Borscht

Borscht, originally uploaded by Kelly Sue.

Borscht is an ugly word. Yet the dish itself is one of the most gorgeous things. The beet base gives borscht a deep magenta color, shifted slightly red by the diced tomatoes. And a finishing touch of olive oil makes the surface shimmer with tiny orange beads. On the first day, the soup is thin and the broth is transparent, sour-salty-sweet. The flavors develop further over the next few days - the broth gets thicker - in Russian, we say it becomes 'navaristyi' which captures it perfectly and untranslatably - and the potatoes and the beans turn a beautiful, light pink. Be careful not to boil when reheating, as the borscht will lose its magenta color and start to turn a rusty, earthy orange.

It's my last week of work at Danzantes, and my turn to cook the staff meal. Tere usually cooks the staff meal. She's 33, and used to party hard, until she burnt out. Luckily she discovered cooking - learned it from a Spanish woman who used to own a restaurant in Oaxaca - and now works as an in-home chef for the owner of the restaurant. While the owner is off traveling in India, and because the restaurant is short staffed, she steps in a few days a week to help out and cook the staff meal. She has prepared amazing soups and stews. Her fragrant sopa vegetariana was one of the most satisfying meals I've had. The secret ingredient? Yep, bacon. She has deep-fried taquitos stuffed with tomatoey shredded chicken and taught me to make the tastiest runny guacamole (I could drink the stuff) while making it all look incredibly easy. During the Grito (the independence day holiday last week. No, not cinco de mayo, people...), Tere cooked the traditional pozole - a spicy soup made with shredder turkey, and bursting grains of corn (this isn't the hominy crap you can buy in a box at whole foods), served topped with radish, lettuce and white onion.

One can appropriately show appreciation for food by callin it 'rico' or 'tan rico' or 'muy rico' or 'que rico'. Rico translates as rich, but also good or great. Tere's staff meals are always rico.

So I was both excited and really intimidated by having to follow her act. I wrote a list for the runner, using Google Translator to figure out all the "como se dice"-s and tripling all of the amounts. The ingredients arrived throughout the morning. First showed up the beets - each the size of my head. Next, the head of cabbage the size of a beach ball. With 20 minutes left before the comida, I discovered that the canned white beans that I requested were actually 'refritos' - but the Olla Express (pressure cooker) came to the rescue!

Slinking around Carlos - a juggernaut of a man, who crowds kitchen with his massive frame - trying to dodge him while he spilled oil on the floor, overflowed the steam table, sliced open his hand all the while belting banda music, I bounced back and forth between the cold table where I was frantically trying to chop up jicama and oja santa for prep and the giant cauldron of borscht on the burner at the opposite side of the room. I've often wondered about my kitchen companions. Carlos has been in the kitchen now for 4 months; Octavio for only a month. Carlos used to make sushi rolls at the Mexican chain SushItto (which I haven't dared to try). Before Danzantes, Octavio fixed cars and had never stepped foot inside the kitchen. Now, they are both firing orders with preternatural ease. I, on the other hand, am all nerves - no quiero desmadrar nada. Thanks for Harold McGree and Herve Thies, I'm overthinking everything I do. Is the temperature on the deep-fryer too hot? Have I overbeaten the egg-whites past the stiff peaks stage, and therefore stressed the proteins too much? In addition to sight and taste, I cook by sound and by smell. At home, I listen to sizzling onions to see if the temperature of my pan is correct. I'm able to smell the progress of a piece of meat in the oven. In a professional kitchen, with the stereo blaring, Eloy making a racket at the sink, and five other things cooking on the burner next to me, I'm unable to discern the smell or the sound. So I'm left with sight, which is really disorienting.

As I raced to finish, I kept trying to convince myself that the soup had international appeal. After all, my friends from Sweden and Singapore and France, and my friends who are Korean-American and the whitest white from Idaho have all loved boscht.

