey?

2008-03-01T23:59:00.001-05:00

"Nuestra vida es la comida" Engels tells us. Life is food. Sounds good to me! Engels is our host in Jinotepe, a small town in the department of Carazo. We're his first guests so he was a bit hesitant at first but once we arrived, his family immediately welcomes us, offering us food, shelter, and kindness all around.

So the food. Our introduction into Nicaraguan food began with Miriam, Engels partner, a wonderful and brilliant Austrian gal. She started our day with pinolillo, a drink made of ground cornmeal, water, cacao and spices, and which Engles' family makes from scratch at home. Miriam hands us a plate with soft wheat bread and chunks of cheese and papaya. After that we had some delicious dark coffee from Jinotega, that Engels mom said is the best in the country. Even as good as the coffee was the conversation we had while drinking it with mom, the housecleaner (who is so close with the family I thought she was mom's sister) and Miriam. We talked about how cheap and good food is in Nicaragua and how in the United States the only things that are cheap are things people don't actually need to survive, like electronics and gasoline. Mom shook her head in disbelief when I told her how much people would be willing to pay in the States for an organic papaya. "Here we think canned food is trash," mom says. I agree. We also talked a bit about the privatization of water and how one of the big reasons that Daniel Ortega was elected president in 2006 was precisely this issue and his promise to not privatize it.

Back to the food. After coffee Miriam takes us to get fresh, local fruit sorbet. I obviously can't refuse guanabana, Abby gets mango and Miriam gets a fruit called nispero, which she says is related to the zapote. Wow. And now that the day is starting to get hot, there's really nothing better.

We walk up and down the market while Miriam points here and there at fruits, vegetables and sweets. We try some rosquillas, which are sold everywhere and are basically crunchy baked rings of cheese dough. And then buñuelos, fried yucca and cheese covered with a honey-milk syrup. So slippery and doughy and delicious. I know fried things are unhealthy, but please let me worry about it when I'm older.

We buy a random assortment of vegetables, pretty much all the ones that Abby and I didn't recognize or weren´t used to eating..yucca, tiny ears of corn, extremely long stringy beans, chayote...and later Miriam magically transformed them all into an amazing soup, and although we were standing in the kitchen with her the whole time, we still aren't really sure how that happened.

And, well, besides the food, the best part of our visit to Jinotepe is the conversation with these wonderfully kind, concious, and lovely people. Even the most simple conversations, about a job for example, will be occasionally dotted with statements like, "Well, the outer world isn't even real so actually nothing can be trusted." Engels asks me again and again what our objectives for traveling are and I continue to think about it daily. He tells me "It's all about the journey inward. You can travel to a thousand places and meet a thousand people and do it all without changing yourself at all because you never travel inward to your self." This is a bit difficult when you're already into a trip without much of a plan or much information about where you are or where you're headed, but I am still thinking about it all the time, trying to come up with some clear objectives about why I came to Nicaragua. Now that I'm here and can really see the incredible depth and endlessly fascinating facets of this country, I realize I will have to come back, if only to have clear intentions about my visit.

The wind is fierce in Jinotepe. At night it carries us strange dreams and by morning leaves us covered in a thin layer of polvo, dust, lifted off the dry land that surrounds us. Better than mosquito bites, I guess. Usually the wind will begin as a quick gathering of air, churning itself up into a roar that makes the trees sounds like a sudden, heavy rainfall. And slowly it will wind itself quietly down until the air is still again, but only for a few minutes.

Ah I already miss the constant joking and teasing of our home in Jinotepe. Miriam tells us how she perceives Nicas as looking for one's weakness and then laughing about it and exploiting it until one can laugh at their own weakness. An interesting idea, not for the sensitive, but I kinda like it.

Village life

2008-02-29T19:03:00.001-05:00

On our way to Jinotepe, we pass through Masaya, a town known for its artesanry and market. We only plan on spending a couple of hours here so we ask a woman at an internet cafe if we could leave our backpacks there for a bit. "Sure, if you trust me," she said, and I just replied, "Of course!" and we threw our bags down. We walked around the town from the basic goods market to the artesan market, getting a little mixed up after we wound around through the latter. So when we tried to get to the lovely lookout point our very out-dated guidebook mentioned, we ended up walking down some dirt residential streets, soliciting some strange looks and a couple hellos from small children. We did find the lake but had to look at it through our stinging eyes and with smoke that was rising up off the hillside of burning trash. Lovely, eh. On the way back we passed a dance troupe in the streets performing a sort of satirical play and dance that featured politicans, baby dolls and drag queens.

In the late afternoon we find our bus to Jinotepe. It takes much longer than we anticipated because it winds through all of the Pueblos Blancos, the White Towns, before looping back around to Jinotepe. The Pueblos Blancos are a bunch of small towns, clustered near each other, and get their name from the white paint that they all use on their buildings. One of the towns that we passed through, Niquinohomo, was the hometown of Gen. Augusto Sandino and in a letter that we saw in the city government office in Masaya, I read that Sandino was very proud of his small town birth. Nice to know I share such a sentiment with such an admired revolutionary. This country is so beautiful, it's hard for my heart and mind and eyes to take it all in in such a brief period of time. I love how people refer to each other casually and incessantly as "amor", "love", and how everyone teases each other and makes jokes and laughs endlessly. Everyone seems so happy and warm, even with a terrible war so recently behind them. And, for now, I won't even get started on the food.

Laguna de Apoyo

2008-02-29T13:15:00.003-05:00

So, we moved from the "Bearded Monkey Hostal" to the "Monkey Hut" (owned by the same folks) at la Laguna de Apoyo, about a half an hour from Granada. Nicaraguans refer to both places as "La Barba del mono." The Laguna is a huge crater lake formed by a volcanic explosion many, many, many years ago and is incredibly blue and beautiful and only slightly salty. But we didn't make it there before I had to make a quick visit to the doctor (nothing serious).

La visita I won't go into details about my symptoms, but I finally decided to go to the doctor after a few days of resisting. I'm used to taking other folks to the doctor (mainly Abigail, in Mexico), but I never really consider going myself no matter how sick I feel or think I am. Still, I thought it would be a good idea and we had about an hour and a half before our transport to la Laguna would leave, so we went to the nearest farmacia for a consulta. It's very common in Mexico for pharmacies to have doctors on hand for quick and cheap visits and I was glad to find out that in Nicaragua this is also the case. At the first pharmacy we stopped at, we sat down in the open patio in beautiful, wooden rocking chairs but then were informed that there would be a bit of a wait because the doctor was doing a surgery (in the pharmacy.) So we walked a few more blocks to an actual doctor's office and began to wait there. After about 20 minutes I asked the secretary how much longer it would be. He said a couple of minutes, I looked at the clock and then at him again, and he said "I'll go check." A couple seconds later he poked his head out of the room the doctors were in and waved me in. First, the woman doctor insisted on giving me an ultrasound (apparently this is what the office was for) and finding nothing, refered me to the other doctor. I stepped into his office and he gave me a quick check-up before essentially repeating the same thing the previous doctor had told me. Behind his desk a picture was hanging of him with his small son on his shoulders. At first I thought, "How cute," until I realized that the doctor was displaying an incredibly lewd t-shirt (and a big grin) in the photograph. Next to the picture, a carved, wooden Virgin Mary prayed above his desk.

