Change of plans!

Exciting news: The couple we met on the bus, Liz and George, do indeed have an extra room at the B&B where they are staying in Patzcuaro and have invited us to come there tomorrow. We leave in the morning. We still want to see more of Morelia, so we expect to come back after the festivities (and the paid reservation expires) to explore a bit more.

Also, there were belly dancers at the bar we went to tonight with our roommate, Rhonda.

Also, we only saw two women dressed as Catrinas, but they were pretty great.

Morelia: Day 1 (there is some good stuff in here, so even if you don't feel like reading the whole thing, head down the bold part)

Our bus to Morelia left Gto at 6:50. I took Dramamine, popped in my headphones, and got a good morning's sleep on the way here, which was good because I didn't sleep well last night between the partying students at some nearby bar and my coughing. I did get to see a bit of the ride, including this beautiful lake that the highway bisects -- it was perfectly calm, a crystal mirror of the mountains and hills around it. Bus movies: Beverly Hills Chihuahua and The Bucket List.

Towards the end of the bus ride, Peter chatted with a middle-aged American couple, Liz and George, and they ended up sort of inviting us to come to Patzcuaro! It turns out their friends who were supposed to use the second room in the B&B where they are staying could not come. There might be some friends from Gto coming, but they didn't think so. They would like the room to get used, so they offered it to us. We learned more about their lives: they have a house in Gto that they visit from their home in Oregon. We told them about our trip and how we might end up living in Gto. The woman said they might know of job opportunities -- she knew of one now, taking care of two elderly women in the evenings, and they wanted an English speaker. Patzcuaro was our real destination for Day of the Dead, but we had ended up booking the hostel in nearby Morelia because accommodation in Patzcuaro were full to expensive. We wait to hear from them about their friends, but are hopeful to get a free place to stay in Patzcuaro. Even if we do, we would return to see more of Morelia, most likely.

Our hostel, in spite of its absurd name (Tequila Sunset Hostel) is very pretty. It is in the center of town too, so that's nice.

Morelia is a beautiful colonial city. Much larger than Gto (600,000 as opposed to Gto's 70,000), it feels a bit more like Oaxaca to me with streets on a grid, but already I can sense that it's a wealthier city (Oaxaca and Chiapas are the poorest states).

We ate breakfast at the Jardin de las Rosas, a lovely little square. Morelia, and its home state of Michoacan are also known for being a stop on the Monarch route. They arrive mid-November, are not quite here, but during breakfast I spotted several other types of butterflies, including two large black and yellow ones (not swallowtails). I think I like this town.

We had heard from our new roommate, Ronda, that Morelia's day of the dead festivities were starting today, and we glimpsed people walking by carrying structures for altars covered in marigolds. I saw some papel picado (cut paper) hanging from the ceiling of the Museo del Estado and suggested we peek in there. Turns out they were having a concert in the courtyard: A good classical guitarist who sang traditional Latino folk songs, ending with one familiar to me, La Llorona. From there we were ushered in to another courtyard where they had some paper mache "Catrinas" on display and where they brought out treats for everyone: small sugar skulls, long, thin cookies called "huesitos" or "little bones", and Guava juice. I commented to Peter that I felt like we had crashed a party, but that was nothing compared to what was to come.

We walked over to the main plaza, La Plaza de Armas, where we saw more altars being set up, on the way passing the school of fine arts (peeked in to see about a brochure but were disappointed in the student work we saw, so didn't bother). The hall of justice had a beautiful dia de muertos set up in the courtyard and I also got to see the mural there of Morelos (the city's namesake) by Calderon.

