But I don’t think things work that way.  We don’t experience new things — different as they may be from our past experiences or our routines — in discrete, digestible chunks, ready to be processed and turned into a list of triumphs.  Life is less linear, less intentional than that, even in hindsight.   Now that I’ve finally got the time and space to think about the last 10 months, I still have a hard time holding the whole thing in my head.  It’s the classic participant-observer paradox: you have no fixed point from which to view an experience that changes you profoundly, because you’re moving too.  It’s like hopping on a bullet train in a place you’ve never been to  in your life, catching wind with your huge grin as you lean out the window and love the ride, and then trying to sit down afterwords and draw a map of the strange country you’ve crossed.  There’s no way your map does justice to the actual ride.  It’s more like a cliff-notes guide that, if you’re not careful, eventually takes the place of the original novel in your mind.

Maybe it’s best to just think of this trip as a series of moments.  Insane moments –  “what am I doing here, on top of this very tall Aztec pyramid in the middle of a lightning storm” moments.  Self-congratulatory, “here I am with these two Dutch tourists in the middle of the jaguar and snake-filled Guatemalan jungle, bribing these machine-gun-toting security guards to get into the country’s most treasured archeological site at 4am to watch the sun rise from that temple that’s in the first Star Wars!” moments.  Moments of self-doubt.  Scared moments.  And, of course, bored moments (which never make it into the stories I tell my friends, though they’re no less a part of the experience than that crap-my-pants ”is that guy following me?” moment on a dark street in Xela at 4:00am, or the “that’s the most beautiful sunset of my life!” moments on the roof of old apartment building in Guadalajara).

I guess that’s what this blog, and the personal journal I’ve been keeping along side it, are for; a place to go to relive the disparate, discombobulated, juicy collection of moments that, when squashed together, made up the last ten months of my life.  My gambit is that that collection, well-preserved, will last a lifetime.  I owe it to myself to hang on to them because, ultimately, they’re worth far more than any Cliff Notes version I could come up with.   So how was my trip?  It’s complicated…

I´ve had an eventful few weeks.  Made it from San Cristóbal de las Casas in Mexico to Xela, Guatemala.  Stayed there for three weeks with a wonderful family and brushed up my Spanish at a local language school.  Also, did a killer sunrise hike to the top of the highest point in Central America, el Vulcan Tajumulco, with Quetzaltrekkers, and awesome non-profit that organizes hikes and treks all over Guatemala..  We hiked up to a base camp the first day, spent a rainy and cold night in our tents there, and then summited at 4am…definitely a thrill, and a highlight from Guatemala so far.

I´m now in San Pedro La Laguna, in Lago Atitlán.  I was using the internet at a coffee shop yesterday, and some guys came in to organize a trip to the top of Volcán San Pedro, overlooking the lake, the following morning at 4am.  I decided to hop in with them. We woke up to a warm, clear, dark early morning today, knocked off two hours of steady, tough climbing (one of the toughest hikes I´ve ever done!) and made it to the top just after sunrise (and just before the morning mist rolled in).  The hike was muddy, with mini-landslides and downed trees in a few parts of the trail from recent rains.  The view was absolutely amazing while it lasted…pretty much a straight look down at the whole lake and the surrounding volcanoes!  It felt like being in an airplane, like floating above the whole lake on a tiny outcropping of rock.   I think it´s gonna be tough to go back to east-coast hiking when I´m home!

Last weekend, I was the highest I´ve ever been in my life.  La Malinche (a.k.a Matlalcuéyetl, Matlalcueitl and Malintzin) is a huge dormant volcano in Puebla and Tlaxacala states, east of Mexico City.  The summit´s 14,641 ft—almost exactly half as tall as Everest—and very pointy.

Me, Kisiev, and his friend (now my friend!) Daniel bussed down to Puebla, where we met Miguel(ito) and Iris.  Spent the night at Miguel´s mom´s house and then rocked la Malinche the next day.  Slippery, loose-rock -strewn, steep slope for the last few miles (and hours)…fun, and definitely worth the altitude sickness!

Spent the next few days hanging out in and around Puebla with the banda…Miguel´s mom fed us some great meals, including a breakfast feast of chiliquiles con pollo and pirrian, sort of spicy, light orange mole type dish.  Also got to visit Miguel`s god-mother`s homemade temescal (traditional steam room), where we steamed the soreness out of our post-Malinche muscles, rubbed ourselves with salt and honey, received expert (and spine-cracking) massages from his godmother, and chatted about politics.  Lush! (sorry for stealing your word, Andy).

Then, a few days convalescing in my hostel in DF, a few days staying with Daniel and his parents in southern Mexico City, and back to the mountains!  Dan, Kies, and I bussed down to Tepotzlán, a gorgeous little colonial town with a street market filled with excellent food.

Fried fish, long, veggie-stuffed quesadillas made with tortillas from blue corn, and super-refreshing micheladas (beer with lime juice and tons of spicy chili powder on the rim of the glass…too bad i was on antibiotics the whole time, so didn´t down one on my own).

Also, Tepoz is surrounded by cliffy mountains, and there´s a cool, old stone temple halfway up one of them.  So, we hiked up to the temple, farted around a bit, and then continued scaling up to the top of the mountain.

Fun times with the banda, and once again, a sad goodbye as I continued on to San Cristóbal de Las Casas.

Just rolled into Mexico City (after a 20 hour bus ride from Chihuahua), and I wanna get out and explore!   Still, got to get this off my chest before the next adventure—hiking a volcano with my friend Kisiev this Saturday (still don´t know which one) .

So, I spent the last week at the bottom of the deepest canyon system in North America, the Barranca del Cobre (a.k.a ¨ The Copper Canyon¨…apparently Spanish Conquistadors overzealously mistook pale green vegetation for copper lining the canyon´s walls.)  I met Cici and Vincent, a Belgian couple on a month-long tour of Mexico, on the awesome Ferrocarril del Barranca del Cobre…a pretty impressive train that runs along the canyon and stops at a number of tiny villages perched along the rim.

From Bahuichivo (one such village), we took an aging converted American school bus, piloted by our fearless captain Eugenio, down the twisting, narrow road to the canyon floor (see video on upper right). We were all getting over some stomach issues, so the ride was an exercise in, well, self-restraint, so to speak. Luckily, I was scared sh&t-less.

Spent four relaaaaaaxing days at a sorta home-made ecohomestead/hostel in Urique on the canyon floor called Entre Amigos.  Composting toilets (stocked with Mother Earth catalogs from the 70´s), solar-heated hot water, and papaya, mango, and grapefruit trees abounded! Also, right by the river…key for chilling out after day hikes in the hot canyon.

Keith, the owner wasn´t there, but I still got to take tortilla-making lessons from Maruca, a family friend and employee who was watching over the place. A lady in town (who loaned me a bag of flour when the abarrotes were all out) said I learned from the best. They were definitely delicious, and Maruca definitely got a kick out of the lumpy, mishapen tortilla freaks that emerged from my first few attempts (pictured below is one of the less-freaky tortilla freaks).

Some great day hikes to isolated indigenous communities on the canyon floor, and then a less-freaky bus ride back up and a train to Creel.

There, me and the Belgians rented bikes for the day and pedalled through a series of valleys with interesting rock formations (the Valley of the Frogs, the Valley of the Mushrooms, and the Valley of the Monks, which was (no joke) actually originally called Valley of the Erect Penises by its indigenous inhabitants, because…well, you´ll see).