The visit cost quite a bit more than the visits to the pharmacies that we made in Mexico. It felt a little silly after going to get a check-up for Abigail in San Cristobal, which even ended in an injection of penicillin, and then only handing the doctor 25 pesos. Imagine giving a doctor back home your pocket change in exchange for a visit- collection agencies would be after you in no time.

La Laguna We missed our transport to the laguna due to all the delays with the doctor and later the pharmacy. But as we were leaving the hostal we saw 3 people also looking for a way to get to the laguna and we all jumped into a taxi, convincing the driver that if we got stopped one of us would get out of the car (only 4 were supposed to be allowed at a time). During the ride we found out the gal was from Canada and the guys from Australia, though they both teased each other back and forth about being from the states or from New Zealand (jokes that made more sense to them I suppose).

But as soon as we started descending on the laguna, it was all we could focus on. It was a lot bigger that I'd thought and sparkling blue, completely surrounded by forest with only a house here and there showing in the trees. It only takes a few minutes in a place like this to forget that cities exist.

We throw our bags in the dorms and head straight for the water. It's warm because of the sun but also because of the thermal waters that flow under the lake. We grab inner tubes and splash around like kids and spend the day cooking, laying around in the sun and breeze and taking some kayaks out as far as the wind and waves would let us. From the middle of the lake we could hear howler monkeys start to make loud, roaring noises as the evening set in. I told Abby, "Ok, this is great but soon we have to see Nicaragua too, you know." It didn't feel real or perhaps it just wasn't what I'd imagined before coming to Nicaragua. Being surrounded almost completly by white folks speaking English greatly added to this sentiment.

After a couple nights in the hostal, my patience was waning with the "backpacker" community. True, I have a backpack too, but I mean this group of folks that travel in countries for the sole reason that the places are cheap, this apparently allowing them to indulge more in drugs and alcohol and guided tours and easy transport. I don't want to generalize but I've seen so many of these folks that they really could be classified as a distinct class of tourist. They want things to be "safe" so they stay in hostals owned by foreigners where everything from movies to food to drinks to internet are available and in essence they never even have to leave the hostal. Usualy around 9 or 10 am, after we'd already been awake a few hours, these folks would stumble out of their beds, groggy and hungover. I can't say I never traveled that way but I just can't imagine doing it now. Travel through Nicaragua without interacting with Nicaraguans? Too strange for me.

So after spending a beautiful day and night at the laguna, where we pretty much kept to ourselves, we jumped on a bus to Masaya to check it out on our way to Jinotepe, where we would be staying with a family through Hospitality Club.

Nicaragua is Hot, pt.1: Granada

2008-02-26T20:51:00.005-05:00

Finally, after much talk and much delay, we made it to Nicaragua. Our Tica Bus brought us all the way to Managua, but rather than stay in the huge, uninviting capital, we decided to head for Granada. As luck would have it, we found a nice fellow from El Salvador who was also headed that way and he accompanied us, even loaning us cordobas along the way (we didn't plan our money situation well, obviously). We got to Granada, checked into an overpriced but comfortable hostal, and got some pinto gallo. Our hostal is the typical backpacker, happy hour and cheap vegetarian food, folks from all over the world and everyone speaks english, movie hour and hammock type of place. I haven't stayed in a place like this since Livingston and before that, I can't even remember. Still, it's relatively cheap and eh.

I woke up early and we got out of the hostal to explore this new place. Granada is beautiful and bright in most places and fading and crumbling in others. According to something written on a concrete wall that I saw when we were entering the city, it's the oldest city on the American continent, but I'm sure that's disputable. And most of it had to be rebuilt after William Walker burned the city to the ground when they threw that overly intrusive yanqui out of his self-proclaimed presidential fantasy.

In the morning we found a little cafe where we could eat outside AND where the owner walked up to us carrying the largest guanabana I've ever seen in my life. He was impressed that I knew what it was, but I just couldn't get past why he wasn't offering me a piece yet. Finally I just asked for a little dish of it and ah, it was beautiful and brought me back many memories of one summer in Chiapas.

In the afternoon we got on some rusty bikes and rode all over the city. To our credit (amazement?) we only had one semi-close call with an oncoming vehicle and it really wasn't even that close to get worked up about. We rode to the Lago de Nicaragua (or, Lago Cocibalco), a brown and smelly thing but also an enormous freshwater lake home to many little islands and even sharks (the only freshwater lake sharks, apparently). We rode a couple kilometers along the lake, down a road that was lined with so many rusty and empty playgrounds (why?) and towering, sweet mango trees. Mangos were literally dropping in our path and squishing under our tires! People were laying on the side of the road on big sacks of mangos! This city is just dripping with small green-orange-red mangos, how lovely. There were also trees covered in red-orange flowers, trees that looked like squatting oranguatans, trees with broad, bright green, shining leaves, trees with enormous roots jumping up out of a lily-covered swamp. And all along the way, the birds sang like crazy and the breeze pushed us along.

Later we rode to the old train station, through the wild, narrow-streeted market and on to a fort where Somoza used to interrogate and execute prisoners. Climbing up a wobbly wooden ladder in the fort we could see all across Granada to the lake.

The Pan-American

2008-02-26T09:42:00.003-05:00

Leaving San Cristobal was difficult for many reasons, mostly because I'd gotten so used to it so quickly and so comfortable. And well, there are other reasons but they're small, silly things.

Somehow we made it on a night bus to Tapachula and just as our bus was pulling in, the bus next to ours was pulling out for all Central American cities. Without hesitating, we threw our bags on the bus and jumped on. Our first stop was Guatemala City. It was hot and I was slightly delirious from the travel. We stopped in a parking lot outside of a small strip mall, fast food restaurants and car dealerships lined the streets. Breaking with my tradition of not patronizing U.S. companies while in other countries, we found that we were both starving and without cash so I had to swipe my American Express at the Subway, and we got back on the bus.

I spent the next few hours falling in and out of sleep, falling into and bouncing off of the window, watching movies while the sound went in and out, the subtitles making me slightly nauseous. The countryside was beautiful and I felt a little bad for just racing through these lands, my heart set on a distant other land, but "next time," I remind myself.

Our bus stops again as the sun is setting. San Salvador, El Salvador. The bus station is conveniently located inside a cheap hotel so we throw down our bags and prepare to rest. But, that money thing again. We haven't got a dollar, a quetzal, or even a cent in any currency (besides pesos but they don't mean a thing here). I attempt to walk a few blocks looking for a ATM machine in this strange and unfamiliar city. After a couple of blocks of completely dark, completely empty streets, lined only with funerarias (casket stores and funeral services, some with 24 hour service), I am sufficiently creeped out enough to just head back to the hotel. Later one of the hotel employees walks us to a nearby gas station and finally we've got some cash.