Continuing our walk, I yet again stopped Peter to pull him in to see more altars -- today seems to be the day to build them. This time, I thought we were going into a University building, where students were making altars all around two large courtyards and in the connecting hallways. In the second courtyard, a girl approached us and tried out her English. She asked where we are from, and we asked her how it was decided who did which altar (it was classes, well groups, and it was a contest). Peter asked her what she was studying there and she struggled to translate to English, but finally made clear that she's a Junior. "Wait, this is a high school?" "Yes. Do you want to see the one I worked on?" Peter and I froze for a second and then said, "Yes" After she showed us her group's altar, a boy approached us in Spanish and asked if we would like to see his group's altar. Sure! So he lead us to another side of the courtyard where he and his friends gave us a fantastic explanation of their altar: the history of the people they were honoring (Morelos and a woman who, they explained, was also prominent in the revolution); the significance of lake Patzcuaro, which was featured, and the symbol of the fish (the fishing history of Michoacan is important for the whole country); and all the different parts of the altar. At some point, it seemed like they maybe thought we were judges, their explanations were so careful and complete -- also three different boys explained to us (with some repetition, but not entirely), much like a group presentation. I was thiking, "I want to teach students like this!" After this group, which went on a while, I said, "Peter, I think we'd better get out of here before someone else thinks we're judges." Peter said, "I think we'd better go look at the next one!" We looked at a few more, snapped pictures, and saw very few teachers. The few we did see looked at us a little suspiciously but didn't say anything (Teacher in me says, "What? We endangered your school by coming on! Kick us out!"). We both felt like telling the teachers what wonderful students they had there, but instead we just left, laughing all the way down the street.

From there to the Sweets Market, though so far we haven't tasted many candies here that we like, so we didn't buy any. I want to try the preserved key limes stuffed with coconut but another day.

Back to the hostel to catch up on more sleep. Tonight there is supposed to be a parade of "living Catrinas" (I imagine people in costume) and I think a band is playing in the Plaza's bandstand.

Final destination analysis: Hard to say. Morelia is so vibrant (of course, it's festival time). The two cities are very different in feel -- there are more cars here, and more of a city vibe. I have loved stumbling into so much going on today, but who is to say that's the normal city when it is not festival? If we go to Patzcuaro to stay tomorrow, we would still come back to spend some non-festival time in Morelia and see its sights. There are also many outlying towns around Lake Patzcuaro and maybe around Morelia to visit.

Pictures of all of this to come eventually...

The Tunnels of Guanajuato

We have been meaning to post about the tunnels. See, much of the city is hard to cross by car, so what they did was take the rivers that ran under the city and rerouted them (probably not for the roads but before that, for water and whatnot), and then turned the dry river caverns into streets. So, jump in a taxi on one side of town and ask to go to the other, and down into a tunnel you go. The tunnels intersect with varying rules of right of way ("uno y uno" is my favorite sign). Tonight, we took a taxi home from Studio Festi. He said something about the tunnels and I said, "Yes, you can let us off outside the Teatro Cervantes. That's fine." He said something else that I didn't quite until we arrived. We pulled up, inside a tunnel, to a foot passage with a sign that pointed to the Museo Iconographico de Cervantes and the Templo de San Francisco, our neighbors. We emerged from the stairs, similar to coming out of a subway station, only closer to the surface, and recognized our square -- I don't think I've ever noticed the stairs there before! "Hey, that's where we live!"

Studio Festi

Again to the big area near the entrance to town, again for a spectacular piece of entertainment. This time from a group from Italy whose show was loosely about the 400th anniversary of Galileo's telescope and "how it influenced, for better or for worse, what it means to be human." What we saw was:
lots of harness trapeze with film showing behind them
children on trapeze! so cute. I think they were supposed to represent Columbus and Da Vinci, and then there was one other
ballerinas with headlamps on
a giant balloon of the moon with a face, and dangling from it a woman on trapeze, which moved through the crowd
A woman in a huge bowl of water
A woman in a giant clam shell

My favorite was a duet dance in which the woman was harnessed to the trapeze and the man wasn't. She lifted him a few times. Where much of the show lacked in strong choreography, this was a beautiful dance and neat use of the trapeze.

Not as spectactular or polished as Pan Optikum, but pretty in its art and very Italian looking.

Diego Rivera Museum

Diego Rivera was born in Guanajuato, but his family moved to Mexico City when he was small. They turned his house into a museum, so we went.
The first floor has furniture "typical of the time." The third and fourth floors have temporary exhibits.
The second floor was where they have early works by Rivera. It was interesting to search for his later work in these as he went through art school painting in different traditional styles. One that stood out to me was a painting he did at 20 in the impressionist style of Monet. It was from the back side of Notre Dame -- a little less elegant than those of Monet, and it featured in the foreground some small mechanical cranes and building materials. I don't know when Rivera's attention turned to Marxism and industrialism, but this seemed like a Marxist commentary on Monet. In his murals, you also see the glorification of industrialism as was popular in Marxism at the time.

