Days 84 - 91: Chiapas; costa Oaxaqueña

I'm starting to wend my way home.

Hans left me behind in Xalapa about a week ago. I spent a few days there recentering in a private room much posher than I could normally afford - all because the hostel I inquired at is currently hosting an entire baseball team, and has a deal with another spot for their overflow. I had my own kingsized bed, coffeemaker, electric safe, swan-shaped towel...water pressure...the works. I even watched a stupid movie on cable tv.

Thence I made my way to Chiapas for Gen's and Ale's wedding, which was beautiful! They were married outside under a giant tree, with pine needles spread on the ground all around it, to wise and poetic vows, and the applause and tears of an international family. I cried, too. And saw old friends, and made new friends, and danced the night away to Marimba, Mariachis (if Hans ever gets a pair of those sexy sequined pants, I'm done for), and wonderfully horrible pop music. Yes!
I tried to go directly to the coast after that...but the toenail I turned black and blue hiking in the Sierra decided to detatch itself when a friend scuffed it in the process of hugging me. Oops. For some reason that meant I stayed in Chiapa de Corzo one more day, which happened to coincide which the incredibly silly first night of the "Fiesta Grande" de San Sebastian - Chiapa de Corzo's yearly, two-week hoedown/carnival in honor of...well, I still don't know much about him. What I do know is that it appears a cross between a typical small-town carnival (rides, cotton candy, electronics raffles...?) and funky traditions from the area, including a jolly, all-night parade of hundreds of guys in drag, dressed impeccably in traditional Chiapanecan women's outfits. My friends and I spent the night wandering the streets with the rest of town, watching (and joining) the wandering stream, which played marching music, danced, threw confetti, and got steadily and pleasantly drunker.

I love Mexico. The sense of humor, everything. I can't even tell you. It was a very warm-hearted night. We were like salmon, trying to fit through the street, following the current, going uphill, scattering to rest on the steps of churches.

~

Now I'm Zipolite, where the sun scorches, the ocean is a lovely blue-green, and, according to the hand-painted sign at Shambala (a hilltop retreat of sorts, where I pitched my tent for a small fee), "the sixties never end." Hm.

Among other things, this apparently means that while Mexican kids cast their fishing nets from the black rocks of the cove, and women cross the beach draped in heaps of handmade bags or shawls or bracelets, and a man wheels his wheelbarrow of coconuts...steadily browning white folks will lie naked on the sand, and occasionally make barking noises, or break into modern dance.

The beautiful, strange, and hilarious culture clashes here never fail to surprise, confuse, and intrigue me.

Anyway. I am grateful to be here! To be absorbing sunlight, like a camel, for the months ahead of Portland rain. To be camping yards from the ocean. For last night's yellow moon, and the sound of the waves at night (augmented by the neighbor's goose). I am glad to be here by the graciousness of my hosts, big and small, obvious and not: the ocean, the people, the other ways of life here, the iguanas by the bathrooms, and the little boys who live with their family on the edge the camping area, and used my cooking equipment as sand toys.

I'm getting what I came for: S U N S H I N E.

And when I've had my fill, and collected scattered belongings in several cities, and said a few goodbyes, I can come home. H O M E.

Days 50 - 62: Ciudad de México; costa norte de Veracruz

Hans and I spent our first few days together doing close to nothing in the third biggest city in the world. We managed to leave our beautifully-groomed and cozy crashpad (one of two homey and quiet private rooms in the back courtyard of a french family's home) long enough to give Hans a sampling of great street food and markets, catch stares playing capoeira in a plaza, and oggle some Pre-Hispanic art in the fantastically overwhelming Museo Antropología. To ensure Hans a true Defeño experience, we added our bodies to the sardine pack of the evening metro and the carbonated pedestrian currents of Alameda central, on errands for organic vegetables and camping fuel...and experienced the lingering tremors of an earthquake when surfacing from the tube. (I thought I was just dizzy, but the lack of lights for a few hours that evening and apologies from our host soon informed me otherwise.)

I've loved reexperiencing Mexico city in these days before and after Hans' arrival. I returned on the 1st and by instinct took a hostel in the artsy Roma neighborhood, where I spent a few days relaxing and marveling in how different my perception of this city is this time around. Equipped with better Spanish and more experience with this country's pulse in general, D.F. no longer seems as overwhelming or threatening, especially outside of the centro's confusing and commercial, touristed hubbub. I took myself to a museum or two; spent a few nights staying with a Mexican friend of a friend, experiencing “real life” in the big city and putting my Spanish to the test; and confirmed it's possible to escape to greenery for a day, with a trip to the serene pine forest and monestary of Desierto Leones National Park. Staying in Roma, and with Hans in Santa Maria de la Ribiera (which is so far north of the centro and so little touristed Hans and I were the only güeros we saw), I saw much more of the calm and warmth I experienced in smaller towns bob to the surface of D.F.'s churning.