Then, burnt crispy from the all-day bike ride, I said goodbye to the Vincent and Cici and bussed it up to Chihuahua with Daniel, a German army vet, Antonio, a diction and Literature instructor from Mexico City, and Francesca, a French business consultant. Chihuahua was kind of a rough town, although not without its jokes. Me and Daniel were assailed (in a repeat of earlier events in Guadalajara) but camera-phone bearing schoolgirls while taking a tour of a historical mural at the Palacio de Gobierno. We finally escaped and finished our tour, only to be whistled at by the prostitutes (at least one of who sounded, but didn´t look like, a dude) stalking the streets outside the run-down guesthouse where we were staying.

Later, me and Daniel had a great time at a dive cantina populated by two puckered old guys with canes, three surly waitresses, and another prostitute who kept checking out the window for clients. The jukebox was banging out Norteño love ballads for the first few shots of tequila, but then suddenly ran out of credit and went silent.    Seizing the opportunity, I flipped through the catalog of discs and found treasure: Creedence Clearwater Revival´s Greatest Hits. So, I put on Bad Moon Rising, not sure if we´d be kicked out, and went back to my bar stool while the song loaded.

Then the familiar tune burst out of the speakers at full volume, and to everyone´s surprise, one of the seniors put down his cane and started dancing this great unselfconscious kind of salsa dance, arms upraised and fingers snapping, sashaying around the bar floor. We all of course started clapping and yelling ¨EY EY EY EY¨ (like they do here), and I rushed over to the jukebox to keep the tunes flowing. A half-hour later, after great success with more Creedence and some Daddy Yankee (he loved ¨Gasolina¨), we slapped on some Cumbia (good dancin´music) and all got out on the floor.   Good times!

Hostel-bound here in Mexico City for now, due to surprise streetfood poisoning, but stoked for the upcoming volano summiting!

Things are getting beautiful here.  Trees of all different colors are sprouting all over the place…at least it feels that way, since I never paid them much attention before they were bright purple or yellow.  Baking hot at mid-day, but warm breezes all night.  Deep purple sunsets.  Ants diligently at work dismantling leaves from the highest branches of the tree in front of our apartment and trucking them the millions of ant-miles down the trunk and into the hole in the tile under our front steps.

Had a great visit with Sam; we`ve known each other since we were talking about Warcraft in the back of Eric Weis`s 7th-grade algebra class.  There`s something really cool about being with someone you know really well in an environment that`s completely foreign to your relationship…like two kids from central Vermont hanging out in Guadalajara, Mexico.  It`s calming, in a way…kind of reassures you that, even though you may only know a few people here and don`t understand half of what everyone says, you`re a real person, with a history and a home town.

Anyways, Ana`s coming to visit this week.  Stoked for that!  And in the meantime, here are some photos I took over the last few weeks when spring started happening.

I`m starting to dig those uncomfortable moments when you realize that you`re outside your familiar social scene, and you`re suddenly a little self-conscious.  Temoc and Joris (our new roommate) have been taking me to their friend`s parties, so I`ve had a lot of these moments recently!

I`m definitely speaking more Spanish, which feels fantastic.  I`m really beginning to love forming the words and trying to mimic the accent of the people around me…hopefully they don`t mind (probably they don`t notice).    Feeling way more confident with the language, and just more socially confident in general.   Anyways, here are some firsts from the last few weeks:

- My first tag (i.e. graffiti for less anarchistically-inclined readers)…a stencil I mostly filched from Banksy (but traced and cut on my own), with the exception of one small detail.  Here`s the original for comparison:

And here`s mine (on my wall in my room, admittedly not a very bad-ass setting):

Other firsts:

- first time in a mexican karoake bar (also, first time singing on stage with the birthday girl wearing a giant sombrero at a very big birthday party in a mexican karoake bar)

- first trip to a mexican dentist

- gave my first english lesson to my first student (who also happens to be my dentist, see above)

- first time eating carne en su jugo (meat in it`s own juice) at the fastest restaurant in the world

- first time shopping at a place that sells fresh octopus by the kilo (“mercado abastos“ a smelly, dark, wonderful market with vendors selling a billion kinds of meat, cheese, bread, seafood, whole-bean coffee, and some fruits and veg i`ve never seen before).   More on that in a subsequent post.

-  first time at a traditional mexican balneario, a hot-spring fed public bath full of proudly-rotund mexican grandpas steaming themselves like white-haired dumplings in the temazcal (cave-like sauna filled with steam from really, really, hot springs burbling around underneath), among other interesting sights.

-first time eating cheese-flavored ice cream

I was looking through some old stuff on my computer, and found my application for the fellowship that brought me here last year.  It reminded me why I`m here, and why learning Spanish is both a huge opportunity and responsibility.

When I first decided to learn Spanish, it was because I wanted to say “thank you.” I had arrived, sleeping bag in hand, at Blanca’s door just moments earlier.  I would be staying in the cinder-block house of this family of maquiladora workers in Nogales, Mexico, as part of a trip for a college course on the U.S./Mexico border, and I couldn’t even say thank you.  I had, of course, said gracias as Blanca, the mother of the household, began serving dinner that first night, but that garbled attempt seemed inadequate coming from a privileged American student who had literally just been airlifted into the lives of this struggling Mexican family.

I still remember the pregnant silence that descended over the table arrayed with bean stew, meats, homemade tortillas and guacamole; so many conflicting emotions and thoughts roiled in my head, but I was deaf and mute, unable to communicate with my hosts.  Unable, that is, until Blanca’s sister Carmen joined us.

Carmen could speak some English, and upon learning I was in Nogales to learn about the border, she began recounting painful stories of migrants attempting to flee poverty and hunger in Mexico.  She told me of children drowning in the moat-like canals lining the border as they tried to cross with their parents, of old women being abducted and robbed by smugglers, then left to die in the swaths of desert engulfing much of the border, and of cesarean sections performed with kitchen knives in Chiapan homes due to the lack of basic health services in rural Mexico.  She told me that Carlos, her son, had lived in the U.S. since age two, but was expelled by the INS just after being accepted to a visual arts school when he was 18; he now earns less than two-hundred dollars each month driving a forklift at a landfill in Nogales.  She told me it was too painful for her to go to the side of town where a twenty-foot corrugated metal wall separates it from Nogales, Arizona, and by the silent watchfulness of the rest of the family, I could tell she was speaking for them, too.

As the meal ended, Carmen, in tears now, thanked me for coming to Nogales and listening to her stories.  Sick to my stomach and on the verge of tears myself, I found some small piece of redemption in her gratitude.  Blanca’s family had given me so much and I had so little to offer in return, but maybe, for an American to travel to Mexico, to listen to the humanizing, heart-breaking stories of the people many Americans dismiss as “illegals,” was an offering in its own right.

you can see the border wall bisecting the neighborhood in the background

Being such a big advocate of responsible travel, I decided to try taking the most carbon-efficient mode of travel to get back to GDL from Vermont after xmas: long-distance bus.  More than anything, I wanted to prove that it`s doable, if not enjoyable. I was tired of the hypocritical dissonance between my climate idealism and my penchant for flying.  And, admittedly, I didn`t want to wuss out on my former roommate Andy`s challenge to travel the 3,000 miles by  bus.  So off I went!