Cervantes and Guanajuato

Cervantes never came to Guanajuato. Yet, this is a city obsessed with the author. To a large degree, it's a tourist attraction -- the Cervantino certainly put Guanajuato on the map and brings in about 50,000 people each year. However, yesterday we visited the Museo Iconografico del Quijote, full of paintings and statues of Don Quijote, Sancho Panza, Dulcinea, Rosinante, and plenty of windmills and dragons; even a cross stitch of the iconic man of La Mancha. To me, this museum, while augmenting the tourism, also takes Gto's fascination with Cervantes over into obsession. I am tossing around some thoughts that compare Don Quijote's fantasies with Gto's -- I am not sure the comparison works, but there is something there. It is certainly interesting that Guanajuato turned to Don Quijote to transform its future from anonymity to something fantastic and exciting.
The city started the Cervantino festival in the 1950s, when student groups at the University would put on scenes from the book. Most of the events now are unrelated to Don Quijote, but you see statues of him and his author throughout town, as well as a guy dressed up as him, and t-shirts galore.

El Pipila

Guanajuato has a funicular! We took it up the hill today to the statue of El Pipila. According to our Lonely Planet, it honors the guy who set fire to the Alhondiga gates on Sept. 28, 1810, enabling Hidalgo's forces to win the first victory of the independence movement. At the base it says, "Aun hay otras Alhondigas por incendiar" ("There are still other Alhondigas to burn"). Love it. Throughout our time here, we have glimpsed El Pipila up on the hill -- at night he's lit up. Plus, it's fun to say (there should be an accent on the first syllable, but I can't get blogger to do that formatting).

Pictures

We have uploaded most of our pictures so far to Picasa. Find them here.

Las Pestanas

I am guessing that it is primarily for the festival that the streets are full in the evenings of people selling light-up horns and mickey mouse ears, fake mustaches and beards, sometimes glasses with funny rims and, yes, fake eyelashes. They are made of black paper and have a band of glittery paper across the top that ends up looking like glittery eye-shadow. They cost 10 pesos (70 cents) and the vendor will apply them for you. The last two nights I have bought them: silver, then pink, and last night Peter drew some laughs and looks because he got some, too: orange.

...in which Peter locks Juliet in the bathroom

We came back to the hostel last night and Peter was trying to show me how to lock the bathroom door. Once successful, he went downstairs to use the bathroom there...for a while. I finished my business and unlocked the door, only to find it was stuck. Really, really stuck. For some reason, some of the bathroom doors here have slide latches on both the inside and outside. Why would you want to lock the bathroom from the outside? I'm not sure, though for some of them, that's all that keeps the door shut. I quickly realized what had happened -- when Peter was telling me what to do, he had locked the outer lock absentmindedly.

I took the opportunity to stretch -- my legs, hips, and back have been aching from the steps, the cobble-street walking, etc. I listened for the sound of Peter coming up the stairs, but after a while I worried that I missed him. I called out to him and heard him call back from downstairs. I told him he'd locked me in so he wouldn't worry it was anything scary or urgent. When he was ready, he came up and unlocked the outer lock. He had thought the two were connected on one slider, so I'd be able to open it from inside.

Pan Optikum

Yesterday went from being fairly uneventful (it was Sunday, so many things were closed, plus I have come down with a vicious cold so we took it easy) to being pretty spectacular. During the day, we lingered in cafes and watched some street performers. The clowns alternate through two sides of the Plaza de la Paz and mostly we don't watch, in part because Peter can't understand anything they say, and in part because I can't understand much, but mostly it seems to involve bringing audience members into the "stage" and asking them to do silly things.
However, we did stop and wait when we saw the group of people decked out in medieval armor (made of pleather and machetes altered into swords) getting ready to go on. They did stage combat, with varying degrees of talent. There were small kids in costume also, though they didn't fight -- they were the sword boys and girls (much like bat boys and girls, their jobs were to retrieve the swords at the end of the fights and return them to the next fighters) and also collected money from the audience in a skull shaped chalice. The two men who seemed to be the most experience were great -- fast and without the obvious aiming for the swords or looking where they were going to strike.
From there to another square, Plaza de San Fernando, where we lingered at an outside table at a cafe waiting for whatever was next at the temporary stage there. Turned out it was going to be something we had seen the day before -- people covered in white make-up doing some avant-garde dance that was beyond our experience to appreciate. We had overheard a guy earlier explaining to his friends that it was an art form that emerged in Japan after the atom bombs and as a reaction. Once we realized it was going to be a repeat performance, we left to come back to the hostel. I took sudafed in the hopes that I would feel well enough to go to a 10pm show across town. I didn't think we would make it, but then we described it to one of our new roommates, Greta from Germany and she decided she would go, so we mustered the energy to join her.
I'm going to let Peter explain what we saw:

The show was an extravagant commentary on the sport of soccer. It was almost entirely in Spanish, but for the most part it was very easy to understand. The soccer star, who loves the game becomes disillusioned with the rampant commercialism of the sport and quits. The press and the soccer club itself blasts him for it and his adoring fan turns from idolizing him to reviling him. It also brought up the idea that the spectacle was beginning to overshadow the sport or at least that was my take on it. Given my difficulty understanding the finer points of the critique, it was easy enough just to focus on the staging and performance of the show itself, which was the most amazing part. The piece was performed in an open space near the entrance to Guanajuato. There were four movable stages, which moved through the audience throughout the show. The floors of the stages were about at head-height and were pushed through the crowd by men in soccer uniforms. The first stage was for the soccer star. His stage was the smallest and was mostly made up of a large moving floor, like a treadmill, so he was forced to walk throughout the entire show. The motion of his stage and his motion on his stage made for some powerful moments of reflection, surprise and struggle. The three other stages were also mobile, moving through the crowd separately and coming together to form a single large performance space. They seemed like they were made from theater lighting scaffolding and so in addition to being stages for walking they also were able to incorporate some aerial performance as well. Also, they had plastic screens which could be raised, for projections of images and shadows. When we arrived people were dancing on the stages beneath other performers in harnesses which allowed them to spin and flip completely around casting shadows on the screens. The dance seemed to incorporate motions from soccer players, referees and fans. Since the whole performance was done in an open space, actors would leave their stage only to show up on an entirely different place, sometimes across the field. At one point, the news commentator character appears on the roof of a nearby building, spewing invective at the soccer star who has decided to quit the game and "build a Japanese rock garden and wait until he knows what there is to know." Also fireworks were used throughout the show, sometimes as decoration and at others to bring your attention from one side of the show-field to the other. The two last parts of the show were certainly the most amazing. In one, the three stages had come together at one end of the field, where the soccer club owner, the fan, and the media agent were talking about (or so I think) stepping up the showiness and spectacle of the game --build the perfect players, the perfect team, the perfect club, by removing the human element. The president was in a suit that was filling with air, the fan was on some kind of bungee cord contraption and was trying to climb the poles on the stage with a flaming ball counterbalanced behind him, and the media guy was... um talking or something. As the level of frenzy increased, the president was lifted onto a trapeze, the fan had fallen down onto the stage and was jumping from platform to platform as fire sprung up from below the floor, and the media guy (in one of the harnesses from earlier) seemed to be walking up the walls and then onto the ceiling of his stage area while fireworks shot from the helmet he was wearing. Certainly a spectacle.

Then, at the other end of the field, the soccer star had appeared in a man-sized hamster wheel on a tower about 30 feet off the ground. Through various scenes, he was running or spinning the wheel, while giant flaming spheres swung behind him. In the finale, the three chorus women were hung in harnesses in a framework attached to the wheel, so they spun and pinwheeled around the spinning wheel as fireworks shot up behind them, sometimes from just behind them on the contraption. The finale fireworks show was comparable to one that you might see a small city put on for the Fourth of July, but happening in quick time. It seemed to keep going and going... Curtains of sparks, bursting flowers, spinners, and fountains. It was just amazing.

As Juliet said, we were very tired and almost didn't go out. We're both so glad we did. I wasn't really expecting all that much from the show, but thought it might be fun. Instead it was one of those smashingly over-the-top experiences that raises the bar for crazy things people do in the name of art. Thanks Cervantino, you blew my mind.

Back to Juliet: One thing I want to remember was that, as the fireworks smoke cleared, I looked up to the sky and saw what I thought were bits of ash swirling and then realized they were white birds circling way above -- the fireworks must have disturbed. They didn't seem like night birds. I asked our German roommate about the themes of the show, but she said she didn't understand what they were trying to say, though she had understood all the Spanish and German of the show.

