Sunday, January 01, 2006
Buses, hostels, and markets—oh my!
Just got back from my winter travels, a bit worn down and definitely not ready to get back to teaching on Tuesday.
ARANDAS (I)
The last day of school before Christmas break is fabulous for students. They get gifts from their schools and have a big party. The kids at my school had piñatas and games, and a taco stand came to the school and made lovely tacos and gringas (quesadillas with meat) all day long. The teachers’ posada was the following day. We had a lovely catered breakfast, followed by games and a gift exchange where we found out who our amigos secretos were. I got a pair of warm gloves that I doubt I will use here in Mexico but which will probably come in handy should I return to the icy North. The school also gave us gift bags, each containing a Christmas bonus, a small gift (lacy underwear for the women!), and lollipops. It was a nice posada, but I always wonder why they choose the ranch as a venue for meetings because we end up under the ramada where it’s freezing cold in the shade.
Luis’ flight was cancelled, so he couldn’t get to Arandas until Sunday. We ate lots of tacos, danced, read some silly children’s books that he’d brought from the States for me (George and Martha rule!), drank tequila, shopped at the market, and napped a lot. We went to Guadalajara Tuesday and stayed with his sister.
ZIHUATANEJO
The next morning I left for Zihuatanejo, where Mika and Meabh were. The bus to this beach town/resort on the Guerrero coast took ten hours, and I arrived in the evening. First thing was first—I had to have lunch/dinner. The taxi driver took me to a taco bar, the likes of which I had never seen before. I ordered three big tacos before realizing that all the stuff at the buffet was included. Of course I stuffed myself. Even the small places have salads and things that you can have along with your tacos—a Guerrero specialty? After dinner, I walked to the center to look for a hostel. I booked a room for three at a nice place (Angela’s Hostel) and met up with Meabh and Mika, who had been at another beach all day. The next day we had a very nice breakfast at a restaurant called La Sirena Gorda (“The Fat Mermaid”), decorated with paintings of fat mermaids, of course. Then we went shopping, because Mika was leaving that night and had to get gifts for her family. In the markets and stalls there was a ton of silver jewelry from Taxco, and I ended up buying a good share of it, unfortunately for my wallet. Having finished our shopping, tired from hearing vendors pushing their goods with, “Ladies, something for your boyfriend?” and “Almost free!” we went to the beach and swam in the big bay. Then we had a big seafood lunch at a palapa restaurant, and prepared to send Mika off at the bus station, where Meabh and I were planning to ask about buses the next day.
The bus station trip turned out to be a drawn-out drama. The bus to Puerto Vallarta was full, so Mika had to find another way to get there before her flight out the next day. After about four hours of running around and waiting, Mika got on a bus to Guadalajara, and Meabh and I headed back to the hostel.
That night I felt sick. I had what I suppose was terrible heartburn, though I had never wanted to throw up with heartburn before. The next morning it was Meabh’s turn to be sick. It was probably the tacos we’d had near the bus station. We decided not to take the morning bus to Puerto Escondido as planned. We’d been wavering on where to go from Zihua, since we wanted to go to the city of Oaxaca but weren’t able to take a direct bus, and had decided to just go the beach in Oaxaca state instead. Our stomachs, however, made the decision for us, and we left that night for Mexico City, after recovering a bit and opting for comfortable luxury buses with restrooms aboard (not an option to Puerto Escondido).
OAXACA
Arriving in Mexico City the next morning, we bought our tickets to Oaxaca but had several hours to spare before the next available bus. We went to the trendy, hippie neighborhood of Coyoacan and remembered that it was still freaking early in the morning. Nothing was open except for the chain restaurant Sanborns, so we spent a couple hours having breakfast there and using its bathrooms to freshen up. The bus to Oaxaca took six hours. We arrived during the early evening and settled into the cleanest hostel I have ever stayed in—Casa Paulina (white tiles, fountains, a garden, a rooftop lounge, huge complimentary breakfast, big lockers in the dorm rooms, and hot water in its numerous showers—the opposite of the awful place where Kristin and I had stayed in Guanajuato). It was Christmas Eve, so we went to the center of town, the Zócalo, and had dinner. We watched a big Christmas parade and went to midnight mass in the cathedral (given by the bishop complete with swinging incense thingies) before having a few drinks.