I cheated from the start, taking a train from Montpelier to New York City to save a few bucks and 5 hours.   After 3 great days catching up with friends in NYC (thanks for the futon Fergy!), I woke up at 4am on a freezing Thursday morning to make it to the Port Authority terminal for my 6am bus.  Got my ticket, an accordion of perforated glossy sheets for each of the stops on the my trip.  It read like a band`s reunion tour through the south: New York, Washington, Richmond, Raleigh, Winston Salem, Charlotte, Duncan, Atlanta, Birmingham, Jackson, Monroe, Shreveport, Dallas, San Antonio, Laredo, and finally Nuevo Laredo and Monterrey, Mexico.

The next week and half was a bumpy ride of travel highs and lows. There was a great conversation with a young Iraq vet-turned pacifist on the bus from San Antonio to Nuevo Laredo. There was the anxiety-inducing run from the bus station to my hostel in the freezing early-morning darkness  of Zacatecas, a city I`d never visited, using only a  hand-drawn, un-labeled map I`d picked up at another hostel and a bumpy commuter bus.  There was the quiet wonder of hiking lone in the mountains in Chinpinque park, outside Monterrey.

But there were there were also the drivers`terse, early-morning wake up calls blasting from scratchy loudspeakers as we rolled into depressed Southern towns in our fluorescent-lit, jam-packed buses.  The physical discomfort of days without a shower, or real food.   There were the desperate-looking riders waiting, sleeping, or sometimes just swaying in place in shabby greyhound terminals.  And there was the sobering moment when I crossed the border into Mexico with just my passport and a signature, while hundreds of people die every year trying to do the exact same thing, but in the other direction, in the surrounding deserts.

Coming back to Guadalajara was like coming home after a long trip.  The warmth of rekindling memories and friendships from last year was great.  But the let-down of not being on the road anymore, of not being in motion, in emotional and geographic flux, made me feel idle and impatient.  Living life on such a wide emotional spectrum is addictive.   Even if you`ve just spent a whole week on cramped buses and dirty terminals,  sometimes coming home can be the most uncomfortable part of traveling.

I just pared down and edited all my photos from the last three months in Mexico.  They`re all on my Picasa web album, and you can check them out whenever you want.  Cheers!

-D

The next day was the leg we´d been waiting for, and debating, for days: the Carretara Fronteriza. Four hundred kilometers of jungle-skirting two-lane highway, thick with military checkpoints, howler monkeys, and indigenous communities.  We waded through dense, bright green jungle yesterday, but now we were cruising past rolling green hills, distant blue mountains, and small farm plots fenced in by trees.  Small towns materialized, bordered by rows of  abarotes (mom and pop convenience stores) and pick-up truck fruit vendors, as we curved through the fecund landscape.

We stopped for a swim and lunch break at El Chiflón, a huge waterfall that pours turqouise green water into a brisk river.  Disapointingly, the zip line that crosses the river just under the waterfall was closed for repairs…I got butterflies just looking at the thin cable stretching across the turbulent water.

Five more hours of driving (with one brief pause to let a monkey cross the road in front of us) brought us to Yaxchilan, one of the least-accesible and infrequently visited Mayan ruins in Mexico.  After inadvertently landing the the middle of, and carefully extricating ourselves from, a heated dispute between the local taxi drivers and boat operators, we hopped on a narrow, long lancha and motored off.

We had been flying down the Ucumacinta river for about forty-five minutes, skirting the border between Guatemala and Mexico, before the grandmother (pictured above, first row, left, loving life) of the Mexican family that shared our boat gasped and raised her arm straight out towards the shore.  Slowly, swatches of beige stone emerged from the dense green forest.  Then crumbling, pocked structures.  We passed two nearly-hidden buildings before swinging towards the sandy shore.

Walking into the park was like a weird dream…deadly quiet, except for occasional outburtsts from territorial howler monkeys, and nearly deserted.  We hurried ahead of the others from our boat so we could be alone in the ruins.  Joking to break the tension and quiet, we tramped along a vague, vine-laden path until a huge, mossy stone box came into view, blocking the path.  We sidled up, and found a pitch-dark opening in the box.  A doorway, of sorts, with warm, wet-smelling air pouring throught it.

We crept through with baited breath, cringing as we realized that the small squeeks just above our heads were a pair of  tiny slumbering bats heads.  Soon, the the darkness slowly abated and we emerged on a large platform, with a grassy lawn infront of us, the river bank to our left, and a steep hill on our right.

Crumbling stone structures stretched across the lawn; we recognized pelota courts, temples, houses, and staircases crawled up the hillside to our left.  We spent a few hours exploring the ruins, taking side-paths to smaller plazas and structures hidden deeper in the jungle.  I felt a deep sense of awe, and also nervous excitement…it felt like we´d stumbled upon a hidden city, whose inhabitants were watching us from the dark recesses of their abandoned buildings.  The constant roaring of the howler monkeys only added to the Indiana-Jones feeling.  An unforgettable experience.

We left at dusk as the attendants were closing the park, and hoofed it another few hours to Palenque, rolling into town exhausted from the drive and the adrenaline rush.  The final score: 400 kilometers, 1 huge waterfall, six full-car searches by Mexican soldiers at checkpoints, one hidden ruins, and too many peanut butter sandwiches to count.  The next day we toured touristy, but impressive Palenque.  Then goodbyes, an overnight bus to Cancun, and a flight home for Christmas!

……………………………………………………………………………………………………….

I´m sitting at the computer terminal in my hostel in Zacatecas, listening to the rain patter on the dark, cobbled streets outside.  I´ve traveled almost three thousand miles in the last week, from wintery Vermont to rainy central Mexico, by bus and train.  I´m tired, and pretty dirty, and recovering from a cold, but I´m on such a huge traveler´s high that it doesn´t matter.  But, before we go there, I´ve got some catching up to do.  The story of the last leg of my roadtrip across Mexico with my housemates, Andy and Temoc, remains untold!

Beginning the last leg of our roadtrip across mexico, we ditched Oaxaca with heavy hearts, and decided to get some distance.  We drove through the whole day, and part of the night, arriving at San Cristòbal de las Casas around 2am.  The road was amazing, full of extreme bends and cliff-side views of an absolutely epic, mountainous landscape.  We passed dirt hillsides forested with cacti, and vast plains shrouded by layer upon layer of blue-purple mountains on the horizon.

After three days in mountainous San Cristobal we launched ourselves into the jungles along the Guatemalan border, camping and driving our way across the Carreta Fronteriza, a road running 400k along the Mexican-Guatemalan border.  Some claim the road was built solely to facilitate the Mexican military´s control over the region in their efforts to restrict the movements of the Zapatista rebels in the bordering Lacondon jungle.  Either way, it was lush, green, wet, misty jungle throughout.

We camped one night in the Lagunas Montebellos national park, a collection of five placid, forested lakes just on the Mexican side of the border.  Our little lakeside campsite was run by a large family, who also had a rustic restaurant on-site and ran tours of the region.  We´d barely pulled our stuff out of the car before Carlos and Jonaton, two pint-sized cousins, ran over, arms flailing, to ask us where we were from, and what our names were.    They helped us build a nice fire, and we spent the evening chatting, fixing them peanut butter and bimbo (i.e. wonder bread) sandwiches, and telling ghost stories.  Heartwarming!

