Free Sunday Activities Help Save Dwindling Budget

Approaching the final 3-4 days of this trip, and running low on disposable funds, I set out yesterday to find free or low-cost activities.

With the large Alameda Central largely closed off for renovations, even hanging out in the park--just three blocks from my hotel--wasn't a viable option.

Imagine my delight, then, when I discovered that the Museo Mural Diego Rivera waived its 19 peso entrance fee in order to welcome a California based musical trio for a free afternoon concert.

http://www.thelandtrio.com/land_trio/Home.html

With a young Mexican composer/guitarist fronting two Iranian Americans on percussion (tabla) and kamancheh, a violin-type instrument played upright and verticle, the Land Trio performed its last concert of their current tour in front of the huge Rivera mural Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park before an attentive audience of around 100 people.

These three excellent young performers played a 75 minute concert with enthusiasm and sensitivity, occasionally inviting another Mexican guest artist who played Mexican guitar.

I paid five pesos (40 cents) for a photo permit in order to practice shooting indoors without flash, but could only manage to get some very mixed results.

I produced slightly better quality by recording six or seven minutes of audio/video of the musicians.

Here is Frommer's take on the Museo Mural Diego Rivera:

http://www.frommers.com/destinations/mexicocity/A24331.html

CNN Reports U.S. & Mexico Mum on Shooting Attack

Back in the DF, I saw a crawl on CNN:  'U.S. Mexico Mum on Attack' but there was no report so I looked  it up online.

See below for the Los Angeles Times report:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/08/mexico-gunmen-attack-us-officials-american-driving-consulate.html

Apparently Mexican federal police are suspected of firing automatic weapons at American diplomats in an SUV traveling on a highway from the Mexico City to Cuernavaca.

This is not the first time in recent years that American diplomats have found themselves under fire from shady Mexican gunman.

Mexican police and military are notorious for harboring rogue elements who moonlight as thugs and gunman for the narco cartels.

Bug Bites Force Hasty Exit From Oaxaca

Usually my on-the-road hotel picks are fine, and I'm fairly well-practiced at finding good accomodations for an excellent value price.

But my second hotel pick in Oaxaca turned out to be a real bite in the neck when I woke one morning with a baseball size swelling on the left side of my face (the violin side).

With another similar bite behind my right ear, I found I wasn't in the mood for much sightseeing.

All I know about the mysterious insect bites is that they were extremely itchy but not mosquito related.  The only insect I could identify in my room was a very small beetle type bug.

With the left side of my face seriously deformed, I found I really wasn't in the mood for any  tourist activities at all, so I beat a hasty exit from Oaxaca on Saturday morning, buying a bus ticket to Mexico City for the seven hour trip back to the capital.

My reasoning was thus:  since I'd already done considerable room shopping in Oaxaca, and having found rooms in general to be a bit overpriced, I decided against searching for yet another dubious 400 peso ($32) room.

Americans 'Wrong About Mexico' Says Travel Blogger

http://everything-everywhere.com/2012/08/26/4-things-americans-get-wrong-about-mexico/#more-14813

Oaxaca from Lonely Planet

I left beautiful San Cristobal on Tuesday and pulled an all night bus to Oaxaca town in the neighboring state of the same name.

With Mexico City now only five hours away by bus, I am near the completion of the loop I started a couple weeks ago when I made my way to Palenque via Veracruz and Villahermosa.

My first impressions here are that while Oaxaca is a nice town, by comparison to San Cristobal it's a bit expensive for lodging.  I'm paying 400 pesos here for something I could get in San Cristobal for less than 200.

And while San Cristobal had dozens of low cost laundry services available, here I've been unable to find any service but dry cleaning!  A minor annoyance perhaps, but clean clothes would be nice. . .

Check out the Lonely Planet's take below:

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/mexico/oaxaca-state/oaxaca

Informative Daytrip to Chamula & Zinacantan

Saturday I joined a guided tour to the nearby native towns of Chamula & Zinacantan, about five miles from San Cristobal.

Chamula, at 80,000 population the bigger of the two, is home to a Mayan tribe called the Sotsil who have their own particular dress, religious customs, and language.  The town features a small market, a municipal government building, and a large central square.

At the center of town is a medium size cathedral where the locals pay polytheistic tribute to a number of gods, spirits, and Catholic saints.

The floor of the cathedral is covered in pine needles as families gather around on their knees in small groups to light candles and worship.