I shower in the smallest bathroom I may have ever witnessed in my life and then commence to repack my bag and sleep, though not very well, until we're woken up by a loud knock. "Managua!" they shout and we're up. Back on the bus for a day full of riding, the entire Bourne film series, and endlessly beautiful forests, mountains, volcanoes, rivers and green-yellow grasslands.

The Return, Pt. 5: Finally, San Cristobal de las Casas

2008-02-21T16:23:00.006-05:00

It is such a lovely feeling to step outside of one's own room, into the sunshine, in bare feet, and into one's own kitchen. To make a cup of tea and enjoy it in the sunshine, to say "Hm, what should I do now? Suppose I'll lie in the hammock a bit." This is what my mad rush down through Mexico brought me to and now I can appreciate every second of the return to the far south.

The first week was a bit rough as all of my previous plans regarding San Cris fell through (well almost all of them), but luckily they were quickly replaced by serendipitous happenings, thanks to God. A quick trip to the beach, ah lovely lovely Boca del Cielo, helped me to get my thoughts in order. I ran into an old friend from Mexico City and we spent the whole week catching up and engaging in extravagant time-wasting activities while he told me story after story about his recent trip to Cuba. And just as I was about to be homeless once again, a friend of this friend graciously and unexpectedly offered me a room in his home, free of charge.

I have to say thank you, thank you about a million times a day. I've been so very lucky.

Also in these past couple of weeks Abigail has arrived, just in time to give me some additional perspective on the madness and beauty that surrounds us. We worked in the Casa del Pan organic garden once again, where we worked alongside a beautiful Canadian family and a new garden worker whose interests range from compost to windsurfing to therapeutic massage.

It's amazingly easy to spend an entire day just seeking out ingredients for and making no-bake cookies. Vanilla was the hardest, "Oooh" A woman who runs an herbal stand in the market tells me, "That's very hard to find, I don't think anyone will have it, try the other herbal stand around the corner." Well, we couldn't find that stand but indeed, around a different corner, after asking several more people and receiving similar responses, we finally found a little bottle of vanilla essence, made in Veracruz. The cookies turned out beautifully, a friend told us they looked like they came right out of a magazine and that we could make some good money selling them around town. Hm.

The Return Pt. 4: Oaxaca

2008-02-20T17:19:00.004-05:00

I wake up confused because I do not recognize this bus station. A fellow from Hospitality Club is supposed to meet me so that I can leave my things at his house during the day. I’ve decided to just take another night bus from Oaxaca to San Cristobal, just to get somewhere where I can actually put my bags down and rest. But I can’t bear to pass through Oaxaca without at least getting coffee with my dear friend Leo, a wonderful and talented musician whose secret weapon is his incredible laugh. I realize this bus company doesn’t drop me off at the main bus station but instead some little shack-like station outside of the city. So I get in a cab, hoping I’ll find my host soon.

And I do. He shows up and helps me carry my oversized bags on and off a bus and up a street to the gym where he’s going to work out. I put my bags in the gym and decide to walk around the city while I wait. Though I am slightly delirious from the bus ride and the hour of the morning, I manage to remember the layout of the city somewhat. I try to go to the organic market at el Pochote but it’s not open yet. So I walk and walk for an hour and a half, surprised at my ability to just keep wandering despite my exhaustion.

My HC host then takes me to his house where I get to meet his whole family and his mother invites me to eat breakfast with them, very sweet people. I realize I’m already late to meet Leo but I have to wait patiently for my host to shower and get ready for work (he’s already an hour late too, but I guess it’s no problem?). But despite all my panicky fears that the one reason I’ve come to Oaxaca will disappear, Leo is waiting patiently for me at Santo Domingo. Happy laughs and hugs and all the tardiness and waiting mean nothing.

We go to have a coffee and tell each other stories for a couple hours, catching up and also stories just for the laughs of them. Leo is teaching classes now in an institute run by the city government of Oaxaca and he loves it, though now he can’t drink beer anymore, he laughs loud at this. “No more Coronas!!!” He exclaims and he laughs and laughs.

In the afternoon I buy my ticket for San Cristobal, very eager to just arrive and sleep. The afternoon is sunny and breezy and we go to a place where Leo usually plays, a sushi restaurant outside of the center of the city. Leo is supposed to play today but we show up and he whispers to me, “I didn’t even bring my guitar!” and he laughs and laughs. We’re just here for the sushi; he knows how much I love it. Salmon, aguacate, cream cheese, yum.

The day is winding down when we head up to the mirador a look-out point just past the luxurious home we enjoyed for a couple of days back in November, the Hotel Victoria. We chat and laugh and via text message I set up a quick coffee date with another Oaxacan friend. He texts me a bit later saying he'll be 20 minutes late and I am really in no rush, though my bus does leave at 9pm that night. Eventually we ease up from the concrete slab we'd been occupying and head for Leo's red bocho (his old beat-up VW beetle that recently started to smell nauseatingly of gasoline, "At least it covers up the old smell of beer!" I tell him and he laughs and laughs). As I put my hand on the door handle, I hear a voice "Oh my God." It sounds familiar but not until I look up do I see our dear friend Beni! Beni's a young German kid who was sharing the house with us in San Cristobal in December. I had been disapointed when my trip got delayed to the point where I wouldn't be able to see Beni before he left Mexico, but thanks to God we found each other on some little mountain in Oaxaca.

Late again, I meet my friend at Santo Domingo and we head for a coffee shop near the park where I'm set to meet my host in an hour. Mostly I listen sympathetically to him tell me the great saga of some problems he's been having with a radio project. He always has wonderful stories and I never have enough time. Rushing again to another bus, it's very easy for me to fall asleep as soon as I board.

The Return Pt. 3: el DF y Texcoco

2008-02-20T17:19:00.001-05:00

It was early evening when I got to el DF and getting dark by the time I had pulled my bags up and down the stairs of several metro stops and was looking for my friend’s apartment. I was exhausted. I had met this gal through the Mexico City couchsurfing community and found her again. I’m glad I did because she is such an interesting and sweet person to be around. She quit school when she was 14 and traveled all around the world, working on and off, and is now working for a couchsurfer that contracted her, while she saves up money for her personal dream: a traveling culture bus.

So the real reason I’d even stopped by Mexico City on my way down was to see the wonderful banjo player and our friend Andru Bemis play. It was just too lucky to be passing through at the same time he’d be playing so of course I had to stop. Unfortunately a friend who lives just outside of Mexico City changed his mind about coming with me and the friend I was staying with was too tired and broke to want to go. I was a bit disappointed but we decided to just play cards and go to sleep. As we’re getting close to the end of the game (thank God because I’m losing horribly), another couchsurfer calls. My friend thought she was getting in the following day and now has to go meet her to give her the apartment keys. Turns out this woman’s hostal is only about 4 blocks from where Andru is playing. So, we decide to walk over and perhaps just go for a little bit, until we find out that the cover is 150 pesos. Eh. I decide to just go in and say hi to Andru but he insists we come in and we do, thanks to his utter generosity. We end up staying the entire show even to the very end where Andru got up on a table, stomping his feet, even getting guys in suits who had just finished their extravagant dinners and several bottles of wine to bark and howl like dogs along to the music. I’d never seen Andru play in a crowd like this but as always people shouted and clapped and wanted to hear more.