I put 6 bowls for the staff on the pass but no one was coming to get them. Lots of Mexicans I met like their food tibio. Not hot. Not cold. Tepid. When my food is tepid, I send it back. Here, when ordering, you can respond by saying, "dos tres" when asked whether you want your champurrado or your atole de leche caliente o frio. Most of the time your soup comes served dos tres. Finally - when the soup was dos y media - Alina came to fetch the bowls. She wrinkled her nose inquisitively and told me that she's only ever had beets as dessert food - in a salad with pineapple and yogurt, or candied.

Eventually, I felt relieved when the bowls came back empty, and some even asked for seconds and thirds. Since no one could actually remember the word 'borscht', it quickly became knows as Russian energy soup, for its uplifting effect. The borscht became fully adopted and Mexicanized when someone finally busted out the tortillas.

Then the soup was deemed 'rico' and I could finally relax.

Making salsa all day, dancing salsa all night

P1020104, originally uploaded by kitty424.

It's my last month in Oaxaca and I'm living out my idiot dream. I didn't actually think it was going to happen. I kept telling people about my plans - but mostly as a way of practicing the simple future tense in Spanish (voy a tratar encontrar trabajo en un restaurante....blahblahblah) - but didn't think I'd actually do it. Then I got back to Oaxaca and realized that I had nothing to do. And I had told enough people, and that I should actually try to make it happen. Really, how many times during the last four years of doing CAD (still too pretty for it) did I dream about being someone's bitch in the kitchen? Bastante!

After a couple of non-starters (and one run-around that perhaps deserves its own entry), I got a call back from Los Danzantes - an upscale place in the historical center - that agreed to take free labor in exchange for the potential media coverage should this wanna-be writer actually get a story published about the experience.

So I find myself in a kitchen (dad: "I thought three degrees from MIT was a guarantee that you'd never have to wear a hairnet"), on my feet, for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. I'm chopping cebollin, slicing something called xoxo, stuffing flors de calabaza with goat cheese and blanched avocado leaf, rolling out dough for cream cheese and quince marmalade empanadas, boiling the filling for jamaica and quesillo tacos, liquefying pounds of chile peppers for salsa, battering shrimp in coconut, deep-frying strips of tortilla. And I'm loving it. There's something so liberating about turning off your brain and chiffonading cilantro. Of course, the brain is not completely off. It's composing a great coming-of-age novel about my self-actualization. Something along the lines of Eat, Pray, Love. One that doesn't start with a complete emotional breakdown and mostly involves Eating. It ends with business school rather than a a religious awakening. But aaaaaanyway.

I'm one of the oldest people in this kitchen. The head chef, a year out of a culinary institute in Puebla, is 24. The others are even younger. Ricardo is 21 and works weekends when he's not in culinary school. His spiky, gelled hair pokes through his hairnet. Carlos, who speaks the undecipherable, slurred Spanish of Veracruz, dropping most of his S's and R's constantly tells me about my beautiful eyes. All morning we belt along with a station that plays "Vete Ya" by Alacranes Musical about 10 times a day.

It's so completely different from home cooking, where I can dilly dally, drink a glass or three of wine, and my friends (excluding one Danny) will still be impressed if whatever I made does not come out exactly as I had planned it. My parents are worried that I'll "find myself" as a kitchen prep cook, rather than getting this out of my system. I'm loving it right now, but I'm also pretty sure that I'm too pretty for this as well. Taking the long view, an 8 hour day on my feet and without facebook is not for me either.

At night, I'm taking salsa lessons with Ney, the gayest straight guy ever ("It's okay. Tell your boyfriend I'm gay"). Ney teaches salsa full time, and enters (and wins) big time competitions in Mexico. He's an incredible lead. Two nights ago Ney and I went to a dance club after the lesson. The place was almost completely empty. I ordered a beer, and a little later asked the waiter to put on some salsa. He looked confused, but left, and later came back with a bottle of Valentina salsa and a spoon. Tomar, traer, tocar? I guess they sound close...