Women wear distinctive black wool skirts and colorful woven tops, and some men wear black wool tunics over jeans or trousers.

The Vatican hierarchy has no direct or indirect control over this unique church but sends a priest once a month to baptize the children.

People were very welcoming and friendly  to our group under English speaking guide Cesar who conducted a highly professional and informative tour.  My group of about a dozen came from Holland, Germany, and France.

Zinacantan--population 30,000--is home to the same Sotsil tribe but its cathedral is much more mainstream.

In this town we visited the home of a family of textile weavers and watched as they worked their loom and prepare tortillas for the next meal.

Cesar was an excellent guide but he was very critical of Western missionaries who come to communities such as these to 'change the culture' as he described it.

For my part, I was happy to have a local act as my own medium to a fascinating minority culture that otherwise would've been a complete mystery to me.

San Cristobal

San Cristobal de las Casas has a lot of the old world colonial charm of Antigua de Guatemala which makes sense--after all, Chiapas state which borders Guatemala is relatively remote from the rest of Mexico.

With its large indigenous population Chiapas has much in common with its Central American neighbor.

Nestled in a valley almost 7000 feet high--nearly as high as Mexico City--this region of Mexico also brings to mind northern Thailand and Laos.

This high valley is surrounded by mountains covered in lush green forest under bright blue skies and fascinatingly surreal cloud formations which can quickly turn ominous as rain can come almost without warning this time of year.

While under the noon day sun temperatures might approach 90 degrees, at night it can turn downright cold.  One morning I was up before dawn and the thermometer was reading below 60.

Here you can meet tourists from all over Europe--I´ve heard German, French, and Italian spoken above all--and there are even some North Americans.  Some tourists travel with children in tow.

San Cristobal features a very well-kept central area with colonial era churches and beautifully restored courtyard buildings.

A large, crowded central market is one of the main attractions here--for tourists and locals alike--and features a colorful array of products, many of them hand-woven textiles made by the Indian women.

Jewelry is also a big local product simce Chiapas is the third largest producer of amber in the world.

Lonely Planet on San Cristobal

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/mexico/tabasco-and-chiapas/san-cristobal-de-las-casas

San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas State

In beautiful San Cristobal de las Casas I have found this year's ¨place that sticks¨.

Though only slightly under a hundred miles south/southeast of Palenque, the bus trip took almost six hours over rugged mountain terrain covered in thick jungle and pine forest.

Anyone who has visited northern Thailand will notice the similarities.  The villages we passed through are some of the poorest in Mexico, inhabited largely by today's descendants of the Maya Indians who live in unfinished wooden houses, some with dirt floors, but surrounded by some of the most beautiful country imaginable.

I'm back in my element here. 

San Cristobal, the main market town in the region, is not actually the capital of Chiapas state--as I mistakenly wrote a few days ago.  (Tuxtla Gutierrez holds that honor.)  But it probably is the most picturesque city for miles around, so accordingly I was up early for the photographer's ¨golden hour¨ between 8.00 and 10.00 to catch the town at its finest with my digital camera.

I'll stay here at least another few days and will continue to post my observations, so check back again in a day or two. . .

Back to the Highlands: Palenque, Chiapas State

I finally have some travel momentum happening after bailing out of a somewhat flooded Veracruz early Friday morning.

Ernesto made its mark in Veracruz but we must have been on the very edges of it.  We had plenty of rain but it was on and off all day, and not continuous.  It was windy as well, but nothing like what you would expect with the fiercest of tropical storms.  I spent much of Thursday taking photos of a rainy downtown Veracruz.

Yesterday I caught a bus first thing in the morning for the trip to Villahermosa, the capital city of Tabasco.  What should have been a six and half hour trip of just over 300 miles stretched to almost ten hours of construction zone jams, stops at police/army checkpoints, and one very long wait at a toll plaza.  Arrgghh!

So I was happy to get a room late yesterday just across the street from Villahermosa's bus station which enabled me to quickly catch another early bus this morning for the two hour ride to Palenque.

Once I got checked into a room here it was only 11.00 a.m. and plenty of time to run out to the ruins and the national park surrounding it.

I spent a happy couple hours roaming the massive site--one of the major Mayan archeological sites in Mexico--shooting photos of the immense structures, dodging the many mostly Mexican tourists, and walking through the very well kept jungle paths leading down from the site to the excellent museum and park exit below.