The next morning I went to visit my friend in Texcoco, an hour outside of the city, where he goes to an agricultural/forestry-based university. He studies tropical forest systems but is currently finishing his thesis on organic agriculture in Mexico, so of course we hit it off immediately when we first met in Chiapas a few months ago. Some friends of his had told him that it was going to be the free pulque day of the Pulque Feria, taking place in an even smaller village 15 minutes from Texcoco. Along the way we meet several people who tell us that this is false information but the sun is shining so nicely and the breeze blowing so sweetly that we decide to go anyway. It doesn’t take long to get there and find the pulque, a sort of sour fermented cactus drink that goes down easy and then gives you a good smack when you’re not looking. First we are buying pulque in a little stone courtyard from a fierce woman who serves pulque and insults with equal efficiency. I start out with mamey-flavored, which is very sweet and a bright sweet potato color. Later I drink a cup of guanabana-flavored and later we all move on to the good and simple “natural.” We also move on to some straw bales down the road under a tree where a man serves us pulque messily by dipping a big ladel down into a large metal vat.

We are me, my friend, a friend he knows from school, and a friend of his friend’s (who I later find out is named “Funny” and this gives me great amusement especially after a few liters of pulque). Our conversations range from school to homosexuality in Mexico to politics to whether Lala actually does rent their entire fleet of trucks. Our pulque server can’t help but listen as we’re sitting only a couple of feet from him and he occasionally smiles saying to us once “Well you certainly have interesting conversations.” The day starts to fade and so do our individual grasps on reality. Pulque can be quite strong, though it seems like it’s only a slimy juice. At some point we realize that the court yard pulque must have run out because young kids are coming to our (“our” because we had been there first and had nearly exclusive access to this pulque for several hours) pulque stand.

Some cowboys stumble up and say hello, one repeatedly refers to me as “clear eyes” and he later tries to give his white sombrero to my friend’s friend. He says he can give away the hat but not the band tied around it because that’s from his girl and he loves her so much she’s really the sweetest girl and he loves her so much so he can’t give away the band but he really wants to give the hat way because you’re good people and it’s a good hat but he can’t give away the band because he really loves that girl. At one point he is standing directly in front of me, shouting, God I wish I could remember what he was saying, only I don’t think I was even listening because all I remember now was thinking was, “Is this God? the devil? What is happening here?” It seemed he was accusing me of something, maybe of being clear-eyed and sitting on a straw bale somewhere in the center of Mexico, who knows.

Sometime after the sun sets we get back on a bus for Texcoco. Then there is confusion and we are jumping off the bus on a very dark stretch of road, somewhere outside of the village where there are only high weeds and fenced pastures. We start walking back and only after we are walking for several minutes do I find out why: Dario lost his backpack. Well, we somehow find our way back to our pulque stand but never find his backpack. It’s around this time that I realize it’s 9pm and that I’m not going to attempt the Mexico City metro system in this state. So I just crash at the house where my friend lives, a house for students but most are out of town right now, and I want to go right to sleep but not before, of course, we attempt to drum on a water jug. My friend’s roommates come home and find us silly and drumming and loud and for them it is just a quiet Thursday night to come home and study. Oh, dear.

The next day we get a cheap breakfast of eggs a la Mexicana, perfect for a morning following a day of pulque, though I eat so slowly that my friend eventually asks if I can just eat the bread while we walk. We take a walk around the university and he explains to me how it functions. Basically it started as a university for the poorest of the poorest students in Mexico, to offer them a place with free (or heavily discounted) tuition, but not only that, it also gives the very poorest of its students free clothing and shoes and haircuts, nearly any basic necessity. There are also dorms on the campus (very rare for a Mexican university) and cafeterias where students can eat for free. Though my friend is skeptical as to how much longer this will last due to the push for privatization and social cutbacks taking place all over in Mexico, in which the higher education system is getting hit with enormous and detrimental changes. He said it is already affecting the scholarships that he receives and that his university is one of the only of its kind so it’s especially terrible. But for me, I just keep thinking about the fact that they give out clothes and shoes. “What kind of shoes” Are they good clothes” I ask. For me, coming from the most anti-communist, individualistic place on earth where the only footwear associated with one’s economic state is “boot straps” all I can imagine is a large warehouse of uncomfortable black shoes that all look the same and if they don’t have your size you just have to make do. He admits that most students don’t actually wear the clothes that they are given, except for to work, but that the shoes are pretty decent. And no, they’re not all black.

In the afternoon we crash a luncheon hosted by my friend’s department. We aren’t fully “crashing” it; we signed up the day before, but it’s mostly a function for faculty and overly ambitious students so we just show up, eat, and leave. Turns out that most, if not all, of the professors also live on the campus and the luncheon is held in the backyard on of these houses, which is actually pretty nice. I can’t imagine what kind of houses they would have to offer to Western’s professors to get them to live on campus.

In the evening we head for el DF as I’m aiming to catch a bus for Oaxaca in the night. I bought my ticket for midnight which would put me in at dawn in the city of Oaxaca. Then, we decide we have just enough time to go and crash another party in a suburb of Mexico City. It’s the birthday party for a gal that my friend met in one of his classes. He barely knows her but hey, in Mexico everyone’s welcome at a party. Again we show up, have a couple of drinks, eat, make small talk, and then ease out of the party and head back for my things. We have to rush a bit and take a taxi to the bus station but I make it to my bus just in time.

The Return Pt. 2: Guanajuato

2008-02-20T17:18:00.001-05:00

The first night I stayed in a hostal but the following nights I slept on a thin mattress with a thin blanket on the floor of Bar Fly. This time I won’t pretend that it was, in fact, a learning experience to view this social underbelly of Guanajuato, this group of close friends and travelers who love each other dearly but always know that good byes are coming, this constant, gossipy, festive, directionless swirl of partying and meandering people. Truth is, I like these people. They make me feel at home every time and we all share a unique love for life and each other. And, of course, they give me a free place to stay anytime I’m in town. With these folks I can even tolerate the terrible nickname given to me when I first came to Mexico which follows me ever since, even when they slap their hands on both sides of their face and shout “Ahhhhhh!!!” (again, think Home Alone) when I walk into the room. Everyone is mildly frustrating and completely endearing and you can’t help but get the feeling that if you double cross even one of them, you’ll get run out of town.