Other nights, my friend Jorge and I walk around the streets of rainy Oaxaca - sometimes for hours in search of the perfect molotes (little deep fried pockets of spicy potatoey goodness. not unlike Indian samosas). Jorge speaks a perfectly enunciated Spanish, telling stories about how he illegally snuck into the US and lived in Tennessee for a year in a barn with a bunch of other Mexicans, working in a car factory and missing salsa dancing, or about how as a police photographer he would go out to burn fields of marijuana outside of the city.

Jorge is a dance instructor too. He teaches on Thursdays and Fridays at Candela, a popular salsa club in town. Jorge dances a callejero Cubano style - his joyful, carefree, informal street style is contrary to Ney's formal academy line style.

Thursday night are gringa/zocalo boy nights at Candela. It's full of blonde tourists and zocalo boys - burros en primavera who know smooth phrases such as, 'you have beautiful eye' or 'you dance very nice.' On Thursday night, I feel like one of the better dancers at the club. On the weekends, it's a different scene. The dance floor is packed with amazing dancers, and a 6-piece salsa band plays popular dance tunes.

Meaningful conclusion goes here.

Random picture and what I did the last couple of days

México, originally uploaded by kitty424.

(1) Danced salsa daily. Tried to reconcile the formal, choreographed style I'm learning in class with the callejero Cubano style I'm learning from my friend Jorge at La Candela.

(2) Had nieves de Guayabana in front of the Nuestra Señora de la Soledad.

(3) Wrote a review of a shitty new martini bar in town. 300 words and not a single opinion! "Our decor is minimalist". Um, Really? I thought it was "outdated funky office furniture from the dot-com boom".

(4) Bought a SEXY hair net to report to work at Los Danzantes - an upscale Zapotec restaurant in the historical center.

(5) Paid 4 pesos in Mexican equivalent of a toll to the guys with accordions on my walk to town.

(6) Had several (more) amazing moles at La Cathedral. And the best G-ddamn horchata of my life.

Mutt and Hummindbird

Mutt and Hummindbird - SFO v BOS pride!, originally uploaded by kitty424.

Javier: Hell yeah mayng, you gotta let your blog subscribers know about this cool cat Jav you met. Maybe include some of my more palateable quotes.

A random picture and a rumination on being Russian in Oaxaca

México, originally uploaded by kitty424.

A long and convoluted story: Judy's friend Francie turned out to be a goldmine. I'm so glad I called her when I did.

Judy Baumann was one of the first people my parents and I met when we arrived in Lexington back in 1991. As one of the most active members of the community, I'm pretty sure she must have been at the airport to greet us late that night in May. It's so bizarre to me now to think that when we arrived, some 20 people from the Lexington Jewish community came to greet us, dazed after some 48 hours of flight delays and layovers and shocked and terrified to be in a new unknown place where we were going to make a home.

Maybe a month after our arrival, Judy took us on a trip to County Market, a grocery store just down Richmond Road from the Heritage Place apartments that the "kind Jews" - as we soon started to call them - had rented for us and furnished with donated items. If I recall correctly, Judy used to be a nutritionist, and I remember being quite annoyed at her tour of County Market. Mostly I remember how she talked slowly and loudly to my mom, and I was embarrassed that people would overhear her explanations about grades of milk or types of individually wrapped cheese and think that we were dikiye (wild, uncivilized).

Strangely being here in Oaxaca has made me think often about that time. Here, I feel strangely Russian. It must be because I'm constantly meeting new people and answering questions about where I'm from. One of the basic questions you learn to ask and answer is 'de donde eres?' and subsequently 'donde naciste?'  Answering this question has always been complex.  I was born in the Ukraine, moved to Kentucky at the age of 11, moved away to Boston at 18.  My parents no longer live in Kentucky.  I no longer live in Boston.  So there.  