Sunny Christmas Day we ate the lovely hostel breakfast and went sightseeing. We visited the huge church La Soledad and then ran into a concert preparing to begin in the Zócalo. We sat down in the shade of the big trees and listened to the Oaxaca State Symphony play an American Christmas piece (the one where the lyrics go really fast “da-da-da lovely weather for a sleigh-ride together for two” and sounds like horses and bells and stuff), Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Meabh practically died gushing from Gershwin. Some of my music snobbery came through (how unoriginal the program, and the pianist keeps making mistakes, and no this piece wasn’t written for Woody Allen’s Manhattan), but I enjoyed Rhapsody in Blue just as much as she did. It gave us shivers. (Gershwin always does that to me when I’m living abroad. There was a time I saw an American pianist play a Gershwin piece in Bristol and I became terribly homesick, even though I am not from New York.) All in all, a nice Christmas in Oaxaca.
Exhausted from all the bus traveling we’d been doing and finding out that Veronica couldn’t make it to Puerto Escondido after all, Meabh and I decided not to go to the beach. Instead, we stayed on in Oaxaca a couple more days, shopping ourselves silly and creating more baggage to lug around. The markets were magnificent. We decided to purchase gifts for people at home in advance because the crafts are so much better and plentiful in Oaxaca. However, Meabh and I compared piles of goodies at the end of the trip, and the piles for ourselves were much bigger than the piles for other people. Oh well, it’s Christmas, we said. I was enthralled by the alebrijes—colorfully painted wooden animals or dream-creatures—and jewelry and colorful tablecloths. Meabh looked at rugs. We both bought beautiful skirts. Meabh dropped a bag she had bought; when we finally found it in the hands of a nice old woman selling sarapes near the amazing golden church of Santo Domingo, I felt it would be wrong not to buy anything from her, two days in a row…. Meabh said she has trouble turning down vendors but that it seems I have the same problem a lot worse.
We found a great restaurant with an Anti-Bush sticker and EZLN posters and delicious, delicious food (“Decano” on Cinco de Mayo, near our favorite store, the Oaxacan craftswomen’s market). The set lunch was only 40 pesos and incredible. We went back two more times. Freeing up our days by deciding not to take the six-hour bus ride through the mountains to the beach, we made time for more sightseeing. We went to the Zapotec/Mixtec ruins at Monte Albán and the Museum of the Cultures of Oaxaca. Our last night we went out to a bar with some of the people in our hostel, where we discovered sangrita (a spicy tomato drink that serves wonderfully, at least in some people’s opinion, as a great chaser for tequila) and I (along with several tequila shots) succeeded in getting Meabh to dance in public. It was our only night out, but a funny and strangely satisfying one, despite the bar being pretty dead and the dancefloor full of gringos humiliating themselves by trying to dance to cumbia music. Oaxaca really grew on us; we enjoyed our four days there a great deal.
TEXCOCO
Wednesday night we took another overnight bus, back to Mexico City. The next groggy morning Meabh continued bus travel to Guadalajara, and I went to visit Veronica in Texcoco, or rather in Tlaminco, a little town on a hill outside of Texcoco. I spent two days there, chatting much-missed chats with Vero and sleeping and reading in the sun. We played with their golden retriever Güero, ate and joked with Vero’s family. It was nice to stay in a real house and eat Vero’s mom’s delicious home-cooked food. It was nice to rest.