So, I swung back into the rhythm of this tight-knit bunch, parties, food runs, dog walks, coffee breaks, drama, belly laughs, confusion, familiarity and all. Again I found myself pushing back my trip to Mexico City day after day. It was a combination of really loving where I was at and really dreading getting back on a bus anytime soon. I mean, why not spend an entire afternoon at Café El Santo, drinking coffee and chatting with a Norwegian lady that had decided to make Guanajuato her home? Or, going to get pizza at the mall (I’m still not sure why we went to the mall) and then playing for hours in the parking lot with dogs and shopping carts and escalators? Or walking all around the twisting, rising, falling streets with a Canadian traveler who shares my affinity for taking pictures of doors? I had no real reason for staying in Guanajuato other than I really was enjoying my time (Heaven forbid), but one morning I woke up feeling so great that I packed up my things, asked an Italian couple on the street corner if they were also going to the bus station and wanted to share a cab, and a bit later I got on a bus for the monstrous and beautiful city of Mexico.

The Return Pt. 1: Escape

2008-02-20T16:58:00.001-05:00

I don’t want this to be overwhelming, but certainly a lot has happened in these past few weeks. In some ways things were planned (what a joke eh) and in most ways, seemingly spontaneous moments found themselves accidentally, needlessly, miraculously all tied together by geography and time. I’ve been lucky.

The last time I decided to write I was miles and miles away from where I am now. It was cold and depressing and then damp and brown (but not before I slipped on the ice and banged both knees up) and then I got on a train. I packed what I thought I would need for the coming year into an entirely oversized suitcase, my family saw me off at the bus station, I started heading south again.

I tend to try and leave out folk’s names. Though this blog is only very limitedly read, I’ve never asked anyone if I could write about them in what is still technically a public space, so for that reason I usually just leave individual names out of this.

Even in Kentucky, where the grass was still green, I wasn’t satisfied with the rise in temperature. I was still bundled up, my movement restricted, thoughts only on things like hot coffee, warm food, hot shower. In attempted denial of the cold, we had a barbecue outside, but as soon as the food was done cooking we all ran inside and shut the door and enjoyed the heat of the indoors again. Despite the lingering of the winter that I was trying to escape, I did get to visit an old friend and meet several interesting folks, many of which I’d heard so much about. I even met a 4 year old girl who proudly told us she could speak 4 languages (Greek, Bosnian, Spanish, English). I’m not even sure how I should go about learning a 3rd language at this point, but anyway a few days in Kentucky were enough and the next place I set off for was “The hellish Greyhound experience.”

My bus was “direct” from Louisville to San Antonio, meaning we stopped about every 4 or 5 hours to get off the bus, get our luggage off the bus, get confused about which line to stand in, and get back on the bus. I did get lucky in the sense that at least half of the time I had two seats to myself, precious time that I took good advantage of. I wasn’t interested in talking to other folks, I just wanted to ride and sleep and finally disembark in a warm place. I didn’t even eat and rarely drank water. Finally, Texas.

I wasn’t sure if by the time I got to San Antonio I would be too exhausted to continue by bus or not, so I had a couple Couch Surfers phone numbers in my pocket just in case. But I found that the only thing I wanted to do was get back on the warm, dark bus and ride throughout the night. I don’t have any trouble sleeping on buses so I bought a ticket for Monterrey and re-boarded the bus.

Sometime around 3 in the morning I woke up to see a small woman standing at the front of the bus, talking to the passengers. I could see that she was an immigration official but none of the folks in the back of the bus could hear anything she was saying. I figured at some point someone would tell me what to do because clearly I was too tired to figure out what was going on myself. Eventually I saw her point to one young guy sitting in the front row of the bus. He got off, went in the office and we all watched as he pushed the button on the stoplight and it flashed green. Someone behind me worried that they were going to make us all get off one by one. But instead, after this guy got back on the bus, we sped across the border and into the early morning, into Mexico. Was I really the only U.S. citizen on the bus? I suppose so because no one else said a word.

So, I get to Monterrey wondering what to do next. I also had numbers for couchsurfers there but at that point I just wanted to get deeper into Mexico as fast as possible. After almost 2 days of being completely alone, I just wanted to see something familiar, somebody familiar. I quickly find that there are no direct buses for Guanajuato and I listen to some guys argue about whether it’s faster to go through San Luis Potosi or Aguascalientes. I buy a ticket for SLP, then try to change it but the bus has already left for Aguas so I just get on my original bus a few minutes later. Things were quite confusing. Then on the bus, I see that the thickest, whitest fog I’ve ever seen has settled all over Nuevo Leon. Visibility extends about 6 inches in any direction. As the bus crawls at about 5 mph, I start to wonder “Where am I really? Where am I going? Why am I here? Who am I?” I feel like I’m losing my mind and it doesn’t help that the rest of the bus is only occupied by a handful of old, sleeping men, “Do any of us exist?” The bus driver’s assistant hands me two magazines about soap operas and celebrities in Mexico and I find myself reading about Dr. Simi’s (owner of huge chain of imitation drug pharmacies) many young girlfriends. Again, “What am I doing here?”

I feel that I am on the bus for eternity, a ghost destined to haunt empty Primera Plus buses for the rest of time, watching terrible dubbed movies while floating past discarded ham and cheese sandwich wrappers. Eventually I fall asleep and as soon as we arrive to San Luis Potosi I race to a phone to test my ghost theory. “Bueno?” Jonathan answers. “Hey!” I shout and then let Spanish awkwardly tumble out of my mouth. “Hey Macaouly!” he shouts back. While I do hate this nickname (think Home Alone), I am relieved that he can, in fact, hear my voice and that I am still a real person with a name, a nickname even. I jump on the next bus for Dolores Hidalgo and from there I ask very nicely if I can still get on the next bus for Guanajuato despite the fact that I’m short two pesos. The woman waves her hand, “Of course,” and an hour later I meet Mr. Paniagua (always in a suit) at the bus station.

To the teeth...

2008-01-08T14:16:00.000-05:00

"The problem is that nothing is under control down there," the warnings fall empty on my ears. I try not to grin or dispute what my dentist is staying. "Now, say aah. And it's just not safe outside of the resort areas." He's just finishing up my routine dental cleaning now, "But you'll be fine. Just be careful and I mean it. If you think that Venezuela is dangerous, now Mexico is really dangerous too. That president they have isn't that great." I think maybe we've found a point of agreement, and I say, "Yeah, not many people like him." The dental assistant is surprised, the dentist sighs, "Not as evil as Hugo Chavez, but he's pretty bad." He sighs again, "But no one could be as evil as Hugo Chavez." New toothbrush in my hand, I step out the door.