I'm close to the age now that my parents were when they brought me to the US. And because of that, beceause I'm struggling with language, trying to make myself understood, missing most of the jokes, I often think about how my mother must have felt in those early months in a new country. Of course, unlike her, I've come to visit, not to live. Whenever I stumble, chances are the person I'm speaking with speaks much better English than I speak Spanish, and can help me fill in the blank. And anyway, Spanish is so much closer to English than Russian is. But I keep wanting to draw parallels maybe because I need to remind myself that my struggles are insignificant in comparison.

My parents had kept in touch with Judy. Ever the networker, Judy gave me the contact information of her friend who spends summers in Oaxaca.

Francie - who like Judy is chatty and full of life - introduced me to her nephew (by former marriage) Edgardo. When he took me around town, we ran into many of his friends. He would introduce me by saying that I was born in Russia (close enough, anyway...), quickly gloss over the part about how I currently live in the states, and go on to say that soon I'm moving to France after I return from Mexico.

Being Russian in Mexico has much more caché than being a 'gringa'. A Mexican couple started talking to me in a bus ticketing agency in Guanajuato. Strangely, their first question was, 'are you French?'

no.

German?

no.

"Sorry, I'm from the States," I muttered apologetically.

To which they told me that I didn't look like a Gringa. So then I found myself using Edgardo's words to explain that actually I was born in Russia, but will be moving to France soon.

"So, you're European!"

At that point, they gave me the contact information of their 25yo daughter in Paris, and - inexplicably, and mostly because I didn't catch on quickly enough - paid for the difference between the Premium and the Super Deluxe bus so that I could ride into Mexico City in style. (NB: The superdeluxe bus differed in two ways. [uno] It had 3 seats per row instead of 4. [dos] It also made an extra stop in Irapuato, thus tacking an extra luxurious hour onto the journey)

I almost get it. The relationship of Mexico to the United States is tense, complex, resentful. I've heard plenty of angry 'your president...' comments about a guy neither I nor the popular majority of my country elected. And while most people are above taking their frustrations out on a 20-something tourist, they seem almost relieved when I give them another category to put me into. It's not that Mexicans really care that I'm Russian - the days of Marxism and Leninism, and naming your hijos Ivan and your hijas Tatyana are past - but it's that in order to like me, they all want me to be something other than a gringa.

Guelaguetza

Guelaguetza, originally uploaded by kitty424.

I wish I had something good to say about the Guelaguetza. Wait, here's something: it was fascinating to see people really enjoying themselves. It was lovely to see (if not share in) their joy. There.

Now, for how I really feel: Perhaps I should chalk it up to experience, and not go next time the opportunity to attend state-sponsored festivities presents itself, or perhaps I should do a favor to some poor sap of a tourist who will come across this post when making plans to come to Oaxaca and save him/herself $40 and four hours of boredom, sunburn and eardrum damage. The Guelaguetza is celebration of something - a catholicized version of an ancient Zapotec and Mixtec ceremony (1 point for colorful costumes, -1 for no longer sacrificing a virgin who has been fed hallucinogenic mushrooms). The Official Guelaguetza 2k8 took place atop of a hill above Oaxaca City. Leading up to this hill were some arduous stairs made quite entertaining by the vendors lining the sides - makeshift restaurants cooking memelitas, a guy selling fried platanos with condensed milk cooked in a pot of hot oil on a rickety wire mesh set up feet from the throng of passersby, vendors selling necklaces, baby shoes, candies, and a bunch of stuff that neatly fits into the category of "colorful plastic shit". Then the roadway narrowed and the shoving began. The once friendly Oaxaqueños turned quite obnoxious and they elbowed their way forward to the metal detectors. We found our seats and commenced sitting for the next 4 hours to observe a ceremony of repetitive music and poorly choreographed (or perhaps not choreographed at all) dances. The dancers from thirteen (?) different regions of Oaxaca were dressed in distinctive garb of their region - bread baked in a ring on top of sombreros, be-antlered devil masks, feather head dresses two feet tall, fanciful textiles, that kind of stuff - performed dances that each went on for an entire 15-20 minutes each accompanied by tinny, loud repetitive music. The dances consisted mainly of shuffling around and swishing of skirts from side to side. Most of it did not seem to happen in a well-coordinated, choreographed manner. None of the dances had a beginning, a middle, or an end. By the end, I felt like I had seen the same dance 13 times but with different outfits. Following the dances, the dancers would hurl "gifts" of mangos, tortillas, heads of garlic, little bags of rice, sombreros or even clay jars of mezcal into the crowd. This was a welcome distraction to an otherwise mind-numbing experience. At the end, fireworks were set off from behind the stage and right into the crowd. What made these so thrilling is that I couldn't stop thinking about the possibility of an unexploded charge landing on top of my head.

