Belated Tidings

Sorry dear readers for the tardy entry, but the fact is I haven't written anything lately because there hasn't really been much to report. My spanish school has been keeping me sufficiently busy that I haven't had much time to sight-see or anything anything like that.

The language school is going ok, it's not coming as fast as I would like, but that's probably because I was overly optimistic and had unrealistic expectations. I'm pretty impatient when it comes to learning new things and learning a language is not like learning a concrete science (which is what I'm used to) where you can overcome obstacles just by brute force and sheer stubborness. That being said, I think it is going well, well enough that I've decided to stay another week.

After the first few days, I requested to stay with a local family as I felt the "all English speaking" environment of a hostel wasn't the best option for language immersion. The family I'm staying with is really nice, and is composed of folks from three different generations, including the 9 month old granddaughter Daphne, who is adorable. Alot of my evenings are spent playing dominoes or cards with the kids and parents, which is really helpful in my learning. I have to admit that at first I was nervous about staying with a family, because really, who knows what they might be like? When the director of my school told me he had found me a family, he told me: "they are really nice, but they are a humble family." I wasn't sure exactly what he was getting at and he really seemed to be emphasizing the "humble" part. I imagined myself sharing a pile of straw with two goats and Faustino, the senile grandfather, and having to use a tin pail as a latrine. However, the reality was that they seem to be just an average middle class family. The house is large, if modestly furnished and decorated. The matron of the family is very friendly, if a little overbearing and insistent (but then again, she is a latin mother after all). I have my own private bedroom and bathroom. The only inconvenience so far has been that the pilot light on the hot water heater goes out when it rains really hard (it's located on the roof for some reason). But other than that my stay has been really comfortable.

Last week, we had some new students arrive at the house. Although I don't have any funny stories to tell about my in-class experiences, I'll relate a few that Jeff, a spanish language beginner, told me. In one of his classes the students were talking about their family and were practicing using descriptive phrases to describe them. When describing his wife, Jeff quickly exhausted the easy ones like "short", "pretty", etc.. and thought to throw out another adjective to describe his wife. Since he has a goatee, and was trying to keep the mood light and humorous, it made sense to him to say his wife had no facial hair. But given his limited vocabulary, what he actually said in spanish was "My wife is clean shaven". The reaction of the teacher was all he needed to know that what he said wasn't exactly what he meant. (I'll leave it to your imaginations to figure it out). Earlier today he was talking at the breakfast table and he was trying to say something about that he liked to bathe or wash stuff (I'm really not sure what he was getting at), but what he, in fact, said was "I give pleasure to myself when I wash". Ah, the pitfalls of learning a new language. There's never a dull moment.

The first two pictures I took are from a lookoutpoint on a hill high above the city where there is the monument to El Pipila, the brave miner who helped jumpstart La Independencia. It offers a great panorama of the entire city. In the center you can see the triangular shaped park which serves as a central point in the city for wandering musicians, outdoor cafes, and people just out for a walk. The statue itself is interesting and a little Stalin-esque (the meek lower class miner transformed into the well muscled hero shining light upon the masses). The caption below the statue is great: "Aun hay otras alhondigas por incender..." which translates to "there are still other alhondigas to burn..." (alhondiga was the granary type building he set fire to, which served as a fortified position for the spanish imperialists when the locals rose up against them).

The third picture is of a massive parade that came through town where hundred of dancers and drummers were on exhibition. This photo shows some "folklorico" dancers in Aztec atire, with a few cute kids joining the throng.

The fourth picture was shot from inside the "triangular shaped" garden shown in the first picture. I still can't figure out how they get the tops of the trees so perfectly shorn flat. The last picture is of my favorite plaza in the city, the Plaza San Fernando, which is lined by modest restaurants and is a popular meeting place for locals and tourists alike. Last night, a beautiful dance was held in the large cobblestone square in the center of the plaza. Eleven or twelve couples were dancing to various latin beats, such as son, cumbia, cha cha, and salsa. The great part is that they were all older (the youngest was probably around 55 or so). And they all danced so beautiful and were incredibly nimble and vivacious. I'll post some pictures next time, as only Jeff had his camera when we were there watching.