Reminders

2008-01-04T23:09:00.001-05:00

I am walking as quickly as I can across a slippery street and then onto a snowy curb, maybe 4 meters from the bus stop sign. The bus is speeding through a green light that I tried wishing red but quickly realized it was too late. But I'm this close, it's this late, it's this cold- surely this bus driver will stop, I did give plenty of warning, the bus certainly can slow down in time. I wave my arm out, still walking toward the stop, now maybe 10 feet away. An empty bus zooms past me, disappearing around a curve, heading toward downtown where perhaps in its journey there and back it will pick up a couple passengers at most. I curse in Spanish, the driver can neither hear me nor would they understand my anger. After all, I wasn't AT the stop. Now I am walking as quickly as I can toward no destination in a cold that feels even more bitter than before. I start to lose feeling and movement in my fingers, despite my snug gloves. I am astounded, and reminded, and I wonder why I come back for things like this. To witness people's internalized habit of favoring efficiency and regulation over humanity.

Today I went to visit Santiago and he called another professor while I was sipping on a sweet little cup of fig coffee. He shouts into the phone, "I hate this country even in the summer!" So, I'm not alone at least.

Reality/Realidad

2008-01-02T22:14:00.000-05:00

The other side: Snow's about as deep as my boots now, I don't mind walking through it because I never have to go too far. It's good to be able to move around in a city on foot- just being a few days in a house where even to get to a convenience store requires some sort of wheels made me appreciate how I like to stretch my legs and move swiftly down blocks, up stairs, down alleyways, through parks, on and on.

Mexico seems incredibly far away, but I don't like to think of it that way. Instead, I'm focusing on this wintery land around me and moving slowly but efficiently. Kalamazoo certainly doesn't feel the same but perhaps nothing does in the dead of winter. I've also found that my body doesn't want to become accustomed to sleeping in a different place every night, but hopefully it can hold out another week at least.

New Year's Eve was filled with love and grief, balloons and stomping boots, dancing and telling stories, and enough Michigan music to put me to sleep like a baby (after jumping, screaming and falling into the snow after stepping out of the theatre).

I still would be able to see the sun sometime, Michigan is beautiful, that's true, but I do miss the sun.

What brings a family together...

2007-12-25T11:28:00.001-05:00

My family is not religious, nor am I. Yet, we take this wintery holiday as a good excuse, as many do, to gather, eat, drink, and remind ourselves that a family is a pretty nice thing to have.

Sisters

2007-12-23T11:10:00.000-05:00

Change

2007-12-21T11:16:00.000-05:00

I traded this...

for this?

Ah, Michigan!

time and crows

2007-12-21T10:39:00.000-05:00

Flyby: Well, now that Guatemala seems like a misty, distant land/sensory experience, it feels very irrelevant to go into many details.

Guatemala to me, is cohetes and loud, snapping firecrackers at our feet, Jesus savior in all forms, slow choking almost-fall-off-the-cliff (despacio!!) smashed into all people around sleeping on an old woman's shoulder diesel fumes exploding colors and names dusty creeping soaring chicken buses, black beans in a can and dismal vegetables, antigua night dancing and after after after after parties, losing track losing things, armando's stories of war and plane crashes and su abuela and guatemalan food, new words food habits friends discoveries, chocobananas, moving through all altitudes, strain and comfort, matching history and text with now and flesh, endless mountains fallen trees rocky cliffs rivers puentes curvas bluest skies volcanes, tostadas, burning the devil, baked goods, goodbye guitar, roadside watermelons standing up, black and yellow corn drying on aluminum roofs, pigs roosters crazy cats.

Vuelo: Back in Mexico, I felt more at home than ever. We walked across the border, borders are such interesting, dynamic, mixing sharing evolving, loud places. In a few hours we were back in San Cristobal, blessed as we are, with a candle-lit home-cooked meal waiting for us. That night Raul and I went to an invitation-only Oaxacan party. I had no idea what to expect other than after a day of traveling and 2 weeks of wearing the same clothes, I wasn't really up for a fancy dinner party. And wow, we showed up to a hall of around 500 people, most of the women dressed in traditional Oaxacan dress, at least 5 bottles of liquor on each table, food, music, dancing, a celebration of the coming together of Oaxaquenos and Chiapenecos. We left at 11 and the party was only barely getting started.

Landing: Cancun is only a 3 hour flight away from Detroit, how how how. How can space and distance and surroundings be so easily erased, replaced. Well, either way, here I am in snowy Michigan, reminding myself that it's ok to throw toilet paper in the toilet and that people have to drive to stores to buy food. Oh dear.

Guatemala in small blocks

2007-12-11T16:52:00.000-05:00

Flores: Our first stop, Flores is a small town on a small island inside a small lake. The streets are lined with tourist-catering businesses and restaurants, walls are plastered with advertisements for tours to Tikal, shuttle buses to anywhere in Guatemala, and cheap phone calls to the US and Europe. There is nowhere to buy vegetables except for a tiny, dusty store that has some sorry-looking tomatoes and a few bananas in wooden crates. For accomodations, because both cost 25 quetzales, we decide to go for the cheap hotel with a balcony over either of the backpacker hostals, though we do end up swinging by one of those for their 5 quetzal snack happy hour. Tiny 3-wheeled taxis zoom up and down the small main street, a bridge leads to Santa Elena but we never walk across it, our hotel attendant speaks in loud, high-pitched, slow Spanish and asks if we are from Spain or France. Only the ruins of Tikal keep us in this town for 2 nights.

Livingston: Second stop. This town is only reachable by boat, either a half hour by motor boat or and hour and a half by ferry. We take the ferry, grab some yucca as we wait for the boat to load and lurch across the water, and ride down the Rio Dulce just as sun sets. It's beautiful and to be near water again is as sweet as the cool breeze coming off of it. Livingston is a small fishing town composed of 4 different cultures, a tiny museum, a strip of touristy restaurants and hotels, and acres of jungle and communities that lead to the Caribbean Sea. We spent our time avoiding the "backpacker hostal" atmosphere of where we were staying (we just couldn't beat the 15 quetzal hammocks), eating fish and chocobananas, and staying out of the rain on those days when it just wouldn't stop coming down. Everyone is in the streets at night in Livingston, minus the tourists who are in bars or restaurants for most of the dark hours, and in some parts of the town where there isn't electricity, you can actually see the stars. The town is laidback, nothing really in the way of entertainment except for heaping bowls of tapado (fish, shrimp, coconut, banana soup) and the "cultural center," located behind the basketball court, that consists of a couple of crocodiles, a couple alligators and a few turtles in cement enclosures. Though one night we did get to see some Garifuna drumming and dancing while sipping on some Gallos. We spent an extra night here, hoping for the sun to show itself again. It did and we spent the day hiking for a few hours through much of Livingston, across a river, down the beach next to the Caribbean Sea, and through the forest until we reached Los 7 Altares, a series of waterfalls and pools. We climbed over stones and through thick, black mud until we got to a deeper pool where we jumped off the waterfall into green, deep, calm water.

We left Livingston on a hellish boat ride, which was supposed to be a pleasant trip down the Rio Dulce with some stops for walking or swimming. Instead, we had an hour's worth of cold rain whipping us in the face and running down our plastic protection onto our necks and legs.

Noticia

2007-12-01T21:11:00.000-05:00

More: fotos are up, check the link to the side. We are in Livingston.