Nyquil sleep for Juliet and earplugs for both of us, but this morning finds me (J) full of cotton in my head and considering crawling back into bed. It's times like this when a private room would be nice. It's Monday, so the museums are closed. I'm off to bed and Peter is off to a Papeleria to get a white pencil -- we got him a colored pencil set yesterday with some artist pencils, but that store didn't have white.

On the other hand...

Some nice things:

• Our roommates at the last hostel were adorable: a large group of students from a university in Mexico City, they were here making a documentary film called "The 50 Faces of Cervantino." Goofy, sweet, and friendly. Some of them came in at about 3am, and were a bit noisy, but it didn't really matter. I thought they were referring to us when they kept shushing each other to not wake the "novios" but this morning we discovered that some of them had arrived earlier and shared beds -- probably they were the "novios."
• The guys at that hostel carried our large wheely suitcases down the stairs on their backs for us to the taxi. Phew! Peter and I managed to use the on-the-back technique to get them up the stairs of our new hostel.
• The new hostel is not nearly as nice as the old one, but at least it's right in the center and the women who work here are really nice (I think they might be a couple). Plus, bagels? Que padre!
• One abundant type of street food I'm looking forward to trying are corn chips in the shape of little bowls with fillings like beans, cheese, salsa.
• While we waited for the hostel folks to show up (see previous entry), we bought some churros from a guy who was walking around shouting, "Churros! They don't make you fat...at least until you eat them!"
• Whereas I never really got the internet to work at the last hostel, this one works perfectly. Hence, the blog.
  

Minor Annoyances

• Listening (right now) to these three American college students talking about dorm life, and anything else -- just a bit obnoxious. Trying to remember I was them when I was in Spain.
• The guy in our hostel at breakfast this morning from SF who was so long-winded and boring. Peter was lucky not to understand his Spanish as he explained in great detail to the French girls next to us how many times he has been to France without going to Paris -- including all the train stops. Then, he kind of free associated about Mexico and SF with us -- not really sure what he was trying to say, but he also described various visits to Mexico.
  
• Time changed today and we didn't know it, but it wasn't really that bad -- we waited in the square outside our new hostel with our baggage until someone showed up to check out and in (it being Sunday made a difference because the Bagel Cafe attached to this hostel was not open early). It explained why Peter's ipod said one time and the clock in the old hostel said another.
  
• Last night's dinner, at a Spanish restaurant recommended in Lonely Planet, was pretty disappointing.

The Journey Here

The good news is that, with the time change, the first leg of the flight was only 3 hours. We each slept a little, but not well. We were two of maybe three or four non-Mexican nationals on the flight. One flight attendant remarked on it, “Going on vacations? We don’t see many Americans on this flight. Most just go to the beaches. Well the beaches are nice, too.”

Arriving in our stop in Zacatecas, we disembarked to go through immigration. Two employees handed out another form to fill out, this one only in Spanish. It was something I was used to seeing, though, after visiting baby Eitan in the hospital various times: Are you experiencing any of these symptoms: fever, cough, aching joints, etc. I helped an American woman on her way to San Miguel with the Spanish. Then we all herded up in front of two men, one who gathered our forms and the other who, I do not kid, taking each person’s temperature! He had an instant read ear thermometer and disinfectant wipes. He then reported the temperature to the man who collected the forms who wrote it on the form. Peter and I both had 34.2C. I don’t think I saw anyone get stopped based on their temperature, but I wonder what they do if you have a fever?

Taxi to Guanajuato, where we were dropped off many stairs up from our hostel (Gto is made up of many callejones, or alleys, many of them stairs because it is also built into a basin). The driver helped us with our baggage (I had essentially insisted that he call the hostel for directions to get to the street above the hostel rather than climb the 156 steps from below) and a hotel employee met us and helped also – wheeled suitcases are useless in this kind of situation. (Peter suspects that the combination of heavy bags and all those step would have been our doom. DOOM!)

We were welcomed in to breakfast, where the cook (perhaps owner?) gave us gorgeous plates of fruit and mugs of café de olla (coffee brewed in a ceramic pot with spices and often orange peel), and then made us chilequiles. Delicioso. We climbed up some more stairs to our shared dorm room, and were nearly falling over with exhaustion when Peter couldn’t find his Ipod touch. We retraced our steps and I went downstairs to call the taxi company while he walked up all the steps again to look around where we got out. The taxi driver found it and we paid for it to ride the taxi back to our hotel. Finally, some sleep.