That night, I feasted on a spiny, mean-looking fish at the family´s restaurant; apparently, it was caught in the lake next to our campsite just a few hours earlier.  Looked kinda like a pirhanna…I´m glad it was already dead by the time I dealt with it.  Despite the outward appearence, it was tender.

The rest of our trip in Chiapas will be in an upcoming post.

After our adventure in the Reserva Mariposa Monarca, we hit the road, slogging three hours through the smoggy heart of Mexico city, and made it to Oaxaca by 2am.  We spent a wonderful last night with Inty, Ana, Kirsten, and Isaac, friends from Guadalajara who were passing through Oaxaca on their way to Puerto Escondido.  Heartfelt goodbyes the next day, and then a quick trip to El Tule, perportedly the biggest tree in the world (in terms of width, or breadth, or whatever).  Impressive, and definitely a good chance to practice making tree faces: 

We crashed early that night, exhausted from a late night the night before and from the emotional goodbyes to our friends of three months.  We got up earlyish the next day, and visited the the site of a former fortified Mayan city at the top of nearby Mt. Alban, which was parched, sunny, and immaculately preserved.

We got back, sun-drenched and beat, and spent the afternoon wandering through the dark stalls and thick air of Oaxaca’s indoor market.   I munched  a handful of chapulines, or fried grasshoppers, which were doused with chili and lime and tasted like salty beer snacks, oogled some recently-removed cow and pig  parts at a butcher stall, and ate a crunchy and interesting coconut cookie at a dessert stall on the street (Oaxaca has lots of them, with interesting-looking pudding, jello-ish stuff, cakes, and ice cream).

I’ve really begun to appreciate my  huge appetite on this trip, because there are so many new and funky things to taste (and, fried grasshoppers are harder to psyche yourself up for when you’re not hungry).  Not only do I always seem to be physically hungry (a direct result, I think, of constantly walking past delicious-smelling food stalls in the street), but hungry in a more emotional/intellectual sense as well.  Being in a place where I can constantly see, hear, taste, and feel new things is such a huge opportunity, and a gift, and I can’t get enough of it!

I think this overt, constant seeking of the new, this joyful (and hopefully responsible) hedonism is definitely my style of travel, which I’m just starting to get comfortable with and really figure out.  As long as I’m here, I want to strip my life down to the most simple, most frugal form it can take, and spend the savings on weird meals, trips to new, unheard-of places, and new experiences.  Cliché or not, I really want to suck the juice out of every day, every place, every experience.

My closest friends in Guadalajara were definitely on the same page, which I think was the reason we got out and saw so much in our short few months.  I’m going to have to be a lot more self-motivated in the next few months.   I’m a little apprehensive, but also psyched to be out exploring on my own again.

The trip started off with a bang.  Also, a crunch.  The bang came when we plowed into the back of a delivery truck that braked in front of us when we were trying to merge onto the throughway 5 minutes from our apartment. The crunch came when we pulled away, and the truck’s squashed bumper, which was attached to the frame with a shaggy blue rope, sagged even lower.  Temoc handled the situation like a pro, jumping out of car and shoving a $200 peso note in the front shirt pocket of the surly, mustachoied driver who stepped out of the front door.  The argument lasted about 30 seconds, and I heard the driver demand $2000 pesos for the damage.  Temoc said no, jumped back into the driver’s seat and we pealed out, swerving around the protesting driver.  Needless to say, we drove very, very fast for the next 20 minutes.  What a getaway!

We drove for hours through the slightly-parched, cliff-bound landscape around Guadalajara, and made it to a dusty working-class town named Zitácuaro.  The streets were filled with old cars and blinking neon signs on top of shabby casinos.  We saw more than a few brothels.  Looked like perfect spot to find a cheap hotel. Also, it easy drive from our objective, Mexico’s huge Reserva Mariposa Monarca, a biological preserve surrounding the winter habitat of  monarch butterflies from across the U.S. and Canada.   After a bit of haggling (again, Temoc’s forte), we ended up paying $3 to sleep on thin, springy mattresses in a cold room overlooking the street.

We woke up early, breakfasted on the white bread and peanut butter we’d nabbed from our apartment, and drove up into the mountains into the Cerro Pelón reserve.  We passed an interesting looking roadside stand in front of the entrance, tended by an old man who flagged us down.  We stopped in to see what he was selling, which turned out to be a drink concocted of fresh-pressed orange juice, a type of locally-made wine called jerez, and two raw quail eggs.  I was hungry and in the mood for something new, so I tried it.  The eggs were slippery and proteiny-tasting, the wine sweet and expansive, and the orange juice tangy and delicious.  After getting over the instinctual gagging reaction that kicks in when you slurp down two raw eggs, the drink was pretty good, almost like a red-wine mimosa with a protein boost.  The taste stayed in my mouth for the rest of the day.  Definitely worth it.

We pulled into the reserve and found a guide, Cesar.  He was wearing frayed jeans and shoes that didn’t look great for hiking, but as we started to climb the steep track into the forest, he quickly outpaced us.  Two huffing, sweaty hours later, we were at the top, in a piney forest carpeted with dead butterflies.  At first, I didn’t see any live butterflies, and was a little disappointed.  Cesar pointed to a shaggy-looking tree in front of us and said “They’re sleeping now.”  We looked closer, and the grey, shaggy mass that I’d taken for foliage took definition.  Orange-gray wings and white-spotted bodies emerged…the entire tree was made of monarchs!  In fact, all the trees around us were covered, from the lowest branches to the top, by quiet, gray, clinging monarchs…must have been millions!  As the sun emerged and began to warm their wings, the most precocious of them detached from the huddling mass and began flapping around in the sunlight.  Soon hundreds were populating the patches of sky above us, and the sound of their fluttering wings drifted down to us.  We watched them for forty-five minutes, seeing how they responded as the sun was enveloped by clouds and emerged, and lunched (more pb sandwiches and chips) while some of them landed on nearby bushes to dry their wings (by twitching them rapidly up and down).  Magic!

We descended back through the misty forest, and hopped into the warm car.  It was already getting that “road trip” smell, a mixture of well-used sleeping bags, piles of crumbs from cookies and chips, and damp socks.  We decided to push through (as Temoc would say, “Fast Tourism!”), and drove 12 hours through the heart of Mexico city and the middle of the country to make it to Oaxaca, where we had slightly giddy, very emotional reunion with our best friends from Guadalajara, who’d already been on the road for a week.  I love travel.

A few weekends ago,  Andy and I whisked the girls away on a four day caper to the coast and through the mountains.  We kicked it off with a boat ride to Isla Alacranes on Lago Chapala at sunset (above).  The next day we swept down crazy, winding mountain roads in our tiny red rental car, passing rumbling trucks and buses until we made it to Isla de Navidad, where we`d booked a small beachside cabaña .  Two days of sunsets over the ocean, swimming at a (poached) private beach belonging to a nearby resort, and laying on the beach under the clearest night sky I`ve seen in Mexico.

The ocean was with us the whole time:  we could see it sparkling in the morning sun when we stepped onto the front porch.   We watched it pound the beach from the pool next to our cabana, and its consistent crashing  lulled us to sleep every night.