So, are we going to the jungle or what?

2007-11-30T13:31:00.000-05:00

Are you happy now?: After many visits to archaelogical sites in Mexico, I had pretty much decided that I'd seen enough ruins and pyramids to last my lifetime. So when we arrived to Tikal, in the middle of the Peten jungle of northern Guatemala, and discovered that the price had risen from $6.50 USD to $20, I really wasn't too upset that I didn't have enough money to get in. Instead, I sat down with my book to wait for Abby and Johanna for the day and tried not to think in the wasted money spent on transport. But, as luck (as usual) would have it, after about 20 minutes a young European approached me, offering to sell his already purchased ticket as he was leaving the park. "Well, I'm sure I can get more for it, but it's no problem," he said and walked me to the entrance so that I was certain that the ticket was valid.

After paying him the only 50 quetzales I had to my name, I was confronted with a choice of 3 paths that led into the jungle, with no clear indicators of where I should head. Without thinking much, I took the one to the left and found myself walking for 40 minutes or more though pure, thick jungle without seeing another human being the entire time. All around me the jungle exploded with noises, tree branches falling, screaming monkeys, crying birds, and a constant chirrr, whirrr of insects above and below. The air was dark and damp, the path muddy and slippery and I stepped along contentedly, feeling quite safe despite being in such a wild place.

Eventually I came upon a partially restored, partially crumbling pyramid rising out of a moss-covered hill. I was completely alone, I felt, and in awe of these ancient stones. I know little about the actual history, so I let my imagination roam wild a bit and then continued on. Another 20 minutes of walking in solitude before I took a few turns and came across the main plaza, where the most prominent pyramids are. All of a sudden, people were on all sides of me, climbing up and down pyramids and stone structures, taking pictures wildly, laughing and shouting in a variety of languages, children skipped around and older folks rested on wooden benches- it appeared to me as a playground, a big, archaelogical playground, although they probably don't sell beer at many playgrounds, and at this one they do. It was a little disorienting after being by myself most of the morning, so I found myself trying to step politely away when an entire family ascended the structure I was one, and rather than ask anyone to take my picture, I instead got very aquainted with my camera timer (I'm quite good at it now).

By the time I found Johanna and Abby sitting on the top of one of the temples, though, I was ready for company. We did some exploring in the Mundo Perdido, found the Bat Palace and were looking around in the main plaza again before the entire sky tore itself open and a torrential rain forced us to go running through the jungle. For 15 minutes, we ran as the paths quickly converted into muddy, rushing streams of waters and as great puddles welled up in front of us. The trees did little to protect us and the mud made going too fast a precarious situation. Just as we arrived to the van, the jungle rain dissipated and the sun returned. Typical- we all knew that tropical rains are intense and brief, but perhaps subconsciously we all needed a run through warm rain.

After returning to Flores, a dark, creamy, delicious Moza beer was perfect. The darkest beer we've had in awhile, and worth every quetzal.

Haze and water

2007-11-28T22:07:00.000-05:00

Squint: Finally we made it to Guatemala, one long, dark night of driving and flat tire later. As hard as I tried I couldn't fulfill my duties as the driverside passenger, though I did try feebly to make small talk with Vladimir for a short while before the mountain curves and the darkness lulled me to sleep like a baby. We slept on the border and in the morning boarded a small, wooden boat across the Usumacinta River. At the top of the muddy stone stairs awaiting us on the other side, we jumped right on a bus, made a quick and painless stop at immigration, and we were off on a long, bumpy, dirt road for many hours before reaching the island of Flores. Along the way the streets are filled with chickens and pigs and children who rush to the ends of paths to watch the bus go past. The land is green but the signs of destructive deforestation are all around us- mainly in freshly burnt palm remnants, rows of freshly planted corn, and acres upon acres of cattle farms. Guatemala is also filled with fog, rising up from lakes and valleys, covering the road at times and at others, the sky. Figuring out how much Quetzales are actually worth is making our brains ache and the amount of English on walls and stores is confusing. Maybe for the first time in a few months I feel that I am somewhere very unfamiliar.

Kitchens

2007-11-24T14:02:00.000-05:00

Dull knives: My favorite theme of San Cristobal so far has been dinners. It started with having our very own kitchen to play in, proceeded with the opportunity to cook in Raul's kitchen, and has continued with invitations. In Raul's kitchen, we met some writers from Seattle who invited us to their kitchen for an anti-imperialist Thanksgiving dinner. We showed up with wine and sweet bread and were amazed at the beauty and extravagance of their home, sitting on a hill like a little castle, complete with amazing views of the city and stars. The night wound on with warm wine, a feast of Mexican, cuban and manynation-inspired foods, english and spanish balancing each conversation. In that kitchen Raul ran into an old friend, hence our next invitation. But, with a free night between dinner party invites, what else to do but to cook an amazing dinner in a comfortable kitchen. We now rely on Raul to make the guacamole.

Universal: Maybe a milestone in my Spanish, translating Patsy Cline songs for Raul so he could understand Abby and I's distraught faces and us clutching at our hearts, and somehow I could communicate at least a bit of the sorrow and sentiment.

Gracias a la vida...

2007-11-22T17:13:00.000-05:00

Guajalote: A short colectivo ride took us much farther from the city than it appeared. We stuck our fingers deep into fluffy, black soil, the earth, and plucked small hierbas from the places where they were not wanted. This was how we spent our morning, by volunteering in an organic garden outside of San Cristobal, where we weeded marigold and pea patches (Pea plant leaves are so very soft), planting little onions, and spending an hour and a half cleaning soil by grabbing clumps and pulling slimy pink earth worms out. At one point, the garden owner showed up and told us about their fermenting fertilizer project. "Super mugra" or "shit tea", as they called it, consists of lots of fresh cow manure, milk, sugar, and trace minerals that are necessary for the soil but very difficult to obtain in organic form. Thanks to this recipe, invented by a Brazilian farmer, after a few months the farm will have enough to last all year.

Between our tasks, we sat and conversed with the garden attendants, Esteban and Salvador. We talked about what foods grow in Michigan, how the weather is, how much people are paid there and how much is the rent, the wall being built on the border between Mexico and the U.S., different types of life and work. We all decided that work is good.

Because God is great, our playing in the dirt and sitting around in a garden was rewarded with a complimentary feast. The garden belongs to a fancy vegetarian, mostly organic, restaurant in downtown San Cris, and for a few hours of work we were able to enjoy a grand buffet. With dirt under our fingernails and down our necks, we ate and thanked the universe for it.