GUADALAJARA
Friday night I took an overnight bus to Guadalajara. I met Meabh early Saturday morning at our old posada, Casa Vilasanta. It was lovely to see Martha the cook once again. We ate breakfast at our old haunt, El Fenix, where the service is the slowest we have seen anywhere but where we always enjoyed going to sit outside in the plaza in front of the church Expiatorio. We met up with Gizelle, a classmate from the ITTO course, and stayed with her for New Year’s Eve. We watched dumb movies on cable and ate these terrible croque-monsieurs I made for lunch. Then we trekked to the Gigante in Plaza del Sol to buy supplies for our New Year’s Eve gathering. After taking Gizelle’s roommate’s brother’s neglected and neurotic cocker spaniel out for a walk/run, Gizelle’s friends arrived and the partying commenced. This consisted of the consumption of chips and beers and wine coolers and tequila while watching “What Women Want” on cable, then eating twelve tequila-soaked grapes at midnight, and dancing around in our seats till 4 in the morning because nobody was brave enough to stand up and dance properly. It was fun. Except when we had to get up in the morning and take a bus back home. I don’t usually get hangovers, but this morning was an exception.
ARANDAS (II), or Home-sweet-home
Got the bus back to Arandas, sitting in the sunny window seat with the wind blowing strong in my face and my discman creating my own individual space and blocking out babies crying and people getting on and off the bus every fifteen minutes. Around Tepatitlan and Capilla de Guadalupe, the wind blew a little too much cow smell, but I needed the window open. It was nice to take the bus home, and all two and a half hours were tranquil and easy compared to the heavy-duty bus riding we had been doing all break. Nearing Arandas, fewer cows and more agave. At the bus station I waited in the warm, declining sun for the bus to my neighborhood, La Prepa (named after the only public high school—preparatorio—in town). A gloriously short bus ride later I was back in my apartment. It’s been quiet and lazy the rest of the day, and I intend for the rest of the evening to continue thus. Tomorrow I must get my application to Columbia Teacher’s College together, plan for the week’s classes, do my laundry, clean the apartment, etc., etc., but until tomorrow, I am still on vacation.
ARANDAS (I)
The last day of school before Christmas break is fabulous for students. They get gifts from their schools and have a big party. The kids at my school had piñatas and games, and a taco stand came to the school and made lovely tacos and gringas (quesadillas with meat) all day long. The teachers’ posada was the following day. We had a lovely catered breakfast, followed by games and a gift exchange where we found out who our amigos secretos were. I got a pair of warm gloves that I doubt I will use here in Mexico but which will probably come in handy should I return to the icy North. The school also gave us gift bags, each containing a Christmas bonus, a small gift (lacy underwear for the women!), and lollipops. It was a nice posada, but I always wonder why they choose the ranch as a venue for meetings because we end up under the ramada where it’s freezing cold in the shade.
Luis’ flight was cancelled, so he couldn’t get to Arandas until Sunday. We ate lots of tacos, danced, read some silly children’s books that he’d brought from the States for me (George and Martha rule!), drank tequila, shopped at the market, and napped a lot. We went to Guadalajara Tuesday and stayed with his sister.
ZIHUATANEJO
The next morning I left for Zihuatanejo, where Mika and Meabh were. The bus to this beach town/resort on the Guerrero coast took ten hours, and I arrived in the evening. First thing was first—I had to have lunch/dinner. The taxi driver took me to a taco bar, the likes of which I had never seen before. I ordered three big tacos before realizing that all the stuff at the buffet was included. Of course I stuffed myself. Even the small places have salads and things that you can have along with your tacos—a Guerrero specialty? After dinner, I walked to the center to look for a hostel. I booked a room for three at a nice place (Angela’s Hostel) and met up with Meabh and Mika, who had been at another beach all day. The next day we had a very nice breakfast at a restaurant called La Sirena Gorda (“The Fat Mermaid”), decorated with paintings of fat mermaids, of course. Then we went shopping, because Mika was leaving that night and had to get gifts for her family. In the markets and stalls there was a ton of silver jewelry from Taxco, and I ended up buying a good share of it, unfortunately for my wallet. Having finished our shopping, tired from hearing vendors pushing their goods with, “Ladies, something for your boyfriend?” and “Almost free!” we went to the beach and swam in the big bay. Then we had a big seafood lunch at a palapa restaurant, and prepared to send Mika off at the bus station, where Meabh and I were planning to ask about buses the next day.