Now Hans and I are in Veracruz! Aie, it is so different here! It's lush, and the dinosoar hands I cultivated in D.F.'s harsh air and water are now being healed by sea-salty humidity - in which my damp clothes also never dry. Hans and I arrived by night bus to the tranquilo, tiny town of Tecolutla, dogearred by Lonely Planet for it's turtle-saving ecology center and incredible, cheap seafood. It reminds me a little of Hawaii here: the thick air, the extra bugs, the strange and raucous bird noise at the beginning and end of the day. The beach is lined with thatched pavilions for lunching in the shade and vendors pushing carts of mariscos cocktails or juices and whole coconuts you can get macheted open and plugged with a straw for 25 pesos.

Time with the ocean is healing.

On the way back through town at dusk, hundreds of long-tailed black songbirds fill the gnarled sillouettes of tropical trees, and collect like shards of dark glass on the roofs of buildings. We walk in the warm and early dark; the people in town move like the air does. Some very silly and friendly folks at a liquor shop sell us what we mistook for regular playing cards (“Cartas Españolas” instead), and attempt to teach us how to play with a deck that has no 8s or 9s.

Today we saluted the ocean and headed north to Papantla, another saucy little friendly town a bit inland, near the jungle ruins of El Tajín. Tonight we had incredible seafood (shrimp in garlic sauce....aaaahmmmmm) on a restaurant balcony overlooking an usually lively Zócalo. At the end of our meal, a brass band started up at the far end, and a parade of young people in white or bright bible costumes wound their way by, colorful paper latterns and stars bobbing above them: Posadas have begun!

Tonight I feel positively flooded with affection for this country.

Days 17 - 21: San Cristóbal de las Casas y Oaxaca, Oaxaca

I spent my last weekend in San Cristóbal growing finally fond of the place - discovering my favorite cafes and bars, falling for capoeira angola (don't tell Pedro), and watching countless colorful alters appear around town.

On Friday at I braved a capoeira class comprised only of the teacher and two other manly capoeiristas...and learned my body is capable of throwing a rabo de arraia, going into a headstand, and passing over into a backbend! I also got to practice berimbau for the first time, and some new pondeiro beats. (Thank you, axé of San Cristóbal!)

This was also the weekend of a cultural festival in San Cristóbal, featuring a wide range of music from around Mexico, with bands playing for free in the main plaza. I saw stunning Lila Downs on Sunday...who is like a sorceress on stage, with a mind-bloggling soprano, and so loved here half the crowd knew every word to her songs. Afterward, out to drinks with Gen, Ale, and co, I ordered what I expected to be a perfectly ordinary butter and brown sugar crepe...and am now, officially and forever, helplessly in love with the ambrosia that is southern México's unadulterated, brown and caramely cane sugar. I'll be bringing bricks home from market.

Over the weekend Gen educated me in altar building, bringing home bundles of marigolds and brainy-looking red flowers covered in fuzz, traditional copal (a sweet-smelling resin burnt like incense in little clay bowls), and offerings to feed the dead - favorite foods, cigarettes, pot and chocolate, pan dulce, café. She arranged it all on a bright table around photos or other reminders of her dead, candles scattered among them and a bed of pine needles underneath!


All around town, in restaurants and stores, flowers are used like paint to cover teired alters in eye-popping designs and crosses; maiz or stalks of flowers are braided into arches with blossoms and bananas; ribbons strung with tiny oranges (or some other unidentified fruit) hang over teirs of flickering candles, photos, and food. Every alter is different, covered in unique mementos and designs. And everywhere, the smell of pine needles and copal. Death is here, loud and clear. And, it's a party! It's a reunion! I'm struck by how healing the act of creativity can be - what an effective means of processing it is, especially within community. How wonderful to have ritualized a way to acknowledge greif, as a community, and alongside celebration.

...Kids here apparently get to celebrate about a five day stint of costumed merry-making, in some amalgamation of Día de los Muertos and Halloween traditions. They were out all weekend at odd hours with masks and candy baskets, which they press upon anyone, in restaurants or on the street - chiming, "Calabasita, tia!" If you give them candy or money, you're cool...if not, they chant, "Let the auntie die!"