Final destination analysis: Sheesh, these stairs! Also, a guy from Spain who was at breakfast said that last winter in Gto was cold and we should consider someplace warmer, maybe a beach. The different colored houses up on the hills are pretty. Lugging your suitcases around always makes for a bad first impression and we have not been to the center at all yet.

Random bits:
• Ran into a former student, Ras, who works at Oakland airport.
• Enjoyed counting the hats on some of the men on the flight – best way to transport your cowboy hat and your giant wool felt mariachi sombrero is to stack them up and wear or carry them.
• One woman at breakfast who was leaving today grew up in San Leandro.
• The view from our hotel includes a baseball diamond.

Peter’s addendum: After sleeping the morning away, we walked down the 156 steps and a mile or so into the town center. Narrow sidewalks line cobblestone streets. Old and sometimes nearly crumbling walls rose up on either side, stone houses lining the tops. I believe the streets here were built in old riverbeds. Including underground, but more on that in a moment. Guanajuato, though infested with Peter’s natural enemies (stairs), is charming. Pedestrian streets lined with shops open up onto plazas and gorgeous buildings. The Centro is modestly sized. Guanajuato is not a large town, with somewhere around 70,000 people. The sidewalks are packed with people in town for the Cervantino. There were street musicians selling tickets for musical tours of the town. We ate dinner in a coffee house/restaurant called Truca 7, which is also the address of the establishment. We had tortilla soup, Juliet had flautas and I had enchiladas in a chocolatey mole sauce. The soup was one of the best tortilla soups we’ve tasted. The broth was dark and rich and the tortillas were nice and crispy. The mole was pretty good, but had a burnt flavor that wasn’t too exciting. Juliet seemed pleased with hers. A three-dollar taxi ride up to our hostel completed Day One of our trip.

What made this evening seem like an adventure:

• Sat down at the edge of the town center to get our bearings. While we were there, 5 or 6 men and women walked by in a line, dressed in old suits or traveling clothes, all carrying suitcases in the same hands. We looked at them, looked at each other, and decided to follow them. Turns out we weren’t the only ones – they had a small crowd trailing them, though nobody seemed to know where they were going. We only got a few feet – they headed into a house. Some of the people ahead of us called out to them, but nobody went in. One woman near me said in Spanish, “What do we do now?” and a young man said, looking at us, “Now we’re all tourists.” The nearby police were also interested in the phenomenon: “Artists?”

• Stopped in a Paleteria (popsicle shop). Of the flavors listed on the poster, there were two I didn’t understand: Grosella and Zapote. The man started pointing out different flavors in the case, and in the end, Peter decided on Grosella and I decided to try Zapote. After we had them in hand, we asked what they were. The man said Grosella is like raspberries. Zapotes, he said, are a large black fruit that grows on a tree. Later, I looked them up in my dictionary, but only found grosella: red currant. Just now looked up zapote and found the picture above -- I have seen that before, maybe even tried it -- it is big -- maybe 9 inches top to bottom?

• One town square had clowns performing at either end, with a whole row of living statues nearby.

• The streets were completely packed with revelers. We are too exhausted to truly partake tonight, but maybe tomorrow.

• As we rode back to the hostel, lightning started and now it’s a full storm with some awesome thunder.

Final destination analysis, part 2: Ok, the center is beautiful, vibrant, very walkable. I could live there if I don’t have to climb the stairs too much.

The Final Push

Thanks to some very helpful friends and our moms, we got our house packed up. Anne says we have been charmed in how things have fallen into place: we got a great tenant, rented my car, and, the day we were leaving, we got notice that Peter’s unemployment went through. After squishing our nieces and a very sleepy Joshua, off we ran to our redeye flight from Oakland to Leon/Guanajuato via Zacatecas.

The Plan

Go to Mexico. Take time off and time together. Ride out some of this economy stuff in a land where our dollar goes farther. Eat tacos. Travel for the first month or so, then settle down for a while in one place. Guanajuato? Morelia? The beach? Cast off the bowlines. 6 months? 7? 8? Set adrift. Luna de miel fantastica.