Reluctantly leaving the beach, we cruised secondary roads through Colima, Comala, and cobblestoned villages of decreasing size until we pulled into a clearing in front of Laguna la Maria, a forested lagoon under Nevado de Colima, one of Mexico`s biggest mountains and the twin of its most active volcano.  We camped there in a small campground, enjoying the crickets and the shrieking peacocks the campground`s owner kept in cages by the gated entrance.  Beautiful rouge sunset, then lots of pb and j sandwiches and wine by our campfire.

We took more treacherous mountain roads the next day, giving Hardip, who just got got her driver`s license, a spin at the wheel.  She steered us unflinchingly up a sandy, under-construction, cut-back and construction-machine ridden road while the rest of us bit our nails in the back.  Bravo Hardip!  The rest of the roads on the way to Tapalpa were covered in rocks, potholes, construction equipment, and featured tons of shear drops and hairpin turns.  By the time we made it to Tapalpa and back to Guadalajara, our rental car looked like a five-year old had spent the afternoon idly peeling paint chips off the bumper and hitting the tires with a muddy baseball bat.  Adventures!

Without further ado, we piled into Kies and his friend Jorge`s cars, and trucked it down to Tixla.  It was a gorgeous five-hour drive at sunset, and we gawked at brooding purple mountains back-lit by a ferocious, angry red sky.  The whole trip was downhill (Mexico city is very high, while Tixla is closer to the coast), and we sped around curves, past  numerous altars dedicated to crash victims and signs informing us of  ”cuervas peligrosas.”  At one point, Jorge told us that the next curve was called “la cuerva de los muertos” (the curve of death), and was locally famous.  Nice!

We pulled into Tixla slightly shaken, starving, and ready to stretch our legs.  Kies immediately delivered us into the hands of his enormous, and enormously generous family.  His cousin (I think) Disief plied all nine of us with Mezcal, which is a local, fiery version of tequila, and we plopped down in white plastic lawn chairs along the side of their house, which bordered Tixla`s main street.  We weren`t exactly sure why we were sitting on the sidewalk in front of their house, but Disief kept us busy with his Mezcal, and some of Kisiev`s tiny nephews with their hilarious vampire costumes, so the time flew.

Our patience was soon rewarded by a persistent thumping and clanking issuing from further up the street, which soon turned into an entire marching orchestra, which soon turned into an entire parade full of dancers in colorful (and sometimes disturbing) “spirit” and “devil” costumes.  Some had gigantic huge straw hats and did a jittery side-to-side dance while cracking long whips and yipping loudly.  Others wore garish masks and lunged at onlooking children and couples , thrusting dirty bottles filled with an unknown liquor in their faces.

Behind the devils, teams of men carried a huge wooden arch laden with juicy vegetables, herbs, and flowers…an offering for the dead.  No sooner had one parade passed, its drums and trumpets still booming and singing off of the stoned-walled houses lining the street, than another approached with its own bevy of devil dancers, and another enormous arch laden with offerings.  This continued for at least another hour, at which point the entire length of the street was completely filled with parades.  We later learned each neighborhood spends months preparing its own orchestra, dance troupe, and offerings for the day of the dead.  As we were called in to Kies`s family`s house to scarf pozole, the teams began installing their arches upright in the street, forming a continuous row of fruit and vegetable laden structures all the way down to the cemetary.

The pozole, of course, was delicous.  Sweet, tender chicken in a salty-limey broth chock full of chunky hominy, onions, and topped with a garden of cilantro and streams of lime juice and hot sauce.  Served up with salty tostadas, I couldn`t get enough, and finished Ana and Andy`s bowls in addition to mine (thanks guys!).  Then, Disief expanded his reperatoire to include whiskey and vodka, some of the uncles cleared the tables away and put some salsa and local music on the radio, and we danced for a long, long time.

We wandered back into the drizzling street to follow crowds of people down to the cemetery.  Everyone was raucous, cheery, and very lit (especially us).  We joined the pooling crowd at the bottom of the street, only to find more plastic tables and chairs set up.  Seeing some older folks seated at them, I sat down too, and a big styrofoam bowl of pozole was thrust in front of me, along with a plastic spoon and a pile of limes.  Damn!  Stuffed to the gills but I was already too drunk and too addicted to Pozole to refuse, I chomped down in silence with three or five abuelitas and abuelitos.  We didn`t talk much, and came from completely different places, geographically and culturally,  but I`m pretty sure we were united in that moment in our revery, or wanted to think so in my giddy state.

After a brief encounter with a guy named Johnny, who kept insisting “I´m from Texas baby!!” and a few nervous seconds in the midst of a pushing match that was quickly ended by a few cops who approached, fingering their clubs, we dragged ourselves back to our hotel rooms and slept hard.

The weekend before last, three very important events coincided. Our first term at CEPE ended, Halloween happened, and Mexico celebrated el Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead.  Antsy to get out and join the festivities, Holly and I took our final exams one day early and headed over to the DF (Mexico City) to visit Kisiev and his family.  What followed was an eventful weekend; we came back full of stories, mescal (like tequila on a bad hair day, burning rubber at a stop light in a `63 Mustang) and pozole (a delicious chicken and maize soup endemic to the state of Guerrero, where we spent the Day of the Dead).  But I digress.

Holly and I were hoping for a restful bus ride after a tiring few days of (mostly) cramming for exams, but we were sorely disappointed.  About halfway through the 8-hour trip, once the Disney movies on the overhead TVs had been muted and we were slipping into nap mode, something hit the right side of the bus, and we came to a shuddering, noisy, and very abrupt halt in the middle of the highway.  Our driver, looking a little shaken, hopped out into the dark night, leaving us puzzled and little alarmed in a bus filled with equally alarmed Mexicans, and some now-screaming babies to boot.  Poking our heads out of the door, and finally jumping down onto the cold concrete, we discovered that our bus had completely totaled a silver Chevy coupe.  It`s passenger side door was completely crumpled, and the two wheels on that side were completely folded under the car, causing the scarred frame to tilt towards us garishly.  It`s bumper was laying a solid 50 feet behind us, and there was a small piece of flaming something in the grass on the side of the road even further back.  And, most noticeably, there was no one in the car.  After a confusing and cold few minutes on the shoulder of the highway, watching our bus driver and various other men in uniforms surveying the scene and tutting, we overheard that the driver had grabbed the car`s stereo and literally run for the hills right after the accident.  What presence of mind!  We waited a few minutes for another (very full) bus from the same company to pass, and I ended up sitting in the aisle behind the driver for the rest of the way to DF.  And, in a recurring theme, I was once again rudely awoken just when I was going to sleep, this time by a mother holding a baby and a can of soda, spilling the latter on my leg.  At least she didn`t drop the baby!

We finally made it to DF around 2:30, and stumbled out into the freezing, open terminal with bleary eyes and an immediate need to sleep (I also had a sudden urge to find and drink a licuado, but the food stands were all closed).  We met up with Kisiev and his sister, and we drove across a very deserted-looking Mexico city to the apartment where he, his sister Itzel, and mother Silvia live.  After a snack of chocolate rice cakes, we crashed hard (for the second time that night).