The bus station trip turned out to be a drawn-out drama. The bus to Puerto Vallarta was full, so Mika had to find another way to get there before her flight out the next day. After about four hours of running around and waiting, Mika got on a bus to Guadalajara, and Meabh and I headed back to the hostel.
That night I felt sick. I had what I suppose was terrible heartburn, though I had never wanted to throw up with heartburn before. The next morning it was Meabh’s turn to be sick. It was probably the tacos we’d had near the bus station. We decided not to take the morning bus to Puerto Escondido as planned. We’d been wavering on where to go from Zihua, since we wanted to go to the city of Oaxaca but weren’t able to take a direct bus, and had decided to just go the beach in Oaxaca state instead. Our stomachs, however, made the decision for us, and we left that night for Mexico City, after recovering a bit and opting for comfortable luxury buses with restrooms aboard (not an option to Puerto Escondido).
OAXACA
Arriving in Mexico City the next morning, we bought our tickets to Oaxaca but had several hours to spare before the next available bus. We went to the trendy, hippie neighborhood of Coyoacan and remembered that it was still freaking early in the morning. Nothing was open except for the chain restaurant Sanborns, so we spent a couple hours having breakfast there and using its bathrooms to freshen up. The bus to Oaxaca took six hours. We arrived during the early evening and settled into the cleanest hostel I have ever stayed in—Casa Paulina (white tiles, fountains, a garden, a rooftop lounge, huge complimentary breakfast, big lockers in the dorm rooms, and hot water in its numerous showers—the opposite of the awful place where Kristin and I had stayed in Guanajuato). It was Christmas Eve, so we went to the center of town, the Zócalo, and had dinner. We watched a big Christmas parade and went to midnight mass in the cathedral (given by the bishop complete with swinging incense thingies) before having a few drinks.
Sunny Christmas Day we ate the lovely hostel breakfast and went sightseeing. We visited the huge church La Soledad and then ran into a concert preparing to begin in the Zócalo. We sat down in the shade of the big trees and listened to the Oaxaca State Symphony play an American Christmas piece (the one where the lyrics go really fast “da-da-da lovely weather for a sleigh-ride together for two” and sounds like horses and bells and stuff), Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Meabh practically died gushing from Gershwin. Some of my music snobbery came through (how unoriginal the program, and the pianist keeps making mistakes, and no this piece wasn’t written for Woody Allen’s Manhattan), but I enjoyed Rhapsody in Blue just as much as she did. It gave us shivers. (Gershwin always does that to me when I’m living abroad. There was a time I saw an American pianist play a Gershwin piece in Bristol and I became terribly homesick, even though I am not from New York.) All in all, a nice Christmas in Oaxaca.
Exhausted from all the bus traveling we’d been doing and finding out that Veronica couldn’t make it to Puerto Escondido after all, Meabh and I decided not to go to the beach. Instead, we stayed on in Oaxaca a couple more days, shopping ourselves silly and creating more baggage to lug around. The markets were magnificent. We decided to purchase gifts for people at home in advance because the crafts are so much better and plentiful in Oaxaca. However, Meabh and I compared piles of goodies at the end of the trip, and the piles for ourselves were much bigger than the piles for other people. Oh well, it’s Christmas, we said. I was enthralled by the alebrijes—colorfully painted wooden animals or dream-creatures—and jewelry and colorful tablecloths. Meabh looked at rugs. We both bought beautiful skirts. Meabh dropped a bag she had bought; when we finally found it in the hands of a nice old woman selling sarapes near the amazing golden church of Santo Domingo, I felt it would be wrong not to buy anything from her, two days in a row…. Meabh said she has trouble turning down vendors but that it seems I have the same problem a lot worse.