So, dear traveler, if you happened upon this negative post, do what you want with it. My advice is to go to see the procession of the dancers and admire their costumes on Calle Virgil on the Saturday before. Or go to a dinner and a dance show at a restaurant in town. Maybe even walk up the stairs to the stadium for the view and to check out the vendors - preferably sometime in between the morning and the evening shows. But watch out for the hot oil, don't wear flip flops and don't stay for the dancing.

Why Wa-ha-ka rocks. A list.

Week one in Oaxaca, originally uploaded by kitty424.

(1) At 10 PM on a Thursday the zócalo is bustling with Oaxacan families. Little kids, babies in strollers, grandmothers - four generations a family - watching clowns performing, buying empanadas or tuna ices from a street vendor, playing with huge balloons in front of the old church.

(2) The Institute of Graphic Arts had a party this Friday night. Not a publicized, but not a private event. An art gallery in an old, colonial building with a courtyard full of cacti.

(3) Three-wheel food bikes. It's a tricycle! No, it's a vitrine of donuts! No, it's both!

(4) Mango with chili salt and limón.

(5) Boiled corn on a stick with limón and chili salt

(6) Jicama with limón and chili salt.

(7) short Mexican boys with crusty, shiny gelled hair. Sometime when you dance salsa, you end up brushing the tops of their heads with an elbow or a forearm.

(8) Hummingbirds

(9) Art galleries on every corner

(10) The cacti in front of Santo Domingo

(11) Church bells

(12) Mezcál at 9am at the organic market

Why I love soggy McDonald's fries

Oaxaca - week 2, originally uploaded by kitty424.

Two perfect meals came from two most unexpected places. One was a lunch in a tranquil courtyard of a yoga studio, with a shady vine with ripening figs hanging overhead. I drank a cactus, parseley and something else juice, and had a veggie sandwich of cucumber and lettuce on multigrain bread over a good conversation. It felt miles away from noisy Mexico.

Oaxacans need to get over their cheese. I'm over it. Oversalty, it somehow finds its way into everything - tacos, tostadas, salads - and consequently ruins it. This brings me to another rant. Briefly: "chilaquiles" is an entire entree of soggy, sloppy, mushy tortilla chips with salsa and of course Oaxacan cheese on top. This morning this somehow passed for breakfast at the posada. I had to pass, in turn. Now I have a soft spot for some things that others may consider past their prime. Namely, soggy, cold McDonald's fries. This predilection dates back to 1989 when the first McDonald's opened in Moscow. Occasionally my father, or some relative would travel to Moscow, stand in a line that stretched for three blocks and two hours, and return by train to Kiev with an entire #1 meal. (nb: I don't actually recall if the meals were numbered in Moscow. I think they were...) Subsequently, when we got around to having McDonald's in Lexington, Kentucky, the hot, just-assembled burger and fries tasted nowhere near as good as they did after a train ride and an overnight in the fridge. So, to tie this back to the chilaquilles: I admit that two-day-old McDonald's fries is one woman's dirty secret, and she promises to never inflict it upon others. What this woman would like to know is how an entire people comes to regard soggy, sloppy old nachos as an acceptable breakfast food? How?