The next day brought a savage, and wonderful, adventure.  After scarfing some finger-licking, sugar-coated pan de los Muertos (kind of like angel food cake but more bready and delicious), we hopped in Kisiev`s car and drove two hours, past barrios creeping up hills, roadside vendors (by which I mean folks with carts standing in the middle of the four-lane highway), power plants, and factories, to Teotihuacan.  Teotihuacan is the site of an ancient city, so old that the Aztecs discovered it already abandoned when they moved into the Mexico valley and founded Tenochtitlan on the site that is now Mexico City.  Teotihuacan is still very much a mystery to archeologists, and new digs are uncovering deeper, buried remnants of even older cities below the surface.

Above the surface, it`s impressive and humbling…rough, angular stone structures are scattered everywhere, massive walls and long plazas abound, and the world`s two largest scalable pyramids (that is, the biggest ones you can get on top of) dominate the landscape.  Sweet!  Petulant weather and a heavy mist gave the whole place a mysterious, brooding, and slightly dangerous feeling.

That mist soon turned into a downpour, and we sprinted for cover under a steel-roof structure protected a recently-excavated house.  After wondering around in the house for twenty minutes, with barely a let-up, we decided to press on to the Temple of the Sun, hoping to get a chance to climb to the top before the entire place closed at 5.  As we moshed through sodden grass plazas, we started seeing flashes on the horizon, and before we knew it we were in the middle of a vicious, slightly worrisome lighting storm.  After many piggy-back rides (for Holly, not me) over river-like drainage runs and deep puddles, we were staring up at the huge pyramid from the base.  Streams of water shoot down from protruding stones along the sides, and the steps looked steep, numerous, and slippery!  By the time we got to the top we were utterly soaked, cold, and triumphant.  Me and Kisiev let loose our best barbaric yawps in the direction of the other pyramid, and I felt more alive, with water streaming down my face and neck and lighting bolts erupting around us on three sides, than I have in a long while.  We could actually see the bolts hitting within the remains of the ancient city, and the interval between flash and boom was getting steadily shorter.  We scrambled down and squished back to the car as fast as we could in the pelting rain, and I have never been so happy that cars come with heaters.

The highways were totally flooded, and what started as slow, sloshy progress through the three-inch high water soon turned into a total, dead-stop traffic jam.  We spent hours sitting, lights and engine off, playing every road trip game we could remember, even resorting to truth or dare out of sheer boredom (Kisiev ended up climbing out of the sunroof of his car in the pouring rain, and running around to the driver`s door to get back in on a dare.  I drank a full 1.5 liter bottle of water, and ended up getting out and taking a leak in front of a fully occupied passenger bus, although only the drinking was part of the dare).

We made it back to the center of Mexico city four soggy hours later, where we picked up Kisiev`s very enthusiastic mom at her workplace (she`d brought a bag of cookies and soda to perk us up).  She took us to a middle-east themed taco join called DonEraki, where we ate grilled steak with onions, peppers, and sheets of melted cheese on puffy, thick pita-tortilla things.  Excellent green and red salsa, and a liter of Horchata each.  Warm, stuffed, and satisfied, although still wet!

We spent the evening at Kisiev`s getting clean and dry, trading favorite youtube clips, and dancing to Celia Cruz.   I admit that the first vid I  put up was Michael Jackson`s Thriller, which was still bouncing around in my head after our salsa class performed it in front of our whole school, in full zombie getup, the day before halloween (see below).  Sometimes a little public embarrassment can be good for the self-confidence.

Stay tuned for adventures from Tixla, the second leg of our weekend trip and the town where Kisiev was born, in the second installment. A quick preview: first encounters with Mescal, dancing demons, little vampiros, marching bands, a street fight, and an encounter with a man known only as “I`m from Texas baby!” Johnny.

Just got back from a fantastic (and sleepless) weekend in Guanajuato, a beautiful colonial city perched on a steep ravine about four hours by bus from Guadalajara.  We visited the Cervantino Festival (named after Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote), saw tons of concerts, met many new people, ate some delicious food, and saw at least one sunrise from the top of the city.  More about that in the next blog post, once I collect all the fantastic picture people took last weekend.

Meanwhile, I´m going to share an aspect of Guadalajara that I´m particularly enamoured with: street life.  Unlike back home, streets here are more than just a conveyance from one place to another.  They house a vibrant informal economy, peddlers of everything from windshield wipers, 30-second car washes, candies, and balloons hawk their wares to drivers stopped in traffic, performers ( glass-walkers, fire-breathers, clowns, ¨ singers and guitar-players, and even the odd melon juggler or two) set up shop at intersections while traffic is paused for red lights, and food stalls offering everything from freshly-fried churros to tacos al vapor, freshly pressed juices, and more festoon most street corners in the central business district.  Colorful graffiti pops up in unexpected places…on the walls of banks, in side alleys, and even in a few ¨designated graffiti zones¨, comprised of white squares painted on to the walls of several businesses in my neighborhood, which I´m sure were ¨designated by the artists themselves and not the local goverment.

Walking becomes an engaging, sensual experience…almost like attending a variety of informal-, impromptu performances, exhibitions.  My friend Andy and I have been taking a lot of photos of street art in our area of town, so I´ll stick those at the bottom of this post. Stay tuned for an entry on street food (featuring the infamous La Calle Los Tacos) in a week or two.  Cheers!

This is a much belated summary of the fantastic weekend I spent at the Cervantino Festival in Guanajuato a few weeks ago.  Cervantino is a huge international arts festival that runs for 2 weeks at the end of October.  Tons of performances in theaters, in the street, in outdoor amphitheaters…everything from dance to opera to theater to jazz orchestras, cuban jazz, electronica, and related after-, before-, and during- parties!  All of this was in one of the most gorgeous cities ve ever been in, replete with cobblestone streets, winding allies, epic stone staircases and even more epic churches, beautiful pastel-colored houses, endless street markets, and, unexpectedly, dozens of roadside pizza stands (in reviewing the weekend, I think I ate 12 slices of pizza over the 3 day trip).

It was a star-studded trip.  In attendance: Holly, Martin, Ana, Kirsten, Che, Yazmine, Chantal (CEPE friends), Andy (my new flatmate), a surprise visit from Cameron the Kiwi (who was first discovered langouring in a hostel in Puerta Vallarta, and later visited us in GDL), and of course Kisiev, who was kind enough to let me crash at his uncle`s place.  Gracias, cabron!

It was a non-stop weekend.  Lots of music (awesome, huge, free concerts in the hundred-year old amphitheater,  including Willie Chorino (a Cuban singer), Paquito D`Rivera (a kickass sax player also from Cuba…he brought his whole jazz orchestra), and others.  Tons of strolling and exploring.  Visits to The Don Quixote museum (and statue…see below), the Diego Rivera/Frieda Kahlo museum, and the creepy Museo de los Mommias, a collection of disinterred corpses, including babies, that are only partially decomposed but completely disgusting.  Spent lots of time hanging with locals, too.  Big ups to Payo and Paula for taking us all over the place, from salsa clubs to grungy house parties to hidden, late-night taco stands!

The city was so alive with people partying and dancing in the streets that the hours seemed to meld together, and the time of day didn`t matter any more.  We attended one techno party with some great DJs in a park one sunny afternoon (a strange but wonderful experience that later spilled into a nearby club…a total of 12 hours in a row of dancing to some great music with a hip, friendly, and exhausted crew of people from all over Mexico).  Another night (morning), we summited Pipila, a huge stone statue towering from atop Guanajuato`s tallest hill, to watch the sun rise, only to discover there was already a crowd there getting ready to start the next day of festivities.  Not to mention the greasy and delicious tacos we scarfed at 6:30 that morning, right before starting our climb…dinner for (early) breakfast!  As Ana would say, porque no?