Bound for the mainland

These first few pictures I had to include because they are pretty cool. The first two are of beautiful moonrises we had in Mulege. The first one I took while Nate and Matthew were on a night dive at Punta Prieta, and I stayed surface side to provide support. The second one we took from the upper deck of Pancho Villa's; you can see the moon rising behind the lighthouse. (I should mention that I couldn't quite get the picture to turn, but relied on Matthew to use his superior photography skills to capture this image... and I haven't yet found a computer with Photoshop to take out the telephone line in the foreground). The third picture is a drawing that Emilia's brother, Isaac, made for me. In it, he chronicles the epic day of fishing that Roan, Jens and I had. He drew every animal that we saw on that day: a family of Dorado, a Sailfish, a Marlin, a Whale, some Dolphin, a Turtle, and that thing that looks like a devilish sperm is meant to be a Manta Ray... he also threw in a starfish for good measure. For a young kid, he is a very good artist. Also, remember that you can click on each picture too see a larger version.

Although I was originally planning on leaving on Monday, Emilia cajoled me into staying until Wednesday, which was my birthday. Although I'm not usually one to enjoy celebrating my birthday, especially in my advancing years, I was sort of relieved not to have to spend it on a bus, a plane and then another bus (as was my original plan). The Buckovecs/Villavicencio family (the owner's of Pancho Villa's Restaurant) were sort of like a second family for me when I was living in Mulege during the winter. The matron of the family, Yolanda, made me an awesome birthday dinner of beef arrachera (a tasty sauce mostly made of chiles) and mashed potatoes (yum!). To top it off, Emilia's sister Lucy made me a pinapple pie to take with me. She is an awesome baker and this unusual pie was no exception (though it was a bit burdensome to travel with, without reducing it to pineapple crumble). Late that night I took the night bus to La Paz, and then caught the early flight to Queretaro, where I would take my final bus to Guanajuato

Guanajuato is where I am enrolled in a Spanish study program for a few weeks. As I was flying into Queretaro, I noticed that the airport was well outside of town. When I landed, I was determined not to take a taxi from the airport to the bus station, as taxis in Mexico tend to be very expensive. I was disappointed not to find a generic bus or collectivo service from the airport to the city. Not to be discouraged, I discovered that there was a public bus stop a 15 minute walk from the airport. I was assured every bus that would stop could take me to the Queretaro town center. After waiting for over an hour, two buses had passed, and neither was going anywhere near Queretaro. Since it was pretty hot, I decided I was getting on the next bus no matter what. So I did, and therefore had a better chance to chat with the bus driver to figure out how to get into town. It wasn't that hard really, but certainly not intuitive. He dropped me off at a small town about five minutes away where buses run to Queretaro every ten minutes. It only took me two hours, but I made it downtown, and saved probably a whopping 5 bucks in the process. But that's travel, huh?

That evening I rolled into Guanajuato, and was immediately enchanted by the small town nestled in a valley of rolling mountains. The town is all winding cobblestone streets curving sharply up or down around the next hill. There isn't a straight road in the entire city. The town, which was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988, is a testament to the wealth this region produced during the 18th century when this region of Mexico was one of the largest producers of silver in the world. In fact at one time the Valencia mine here in Guanajuato produced 20% of the silver mined in this hemisphere. The history of wealth is evident in the beautifully maintained colonial buildings, and the baroque and churrigueresque (sp?) churches, and many parks. The parks are gorgeous, green and lush and filled with people strolling by or just enjoying the cool mountain weather.
The music of crooning mariachi bands fills the Jardin de la Union, where musicians court the patrons at the park's outdoor cafes and restaurants. There are so many people out and about each evening, which I think is partly due to the fact that Guanajuato is a popular tourist destination (if only a small one), but also due to the fact that it´s a university town which is home to about 20,000 students (a sizeable portion of the 80,000 or so who call Guanajuato home).

The Bounty of the Sea of Cortez

Even though I hadn't originally planned on visiting Baja during this trip, it made sense for me to come back to Mulege since Matthew and Nate would be here, as well as my two German, er, I mean Danish friends Roan and Jens. It was a nice relaxing week, with almost everyday spent in or on the water, and the evenings spent playing cribbage and dice with friends. I went on several scuba dives with the guys and Roan, Jens and I went on a sportfishing trip on Sunday. Another highlight of being back was visiting with my local friends at Pancho Villa's and El Patron, two of my favorite places in the world to relax and have a nice meal near the beach.