Forgive the digression. I think I was telling you about good food. Another meal that hit the spot just ended moments ago at an unlikely place called 100% Natural, which looked totally hokey. The over-designed bilingual menu was pages long, espousing a philosophy of all natural foods... something about commencing an act of love when eating. Because of the pouring rain I've been selecting restaurants based solely on their proximity to home. I ordered a soup and some tacos, and wasn't expecting to receive a fragrant broth of tender veggies - celery, squash, potatoes, corn - with a huge lump of avocado on top, or taquitos with a generous side of creamy, spicy guacamole and a salad of spinach, beets, carrots, and chickpeas. This meal unfortunately went undocumented because the camera stayed home to hide from the never-ending rain. I'm over this rain too.

Monte Alban

Week one in Oaxaca, originally uploaded by kitty424.

Monte Alban was bizarre. Lizards crawling on ancient stones of burial mounds and on the stairs leading down the pellota courts. I've seen photos of the ruins in the dry season; the entire plateau looks parched and brown. Right now, during the rainy season, grass is sprouting everywhere, and the entire basin between the structures is a beautiful lettuce green. The sun filtering though the clouds, rolling across the mountains in the distance. The place is full of tourists, but they talk in hushed voices, as to not disturb the gods summoned by the ancient Olmecs who built this city in 500BC or the dead buried among gold and perfuming pots here by the Mixtecs who took over the site after its decline (around 800 AD).

I came with a group, but wandered around by myself, practicing my numbers in Spanish by counting out loud the steps up and down the mounds, contemplating the ages, breathing in the clear air, but mostly just eavesdropping on the conversations of Mexican families, trying to make out familiar words. The drive there and back, up and down the windy roads was terrifying. It revealed a much poorer part of Oaxaca - a shantytown along the bus route.

Colors

Oaxaca - week 2, originally uploaded by kitty424.

Walking around the town, I've been marveling at the three-tone houses here. A house might be painted bright bright blue, with a mustard yellow trim around the windows, and a band of a couple of feet along the bottom. Then if you look closely, you'll notice another color approximating the original blue has been used to paint to about the height of an outstretched arm, as far up as a painter's brush could reach. That line is jagged, revealing the path of a roller. Sherwin-Williams, with its standardized color palette, has not made it to this town. My best guess is that these jagged lines might be a testament to the 2006 riots - the almost matching paint has been used by those who couldn't afford to repaint their entire houses. In other places, like the walls of the Santo Domingo convent, or the sides of the baseball stadium, the particularly incendiary graffiti is simply painted over with splotches of whitewash on top of a neon pink or an orange wall. In lots of places still, the graffiti remains - some places that probably closed their doors during the riots have not reopened and their paint is now peeling. What seems like every few minutes a teenager somewhere sets off fireworks (the Mexicans have lots of fiestas) or a car backfires on the street. I'm jumping less and less at the disconcerting sound.

For the most part, the houses are one or two stories tall and inward facing, centered around an inner courtyard, with only a dead wall facing the street. The wall might have a couple of windows with heavy grating. Sometimes you can peek in and see into a lush, green courtyard full of flowering plants and shady trees. Our posada is like this. The inner courtyard is bursting with flowers. In the middle of the yard is an old VW Beetle. In the garage has a huge cage with some 8 yellow and green miniature parrots. Sometimes after the rain, Bebiana, the owner of this posada, wheels the cage out into the center of the courtyard. The street directly in front is being dug up by construction crews. This is a godsend, as noisy traffic has to turn down a side street instead of passing by the posada. Next to the posada is the Mexican version of Denny's, the restaurant/cafeteria VIPS, with vinyl seating, sterile lighting, and a 10-page menu that includes everything from tlayudas to spaghetti and papas frances.