We got back to GDL four days later; exhausted, dirty, and happy as churros rellenos.

Just got back from a lovely weekend in Puerto Vallarta; lost a pretty serious farmer´s tan and gained some battle-scars from surfing in very shallow water over barnacle-encrusted rocks.  Highlights:  snorkeling under Los Arcos (monumental rock arches soaring above the water near Mismaloya beach).   We snorkelled in the middle of a torrential downpour, so the contrast between the tranquil teal ocean and the turbulent, steely rain drops falling from above was cool.  I spent a lot of time diving and flipping around on my back…when viewed from below, the rain drops impacting the surface looked like millions of camera flashes at a football game.  Our fearless leader and tour guide, Captain Sergio, brought a loaf of sliced white bread, which the fish loved.  He chucked handfulls into the water, engulfing us in schools of fluted trumpetfish, blue, yellow, and black striped angelfish, and some angry-looking chubby grey fish, one of which bit Andy on the finger (understandably…most of us did look a little like white bread before we spent much time getting tan on the beach).  We also caught a very distraught looking pufferfish.  Purple, spiky, and fat, its eyes bulged and beaked mouth garbled as we mercilessly petted and passed it around.   When we finally made it back ashore after three hours in the water, we grabbed cameras, bags, shoes, and ran for the nearest shelter from the downpour…a little beach side restaurant.  It had a less-than- sound thatched roof that sent rivulets of water shooting into puddles in the middle of the floor, but it was drier than being out on the beach!  We sat around comparing prune-fingers and drinking free margaritas (the perks of traveling in large groups!) until our food came.  Stay tuned for some underwater photos (featuring the pufferfish), I´ll upload them when I get my hands on them.

Another highlight was a very cool Cuban restaurant/bar that we discovered on Saturday night.  It was filled the the brim with well dressed Mexicanos of all ages, and the dance floor was packed.  We cautiously tried out some salsa moves, discreetly (hopefully) peeking at the dancers around us to try to pick up some tips.  Also, we had some delicious empanadas and dirty rice topped with a blistering scotch-bonnet salsa, tall, dry mojitos, and Holly ordered a humongous, iridescent red strawberry margarita.  If only I had had my camera!

We bussed over to Sayulita, a small surf town about an hour away, on Sunday.  Sayulita is small and cute, and the beach was filled with Brits and Americans surfing and lounging the day away.  There was a group of 80 university students from Guadalajara up for the weekend, and I actually bumped into 4 or 5 friends from the first hostel I stayed at in Guadalajara.  It was an overcast day, but I still managed to get pretty burnt while surfing.  A few of us rented boards  (figuring that lessons from a surf instructor are for the unadventurous) and proceeded to get up and fall off for an hour or more, scraping fingers and feet on the crusty rocks just below the surface (the waves were breaking very close to the beach so the water was quite shallow)!  I have four matching abrasions on my chest and stomach from wiggling around on the foam surface of my board, but it was definitely worth those few brief, thrilling moments of successful riding (and the more thrilling, more frequent moments of having my board catapulted out from under me by an unexpected swell).  Nancy and Chris, I think you guys will love it there!
Reflecting on the weekend during the bus ride back, I realized I´d learned a ton about myself  this weekend.  Traveling in a large group really put my own preferences, my own style of traveling and exploring, into relief.  I like getting up early, grabbing a quick breakfast, grabbing my camera and heading off for points unknown.  Wandering, getting lost, and getting home late for dinner are all part of the fun for me.  This is difficult (and somewhat inconsiderate) to do when you´re with a group of friends, each of whom has their own desires, preferences, and schedules.  Seeing so many different traveling styles at once was a boon…everyone has their own way of encountering a new place, of familiarizing themselves, exploring, and interacting with new people, and it was really cool to see it all unfold over the weekend.  I learned a lot about patience, about compromise, but I also learned that you don´t have to be with people you´ve known for years to really connect, and have a great time to boot!

We got back exhausted on Monday night, but I dragged myself out (camera in hand, money in shoe) to the enormous festival de la Virgin de Zapopan.  I hopped a commuter bus to Zapopan, about 10 minutes from my house, and wandered through the festivities taking photos .  There were huge crowds, bands and dance performances by leaf-clad dancers, carnival games, street food galore, and even impromptu blanket auctions presided over by breathless men wearing clip-on microphones.  The coolest part was the long, snaking line stretching from the Basilica across the huge plaza and out to the street…probably a quarter of a mile long. The faithful (and curious) waited all night long, inching up bit by bit, to pay their respects to the Virgin of Zapopan (a knee-height, ornate doll), who had been conveyed from Guadalaraja´s main cathedral to Zapopan by a large procession earlier that day.  I didn´t get in line to see the Virgin, but I definitely took advantage of the abundance of street food, grabbing an interesting cone of prune-flavored ice cream.

Next on the agenda: more salsa lessons this week, a soccer game, more volunteering at the orphanage, and off to Guanajuato this weekend to see the Cervantino Festival.  Rock!

It´s kind of bizarre to have someone pack you a lunch every day when you´re 23. The little ham and cheese sandwiches my host (grand)mom packs for me every day, wrapped tightly in a napkin, a sheet of waxpaper, and a plastic bag, are both comforting and infantilizing (if that´s a word).  In fact, my whole week has been.  By the time I wake up and pad downstairs, Maria Theresa is already hunched over the stove scrambling an egg with some ham, heating up refried beans, and toasted bread in her stove-top panini press.  She either starts frying the egg when she hears me coming down the stairs, or just has a bizarre 6th sense to detect when hungry young people are in the vicinity.  While I eat, she brings me hot water for my instant coffee, and starts making the sandwich that I´ll take with me to school.  We chat over breakfast (I eat, she watches), and at some point after I leave for school, she sneaks into my room, makes my bed, and opens the windows.   When I get back home, sometimes very late, I find a pot or frying pan of soup or pasta sitting on the stove, ready to be heated up.

As charming (and convenient) as this arragngment is for me, it didn´t come easily.  After two or three scoldings, I stopped trying to wash my dishes, or even use any of the kitchen appliances to make my own food.  After several days of steady progress, she now allows me to clear my place and bring the dirty dishes into the kitchen.  Though she is still perplexed by the practice, she´s resigned herself to my taking off my shoes at the front door (she leaves hers on throughout the day).  After I discovered she was cleaning my room every day, I started pre-emptively making my bed and opening the windows, but she still comes in to re-arrange the pillows and tuck the sheets even tighter around the corners (or so I suspect).

Maria Theresa is my new host family, although she lives by herself.  She´s about 65, and spends most of her days in the house, cooking, cleaning, and watch TV.  She has a big family, all of whom live in Guadalajara, so most afternoons I end up playing soccer with her 6 year-old grandson, Mauricio (they call him Mau, pronounced like Mao, which is a pretty bomber nickname in my opinion).  Maria has been so friendly and generous since I moved in last Friday…a amicable curmudgeon who keeps a little smile tucked into the corner of her mouth when she shoes Mau away (he likes to play with his mini tennis racket and ball on the dining room table) or snorts skeptically at a newscaster on the TV.  I´m not sure how, but we manage to communicate pretty well even though she speaks no english.  We´ve talked about politics a bit (she´s pretty liberal), her past carreer as a seamstress, and especially about the telenovellas she dutifully watches every evening at 8:30.  I usually join her when I´m around, with my notebook in hand in case a new word pops up.  We both agree the central antagonist in La Muhare Comprado, the beautiful and manipulative mother of the adopted child of another character, is completely loca, and even a bit mala (sorry about my spelling for those of you who speak Spanish).

