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.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Guelaguetza
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Why Wa-ha-ka rocks. A list.
(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
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
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
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.
Monday, July 14, 2008
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.