I'm sitting on the porch, watching the hummingbirds dart between the pink and purple bushes and the tall avocado tree. Somewhere above me is a noisy congress of birds. A church bell is tolling nearby, summoning for the 5:30(?) mass. These same bell has been waking me up at 6am, though today is the first morning I managed to sleep through it. It's not a pretty bell. It might be cracked, as the noise it makes is more of a low twang, like someone beating on a metal jug or a foghorn blaring. The bells elsewhere in town are prettier, higher tones. Somebody told me that the there are some 26 churches in city center. Walking through the main one during services last night did not reveal it packed with Oaxacans. I counted maybe 6 people in all sitting beneath the bling-ed out frescoes.

7,500 feet

The cloud forests of Ixtlan blew my mind. We drove two hours in the rain up windy roads, and into a cloud. The entire time we drove upwards at a high grade, the engine of our van grunting and groaning. You couldn't see very far ahead or off to the side. Occasionally we would pass towns, discernible only because of road signs and a cluster of fruit stands. We'd also pass signs for trucha (trout) followed by a trucha-serving shack clinging to a curva peliagrosa of the of the road, precariously protruding over the edge of the cliff, looking as if the next downpour might wash it off.

We arrived in Ixtlan, a village at 7,000 feet in the Sierra Norte, skipped the promised comida (with a shrug in place of an explanation), donned our rain gear and set off to climb the long set of stairs - past yards full of dogs, chickens, donkeys, and curious children - to the trail head. We first walked through a field of cows, with random cacti sprouting along the path. At 7,500 feet, we entered a forest full of tall deciduous trees, and a muddy ground covered with rotting black leaves. There were ferns everywhere. At 8,000 feet, the tree trunks turned green with fuzzy lichen, and we discovered a number of species of orchids in bloom in weather conditions that were anything but tropical. Higher still, around 9,000 feet, the ground cover turned red with pine needles. The pine trees covered in drooping moss gave the misty forest a sinister, somber look. Among the spooky trees, an occasional flowering bush covered in what looked like orange silly string would lighten the mood.

The forest was also full of beautifully iridescent, but poisonous mushrooms. Every now and then, our guide Ivan would stop us to describe in great detail just how fast and in what manner a certain species of mushroom would kill us.

Gasping for breath, swallowing continuously to make our ears pop, feeling dizzy, we reached 11,000 feet, and climbed a rickety observation tower that afforded views of... absolutely nothing. We were soaking wet, but exhilarated from the hike. Our guide then led us down the gulf side of the mountain in order to show us yet another variety of forest - ground covered in vine, trees wrapped in moss, and temperatures another 10 degrees lower than at the top of the mountain, somewhere in the 40s.

We descended, dined on trout (our tourguides realized they would have a fit on their hands if I didn't get the promised trout), and retired to our cabins. Unfortunately, the cabins had neither heat nor hot water (the firewood provided was too soggy to burn), nor enough blankets to actually keep us from freezing in the night.

The next morning, following a hearty breakfast of huevos, beans and three cups of café con leche, we set off on another hike - a shorter one this time - along the side of a steep hill of a ravine. We hiked through a forest straight out of Dr. Seuss with blooming bromeliads covering every tree. A bromeliad is a tropical plant, of the pineapple family, whose spiny, stiff leaves look like the leafy top of a pineapple. A blooming bromeliad will have a long shoot of red gladiolas-like flowers protruding from the middle. I'm not sure whether they're parasitic or symbiotic, but these plans covered the tress of the forest through which we walked. Every now and again we would stumble upon a bromeliad that had outgrown itself, when its shallow roots grasping the bark of the tree could no longer support its bodyweight and it would tumble onto the path. These crazy plants made the whole forest look like something out of a fairy tale. I imagined that the whimsical alebrijes of Arazola (animals carved from wood and painted in bizarre colors) - two-headed giraffes, purple cats, mermaids with a sow's head - would peek from between the trees at any moment.

Muy típico

A forest straight out of Dr. Seuss

Oaxaca - week 2, originally uploaded by kitty424.

Of those whose need for self-expression far outweighs their G-d-given talent