~

Over the weekend I developed a faint but persistent itch to move on, and woke up Monday morning determined to make it to Oaxaca for what was promised to be one of the most famous Días de los Muertos in México. Thank you Gen, and the capoeiristas and language teachers of San Cristóbal, for the relatively easeful time of transition I experienced there! Now I am glad to be at the true start of my solitary travels, with all the accompanying fresh fears, excitements, unpredictability, and things to learn...

I failed, once again, to sleep at all on my overnight bus to Oaxaca...but opening my window at sunrise to jaw-dropping terrain erased any regret I might have felt. For the next two hours the road coiled along the edge of a string of mountains, arid green and gold valleys folded between layers of more blue cliffs. Below us, hills where orderly stripes of agave and maiz were knitted through the native brush. We passed through several dusty towns, over the sluggish glass of a green river, past families unlocking iron gates to commence the day's business.

A lovely woman from my bus asked about my instruments at the bus station (thank you, pondeiro), and we were shortly setting off together for a trek through town after lodging. Valentina spent a month in Oaxaca City and connected us quickly with a host family from her Spanish school, where they charged us less than a hostel for a room half a block from the cemetery and the carnival-like hubbub lining the road beside it.

Oaxaca is beautiful! The artesanal clothing, pottery, rugs, paintings are incredible and everywhere. The sun is warm here, and other things seem warmer, too...the colonial buildings of the centro are earthern pastels, pink rock laced in a rime of pale moss. The Zocalo is wonderfully green, tall trees (they look like banyans!) dispensing strained sunlight and fairy dust.

Valentina and I brave market (full of such different things than San Cris´s!!) and come back laden with fixings for our own alter. Dinner on the Zocalo dissolves into parades of brass bands and ridiculous costumes! The two costumes of choice appear to be miscellaneous members of gorry horror films, and the Méxicano version of a skeleton (MUCH more beautiful, bright embroidered clothing and eleborately painted faces like the pottery skulls you can buy around town right now), but there are also eerie fantastical creatures in HUGE masks (one that reminds me of the rabbit from Donnie Darko), skeletal brides, children in diablito masks or neon wigs.

We dance our way out of the mayham of the Zocalo and up the pedestrian street, which is peppered by people on display: posing in elaborate costumes for photos, enacting macabre skits, two little boys in a frozen tableau of horror - one stabbing the other. The street outside the Pantheon is full of vendors - food, flowers, candles and copal - with carnival games and rides at one end. Everything has the air of a family reunion. Things are happy and loud and calm at once. The fizz and the fireworks rooted in something heavy and warm, implicitly understood.

The Pantheon is full of little lights. Strands of guitar music and singing. We spiral slowly through a thousand dreams. The trees are wearing the yellow lace of lamp light on chlorophyll. The moon makes a scraping sound and swallows another layer of milk.

Day 0: Portland para México, Distrito Federal

October 12th, Day of Departure (following a full moon), I left a sleep-deprived and smiling Hans at the security gate and trundled off with a butterfly in my stomach, who gathered a flurry of raucous companions as I approached my destination. I arrived wondering if the customs officer would mistake my fear for some illegal secret, but she waved me on in a second and I was swept off in the surging waterways of D.F. airport...communicating via broken Spanglish and sign language, pausing to sacrifice my treasures of salami and fresh bok choi to the travel gods (in the form of a stout-nosed security beagle), passing roaring blurs of taxi venders and reuniting families...then spat out on the curb.

Allelujah, shit shit shit! I'm really here.

The first moments in a new place: salty! Senses augmented by the unfamiliar. (Snowflakes in Frankfurt/the blue and white of street workers' uniforms/a cafe in Madrid/Amalia and cappuccinos, a widow open to the street/Maui, Berlin, the precise and sturdy islands of British Columbia, sharp from the sea.) And here! It was thunderstorming when I got here! This I devoured like a mineral I hadn't known I was missing. And then, as usual, my fear drained like sand, and my taxi arrived.

~

My driver is splendid. The streets are an absurdity of incoherent motion. The little shops pressing against us are bright and peeling like Christmas wrapping paper. Taco stands are awake and disregarding traffic. I am flooded with glee. The buildings of the historic center push back against the roar, expanding grand and imperturbable as bone, the color of blackened ivory, lined with gold lights.

We arrive; my granderfatherly driver tells me, "Joo be careful only at night," and I check into the hostel in Spanish!, relish my shower, unpack in the room that is mine mine mine, rain and rain and rain on the roof telling me there is some lightening but I have everything I need.