We found a great restaurant with an Anti-Bush sticker and EZLN posters and delicious, delicious food (“Decano” on Cinco de Mayo, near our favorite store, the Oaxacan craftswomen’s market). The set lunch was only 40 pesos and incredible. We went back two more times. Freeing up our days by deciding not to take the six-hour bus ride through the mountains to the beach, we made time for more sightseeing. We went to the Zapotec/Mixtec ruins at Monte Albán and the Museum of the Cultures of Oaxaca. Our last night we went out to a bar with some of the people in our hostel, where we discovered sangrita (a spicy tomato drink that serves wonderfully, at least in some people’s opinion, as a great chaser for tequila) and I (along with several tequila shots) succeeded in getting Meabh to dance in public. It was our only night out, but a funny and strangely satisfying one, despite the bar being pretty dead and the dancefloor full of gringos humiliating themselves by trying to dance to cumbia music. Oaxaca really grew on us; we enjoyed our four days there a great deal.
TEXCOCO
Wednesday night we took another overnight bus, back to Mexico City. The next groggy morning Meabh continued bus travel to Guadalajara, and I went to visit Veronica in Texcoco, or rather in Tlaminco, a little town on a hill outside of Texcoco. I spent two days there, chatting much-missed chats with Vero and sleeping and reading in the sun. We played with their golden retriever Güero, ate and joked with Vero’s family. It was nice to stay in a real house and eat Vero’s mom’s delicious home-cooked food. It was nice to rest.
GUADALAJARA
Friday night I took an overnight bus to Guadalajara. I met Meabh early Saturday morning at our old posada, Casa Vilasanta. It was lovely to see Martha the cook once again. We ate breakfast at our old haunt, El Fenix, where the service is the slowest we have seen anywhere but where we always enjoyed going to sit outside in the plaza in front of the church Expiatorio. We met up with Gizelle, a classmate from the ITTO course, and stayed with her for New Year’s Eve. We watched dumb movies on cable and ate these terrible croque-monsieurs I made for lunch. Then we trekked to the Gigante in Plaza del Sol to buy supplies for our New Year’s Eve gathering. After taking Gizelle’s roommate’s brother’s neglected and neurotic cocker spaniel out for a walk/run, Gizelle’s friends arrived and the partying commenced. This consisted of the consumption of chips and beers and wine coolers and tequila while watching “What Women Want” on cable, then eating twelve tequila-soaked grapes at midnight, and dancing around in our seats till 4 in the morning because nobody was brave enough to stand up and dance properly. It was fun. Except when we had to get up in the morning and take a bus back home. I don’t usually get hangovers, but this morning was an exception.
ARANDAS (II), or Home-sweet-home
Got the bus back to Arandas, sitting in the sunny window seat with the wind blowing strong in my face and my discman creating my own individual space and blocking out babies crying and people getting on and off the bus every fifteen minutes. Around Tepatitlan and Capilla de Guadalupe, the wind blew a little too much cow smell, but I needed the window open. It was nice to take the bus home, and all two and a half hours were tranquil and easy compared to the heavy-duty bus riding we had been doing all break. Nearing Arandas, fewer cows and more agave. At the bus station I waited in the warm, declining sun for the bus to my neighborhood, La Prepa (named after the only public high school—preparatorio—in town). A gloriously short bus ride later I was back in my apartment. It’s been quiet and lazy the rest of the day, and I intend for the rest of the evening to continue thus. Tomorrow I must get my application to Columbia Teacher’s College together, plan for the week’s classes, do my laundry, clean the apartment, etc., etc., but until tomorrow, I am still on vacation.