I think I'm much happier in the highlands than on the seashore.  It's still very hot and humid here, but there are decent airconditioned rooms available for 300-400 pesos--still pretty much within my budget.

So instead of heading deeper into Yucatan--it's still almost 1000 kilometers to Cancun from here--I will continue to make my way further south to San Cristobal, capital of Chiapas state, and Mexico's southernmost state.  The guidebooks say this is a very beautiful region, and if Palenque is any indication, then I'm sold.

In 1994 this region made world headlines when the Zapatistas began their New Year's Day revolt under Subcomandante Marcos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapatista_Army_of_National_Liberation

From San Cristobal I will be able to loop back west and north to Mexico City by way of Oaxaca and other points.

Check back here in a day or two:  I'll try my best to post again from San Cristobal. . .

Trapped By Hurricane Ernesto 2012

My plan had been for today to travel further east to Villahermosa, the last big stop before the Yucatan, but Ernesto has given me pause.

After three days here of temps in the 90s and high humidity, rain finally came late last night here at the very western edge of the storm.

I've just googled the weather outlook and read the latest stories about Ernesto, and see that it touched land near a tourist area, causing the evacuation of some 1300 people staying at a resort.

The land fall caused the storm to lose power, but it's headed back to sea and is expected to hit land again further inland closer to Veracruz state later tonight. 

Last night there were officials in the streets here distributing flyers with emergency service numbers and advice for how to wait out the storm.

Of course it would seem rather foolish to travel any further east at this stage, so I think it's better to sit things out for another day and see how things develop.

This is reminiscent of my experience in southern Guatemala during Tropical Storm Agathe in 2010.

 At that time I was held up for a few days waiting for the rain to stop.  When it was over a five hundred year old bridge in a nearby village was badly damaged by the torrent of water breaking the banks of the local river.


http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ernesto-crosses-yucatan-picks-strength-031706304.html

Mexican Computers Rather Frustrating

I'm back in Mexico nearly a week but haven't posted til now because of typical frustrations with Mexican keyboards and cybercafe computers.

There's also the not insignificant problem that Google has completely redesigned the ¨dashboard¨ of Blogspot, and I find it extremely difficult to navigate my way around.

I guess this settles it:  I'm going to have to get my own laptop!  I can't afford to spend hours relearning to blog on strange machines everywhere I go.

I arrived in Veracruz yesterday following a five hour first class bus trip from the capital.  Located on the Gulf of Mexico about halfway from Mexico City to destinations in the Yucatan, the climate here is hot and humid--a bit of a shock to my system following several temperate days and nights at Mexico City's altitude.

So I'm well on my way to the peninsula but already am leery of the idea of Cancun, where it's likely to be just as hot & humid as here.  I already miss the cooler mountain air.

I'll stay here another day at least to get my bearings and figure it out:  should I continue east where it will be just as muggy as here but where there are also ancient Mayan ruins to check out?

Or should I re-think this journey?  Maybe with an eye on points further south, perhaps to Chiapas state and northern Guatemala?

I'll keep you posted!

Plaza Garibaldi

Visiting Plaza Garibaldi is different when you're with a friend.

As a solo traveler, the musicians gave me barely a second glance, but with a friend in tow they are hoping we are ready to pay cash for some live music.

Sitting at a very reasonably priced restaurant terrace (60 pesos, or $5, for top shelf tequila), we were intermittantly approached by musicians offering a song--for what amounts to a song.

After bargaining a young fellow down to 50 pesos from 70, he said "One moment please" and disappeared to round up his partners--who turned out to be another guitarist and a trumpet-wielding hipster with dark glasses and a smartphone.

It was immediately clear that 50 pesos gets you a trio, at most, which includes a horn player busy texting his buddies between riffs!  This was great fun for me to "give back" after many years of playing similar gigs in Thailand and elsewhere.  The trumpet player reminded me of several ex-colleagues of mine, lol. . .

Later an older, more decrepit pair of singing guitarists attempted to entice us with the old, worn out cliches "La Cucaracha" and "Besame Mucho".

"No! but no, no Besame Mucho, no. . ." we protested.

But if we wanted something better, it was going to cost us. . .50 pesos!  "De accuerdo" we agreed, and the duo gave us fairly decent rendition of we don't what, but it was a beautiful song, and everyone was satisfied with the transaction.