Mira: Here are some of my pictures, updated as can be: http://picasaweb.google.com/andreanvogler

Sun spots, light gaps

2007-11-21T18:45:00.000-05:00

Shine on: Luck in her many forms has followed us to San Cristobal. Of course, we've already found that free places to stay are easy to come by (over 2 months and haven't paid for a bed yet), especially when it comes to floor space and cramped couches, but now we're staying in a glowing, sunny hotel room smack in the downtown of San Cris. Our (own!) kitchen is constant entertainment for us, first thing we did was stock up the refrigerator and invest in some cooking oil. The feeling of having one's own place is a beautiful one. We invite friends over for dinner, keep our toothbrushes on the sink (rather than in our backpacks), kick off our shoes wherever we want, move around freely in space that, though only very briefly and tentatively, we can call our own. Eternal thanks for this.

Disco ball: Dancing the pasito duranguese is harder than I remember. Kick up your heels and jump, should be easy right? Well, perhaps the bright, flashing lights and smoke were distracting but really I was also nervous and inexperienced. Salsa is feeling more comfortable to me, banda is still pretty new territory but right now I feel that I have a good reason to learn.

Sorpresa: We were able to find and wander through the forest twice already this week. Fresh air and green are still always surprises to me here after spending so much time in cities, despite the fact that even the cities are still not exactly like the cities I know back in the states. Oaks, pines, utterly tall trees that stretch through the remnants of a cloud forest, trees that are not cut into funny shapes, trees that carry entire ecosystems in their lofty branches, trees that deny the presence of picnickers and the military, all of these we walk beneath. There is constant discovery in twisted trunks and cave formations. There is constant beauty in fresh fruit, friendship, and laying on the ground watching the sky. What happened years ago feels like yesterday, what happens today feels like forever. Time moves like the clouds sometimes, wispy and rushing past, and other times like the sway of treetops, slow and steady.

Mujer afortunada

2007-11-17T14:19:00.000-05:00

Ojos: These past several months I have had a nice bit of fortune to have been able to re-meet folks that I haven't seen for several months or nearly years. Almost awkward laughs, what counts as small talk, dredging up or releasing memories, hugs, laughs no longer nervous or strained. There's almost a routine because we make it up in our minds that time changes things. But, eyes, eyes never change.

Yet, sometimes they do reveal new things- Alfredo says I have los ojos de una mezcalera.

Bocas: The 3 things I most associate with Oaxaca: Chocolate, Mole, and Leo's laugh. All of which I already miss.

Manos: Our last afternoon in Oaxaca and Leo drives us out to the Presas, just outside of the city. It's called the dams, but there are no dams. Leo calls it the laguna or lagito (little lake) but it is more like a rapidly moving river, hurried along by constant gusts of wind. Leo asks if I've ever had my palm read, and I haven't. He takes a pen, begins marking mi linea del destino, mi linea de la vida, mi linea de inteligencia, mi linea de suerte. Tengo mucha suerte y mucho valor. Thus, I will travel a lot, seek adventure, meet good people everywhere I go. I realize I am in my future already but that time is hard to tell on the palm of one's hand anyhow. He also told me something that few, if any people, in my life have ever told me (hence I find it a little difficult to believe at this point)- that I have las manos de artista. Artist's hands. Well, I suppose I should start developing skill then if the talent is lying already in my hands, waiting for something to pull it to the surface. Leo is an artist, too. Leo and I have similar hands yet very different lives. Our hands are covered in lines that fill our minds with possibilities of what may have happened already and what will surely happen now. We become less certain of the past and more certain of the future. Leo laughs and assures us that he will only tell us the nice things.

Muchos leones

2007-11-14T17:57:00.000-05:00

Tiempo tormentoso: Every Oaxaqueño that I've met so far talks about Oaxaca in terms of how things were before what happened last year and how things are now. Time is now split here in this way, a split that cuts deep into the hearts of the people of Oaxaca. Depending on the person, they name the events of last summer and fall as "los problemas que tuvimos", the problems we had, "el conflicto," "la guerrilla," the little war. Some people don't like to talk about and others do. And when they do, usually the topic comes about indirectly but with questions the person will open up and describe where they were, how the streets looked, their emotions and thoughts about the events, the consequences or the government. Everyone asks if we heard about it in the states and how. The streets appear tranquil here but people confide in me that organizing is still going on, that right now the resistance is resting, taking its time. Others are grateful for the tranquility and for being able to again work and leave their homes at night, though most Oaxaqueños that I've talked with still are nervous about being in the streets too late at night, mostly because of the memories and for not any actual, direct threat. Yet people remind me that if a police officer assumes you are part of the APPO or a sympathesizer that it could lead to problems, and they also mention that there are many more police in Oaxaca than before the events of last year happened. The memories and the present relating to the political situation are like a conversation that everyone is having in private, in hushed voices, behind closed doors, never knowing who to trust or with what information. The local government works hard to cover up political art work and spray painted slogans as soon as they appear on walls and doors, they strain themselves to clean up this city for tourists and language students. Certainly, everyone wants Oaxaca to be safe for all, but the type of calm in the air right now doesn't signify safety to me, but more like the calm before a storm, one that is quietly brewing under our feet and behind cement walls. Oaxaca, te llevo en mi corazón.

Suerte: However my improvement in luck coincided with my Abigail returning to Oaxaca, I am happy about it. Through a series of lucky accidents and coincidences, we were able to have our own room, free of charge, in a 5 (no less) star hotel, complete with swimming pool and endless breakfast buffet. People treated us not as backpackers or hippies but as important dignitaries, no matter that we ran around in our barefeet and didn't bother combing our hair before breakfast (we were just going to jump in the pool anyhow). And not only all of this, but we ended up making new friends, mostly musicians from el DF, and having a great night of playing music, singing and conversation. At times I found myself thinking, "I do NOT belong here," but then I would remember the incidents that led to that moment, and they clearly indicated otherwise.

Que onda: Last night I got to meet one of the organizers of a network of community radio stations in Oaxaca and over coffee, we discussed the state of community radio in Oaxaca. He told me that Oaxaca has the most community radios of any state in Mexico, but that after the events of last year more and more radios are facing repression and closings on the part of the government, with extra pressure put on by Televisa, the media giant who already controls 68% of radios in Mexico. He mentioned that one thing he thought particularly scared the government and CEOs was when the women's movement took over some radio stations in Oaxaca and, with the help of university students, even elderly women learned how to broadcast in a matter of hours. He said that event in itself destroyed the myth that radio is expensive, complicated and better left to the media corporations. Knowing that people can truly take the media into their own hands, communicate their own stories and news based on their own needs, is inspiring to me- and dangerous to others, but especially to those in power. The spirit of the people of Oaxaca continually amazes me.

Que bonito es volar: Aprendimos a bailar, bailando juntos. Que lindo. We've also met several folks from the states and more musicians from Oaxaca, mostly trovalistas. Folk singers and they mostly sing Cuban songs or other popular Latin American folk songs and are buena gente all around. We have incredible luck in meeting people, generous people who expect nothing in return, talented people who share their skills, interesting people that share their stories and ideas. It's nice knowing so many wonderful people in this world exist. I will surely miss Oaxaca but hopefully will return on my way back up through Mexico. Tomorrow night we are hopping on a night bus to San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, leaving us with one more night of trova in Oaxaca.