Being in school is a bit weird too…I can´t remember the last time I had homework that included matching pitctures to nouns, and filling in the blank.  I intended to take 3 courses at first, but because I tested into the second level of spanish, I´m kind of trapped in between levels, and am only taking one at the moment (with a wonderful professor named Mercedes).  The first level is mind-numbing and the professor seems pretty unengaged, so I decided to just buy the textbook and work through the elementary grammar on my own.  I´m taking latin dance classes here, too…I´m one of two guys in our class, so we´re in pretty high demand as partners.  We´re all going out friday night to practice our new moves at a salsa club nearby.  I signed up to volunteer at an orphanage twice a week, and I´m on my school´s soccer team too.  Our first game is next week, against a team of professors from the University of Guadalajara´s engineering school…should be a lot of fun!

I´m starting to settle in here and make some more lasting friends (pretty much all my buddies from the hostel have moved on), so the past few days have been socially fulfilling.  There were a few toughs days in there, days where I remembered how emotionally tough, and even disconcerting, travelling alone can be.  Having people to explore with makes all the difference!

I went back to the hostel to watch the soccer match between Mexico and Columbia last night, and had a great conversation with some brits who´ve been travelling around the U.S. and Mexico for the past few months, and were totally filled with wonder and delight at everything they´ve seen.  That´s the attidude that I really want to cultivate in myself on this trip and beyond.  Ultimately, I think that´s what travelling is all about…really feeling deeply the delights (and sometimes lonliness) of exploring new social and geographical terrain.  My pact to myself is to suck the juice out of each day and moment, to put myself out there in every possible way and actively seek out new experiences, and to not be held back by self-doubts or by my language skills.  Here, I have tons of opportunities to do that…even going to buy a SIM card is linguistically challenging, a bit nerve-wracking, but ultimately rewarding.  Staying open and aggresively pursuing new experiences takes a lot of internal motivation and pep-talks, whether asking girls to dance at a club or going to a new part of the city on the somewhat hectic and irregular bus network.  I think these milestones are what I´ll remember the most about this trip, more than beautiful beaches or ancient cathedrals.  Ultimately, I´m here to learn about myself just as much as to learn Spanish, and the past two weeks have been a crash course in both!

It’s about 9-30 in the morning, and I’m sitting at the communal computer in Hospedarte’s living area with a cup of instant coffee, trying to figure out how to type a colon on the keyboard in front of me. People are shuffling around, making breakfast, and watching a Mexican version of “Cops.”

Guadalajara!  I got in Thursday night after a super quick flight from New York, and saw for the first time the city that is going to be my home for the next several months.  Guadalajara is huge, a maze of stubby white buildings spreading across a verdant plain.  The city is surrounded by rippling hills and the enormous Lago Chapala to the south.

I’m staying at a hostel in a neighborhood called Colonia Americana, which is sort of the hip, newer part of town.  Restaurants and bars abound (everything from delis to sushi joints, american-style burger palaces, ice cream parlors,  the bizarrely named “Wing’s Army,” a bar decked out in olive and camo decor, and last but not least, the famed Calle Los Tacos…more on that later) .  Also, weirdly, there are tons of stores selling office furniture.  The main avenues here are broad and feature fountain-laden medians that are paved with orange tiles.  Most of the streets are lined with oak and palm trees…definitely a beautiful place!

The historic district lies on the other end of town, a 20 minute walk down la calle Vallarta, the city’s main artery.  Grungy bars and small taco stands give way to broad plazas paved with tiles, large department stores, a few huge cathedrals, and even a large government building in the style of the Greek Parthenon.  The whole area is beautifully lit at night, and always packed with families, street-hawkers selling plastic toys, balloons, and bags filled with chips,  orange snacks that look like pork rinds and taste like fried flour, and sweets.

Like any city, Guadalajara definitely has its fair share of poorer areas.  I found this out first hand when, two days ago, I decided to go for a “little” run to  check out the area with two other guys from the hostel.  I didn’t realize they were both avid long-distance runnners until we were about 5k in to the run, totally and completely lost in a run-down area of town.  Guadalajara is a very industrial city, with entire districts of factories with gated, guarded entrances, broken sidewalks, and apartment buildings of cracked, tan stucco.  At the same time, some of these areas are bustling and so full of life, as we soon found out.

Jogging is apparently a bit of a novelty here.  In fact, we only saw one other runner the whole time we were out, and got more than our fair share of perplexed stares.  At one point, we were running down a narrow sidewalk, buses and trucks belching past on our right,  towards a group of tough-looking twenty somethings hanging out in the open bay of a mechanic’s garage.  As we jogged up to them, one of the guys feigned a look of terror and clutched his friend’s shoulder, cowaring behind him.  Playing along, I ran at them fult tilt, whooping and waving my arms.  They looked genuinely concerned for a millisecond, and then all of us burst into laughter as I veered off and we ran past.  Later, we ran past a high school as hoards of students were leaving for lunch, and actually got cat-called by a group 14 year old girls wearing matching school uniforms (Papacito, papacito!).  By the time we made it back to the hostel, we’d run 11k and I was about ready to explode.  The whole time, I felt much safer than I ever have in the tougher parts of Las Vegas and D.C.

I’ve been spending most of my time here hanging out with other people staying at the hostel.  I’ve been lucky enough to meet some really great folks and become fast friends with a few. A lot of the people here actually study or work in Guadalajara, and most are from Mexico, so I’ve been hearing (and speaking) lots of Spanish and improving a ton.  My telcel phone is filling up with names and numbers, and I have offers (that I’ll definietly take advantage of) to stay with some new friends in Monterray and Mexico City.  Surprisingly, hanging around and playing Lotteria, cards, and just talking with the people  has been as rewarding as the challenge and excitement of being in a new city.  I feel more experienced, more capable than I did the first time I travelled alone, which is both encouraging and kind of sad.  There’s nothing to match the bewildered, nervous, wonderful feeling of turning up in a strange city with only a backpack for first time in your life, and I don’t think you can ever feel that way again.  The magic of travelling is still there for me, but some of the nervous excitement is gone.
My time’s about up, so I’ll give you a quick round-up of the week’s events before I sign off (imagine a colon here):

Walking and running all around town, watching some amazing dancers at a salsa club, learning (with mixed success) how to ask girls to dance in spanish, chatting up cab drivers and hopping on my first bus, getting lost (figuratively)in an enormous market,  visiting a casino (sorry, they didn’t let me take pictures), seeing a Fourtet and Circle square concert in Zapopan, and discovering the wonder that is La Calle Los Tacos, a street filled with carts selling all manner of tacos from 10pm to 6 in the morning.  It’s usually packed with people in-between clubs or looking for a greasy, delicious end to the night.  Tacos cost 60 cents, and the meat is served steaming and greasy from huge flat stovetops with onions chopped translucent-thin, mountains of diced cilantro, and a battallion of sauces of varying agressiveness.  I’ve been back almost every day!