Voladores de Papantla

According to Jim Johnston's good Mexico City walking guide, "If you are lucky you will catch" a performance of the Voladores de Papantla just outside the Anthropology Museum.

Turns out our luck was good as we turned up just in time for the noon spectacle.

Five men, costumed in the clothing of the ancient Totonac people of Vera Cruz, climb to the top of a 75 foot pole where four of them tie ropes to their feet and revolve around the pole as they slowly descend to the ground while the fifth man plays the flute and dances on top!

Johnston informs us that this show is a ritual "offering to the fertility god Xipe Totec".

Since these guys perform this dangerous feat for a living, we were only too happy to donate to the hat.

Museo Nacional de Antropologia

Om Thursday we made our way to the massive Chapultec Park and to the equally massive Anthropology Museum.

For less than $5 the visitor has access to 12 large salas on the ground floor with corresponding rooms on the second floor and even more in the basement.  Each sala is devoted to a particular region and/or indigenous people and/or period of history in Mexico.

We managed to cover only three salas (Aztec, Oaxaca, Gulf Coast) in two hours.  Even that was a bit overwhelming.

These rooms are filled with thousands of pieces from the tiny to the truly gigantic, and made from just about any material that was available during those times.

Household items, religious objects, weaponry, and jewelry seemed to predominate the displays no matter what period or people.  Jade, gold, bone, obsidian, alabaster, crystal, and shell comprised some of the more durable material.

My favorites tended to be the smaller, intricately carved figurines and jewelry pieces which include some fantastic gold items and even some coinage.

The cabeza colosal (Big Head) was a major attraction in the Gulf Coast hall, but it competed with other equally gargantuan stone pieces rising 20 feet high.

Befitting a culture that places so much importance on death, there also were some carefully arranged tomb displays, one of which featured the artifacts of child sacrifice victims.

The Double House in San Angel

Located even further away from the Centro than the Blue House, the museum of the Studios of Diego y Frida is deep in the tony San Angel neighborhood.  This is the "double house", made famous in the film Frida, two separate buildings connected by a roof top walkway.

Both house are rather small but three stories high.

At first we tought the admission charge, at 12 pesos per person ($1), was a great value until we discovered that Frida's house--also painted deep sea blue--was closed for renovations.

But Diego's studio was worth the long journey anyway.  Wide and spacious and blessed with windows covering about one third of the wall area, this artist's workplace is chocked full of his tools of the trade and has plenty of seating for Diego's many visitors.  Other rooms include a bedroom and a study, and featured sketches and other pieces by the artist.  This was quite obviously a wonderful place to work.

Inside the compound and surrounding it were young local art students at work sketching and painting this quirky and intimate site.

Following a walk back to Plaza San Jacinto--the center of San Angel--we found a nice menu del dia for about 60 pesos each ($5).

La Casa Azul

It's been a jam packed few days in Mexico City.  I've met K, a friend and former travel partner of many years, and we have rooms in the Hotel Fleming, a centrally located abode and an excellent value at around $35 for a single and private bath.

This K's first time in the DF, so I've acted as sort of an unofficial guide to getting around to points of interest of her choosing.

On Tuesday we immediately hit the metro for the trek out to Coyoacan to check out Frida Kahlo's Blue House (La Casa Azul).  Unfortunately the museum hadn't even opened by the time we arrived at 11.00.  A visibly annoyed local woman told us "the guy said he would open the door in a few minutes, but they are supposed to open at 10.00!"

We decided to kill time by going to the Trotsky Museum--my second visit in less than a year.

By noon not only was the Blue House open:  it also was very crowded with Europeans, North Americans and locals.  This is the house where Frida grew up in the 1910s, and where, in 1954, she died in her bed.

The museum has preserved many of the household rooms including the large kitchen, some bedrooms, studies, and sitting rooms.

Other rooms are devoted to galleries that feature Frida's works, other pieces she was inspired by, and pictures by some of her contemporaries such as Paul Klee.

One highlight of the Blue House is the massive garden which feature stone masks of "the dead"--a subject of lifelong interest to Frida--and life size paper mache models of Frida and husband Diego Rivera as skeletons!

Digital photo loops help complete a portrait of Mexico's "odd couple" as the vivacious core of a circle of friends which included many international luminaries of the 1930s--1950s.

Back in Mexico City

I'm back in el defe for a winter visit, so check back for more news.

The weather here is very California-like with temperatures of 72 high and 49 low, though it is overcast today and looks like it might rain. . .