Our final scuba dive trip was a special visit to the Island of Santa Iñes Norte, where there is a sea lion rookery most of the year. We were hoping to get to dive and snorkel with the sea lions a little bit, and we weren't disappointed. I was surprised at how big the larger males were, and how gracefully they moved under the water, performing spins and flips with the greatest of ease.

We were considering booking a fishing trip for the following day, but Jens and Roan were a little hesitant because of a bad experience they'd just had with a fishing trip in Mazatlan. They got shut out on that trip... they had fish on the line, but couldn't land them. They were leary of spending another whole day without catching anything. I don't know anything about the fishing in Mazatlan, but the fishing here is near legendary for a small town, and the captain we were referred to came highly recommended, so I felt sure we would have a good day on the water.

We met our captain Jose Luis, known to everyone as "Niño", at 6 am on Sunday at the dock. Still bleary eyed, we loaded our gear into his boat and set off for Punta Prieta to catch some live bait. We spent about 15 minutes jigging in shallow water and caught about five or six small fish each, enough to satisfy Niño. I told Jens and Roan that at least they now could say they caught some fish in Mexico. So we headed off into deeper waters, and after 30 minutes or so we passed Punta Concepcion where there was a commercial fishing boat stringing out a long net into the waters near the mouth of the bay. After we passed the boat, we saw in quick succession a pair of whales (humpback or possibly cey whales) a few hundred meters from the boat, a large pod of dolphins swimming east, and a couple of manta rays swimming on the surface about 50 meters from the boat. We took this as a good sign of things to come. Not five minutes after we saw the mantas, we saw something else in the water, but much closer, maybe only 50 feet from the boat. It appeared to be a swordfish floating on top of the water. All that was visible was his dorsal fin and the "sword" of his nose. The captain excitedly steered the boat in his direction and strung up a live fish onto a reel and tossed the bait right in front of the marlin. I had actually assumed the fish was dead since I'd never seen a fish just sit on top of the water without moving like that. Unfortunately though, he didn't seem to be hungry as he didn't take the bait despite repeated attempts, and eventually swam off. After this, Niño strung up a rod and reel with a lure, for each of us and we trolled them off the back of the boat as we sought deeper waters. About 10 minutes later, there was a huge bite on Roan's reel. None of us were really sure what to do, but Roan picked up his rod and began to fight. Immediately a huge marlin burst from the water's surface and tossed his head as he fought to shake the lure. Despite Roan's valiant attempt to reel him in, the marlin had successfully shaken himself free of the hook. Although it was a big disappointment to lose the fish, it was also very encouraging since we hadn't been on the water that long. Not much longer, we spotted a sailfish on the surface exactly as the marlin was before. Again, we were unable to get it to bite, but it was still so cool to see the huge sailfin protruding from the water's glassy surface. We continued to motor out into deeper water and we approached a distance of about 10 miles from shore which is where the Dorado roam, a prized gamefish reknown for their beauty and delicious taste. Over the course of the next three or four hours, the three of us landed eight beautiful Dorado, many of which were extremely large and fierce fish. One of the ones that Roan caught was a monster that jumped repeatedly, followed by several dives to deep depth. All the fish were eventually brought on board and we were assured a great feast for that evening. On the long way back to shore (we had reached distances of close to 30 miles offshore in our pursuit of the Dorado), we spotted another group of breaching whales, another pod of dolphins, a sea turtle and the best of all were the acrobatic eagle rays that would explode from the surface and perform backflips and other aerial feats. Buoyed by a successful day, we enjoyed a beer on the long trip back and marveled at the beauty of the Dorado. I was truly amazed at how beautiful the fish are. When they are swimming in the water, they appear to change color from brilliant gold, to emerald green, then to blue and back again. When we reached shore, we gave two of the fish to Niño, four to Pancho Villa's restaurant and two to El Patron's restaurant. The fish we gifted to Yolanda at Pancho's bought us a big discount on a huge Dorado dinner that night. It was one of the best tasting fish I've ever had, probably made more delicious knowing we'd caught it that day. I should mention that, as proud as we were, we had no delusions that we'd caught the fish due to any skill of our own. All our success is completely due to the knowledge and skill of our captain who knew just where to stalk the Dorado in the vast offshore stretches of the Sea of Cortez. This point was underscored when we docked and another boat that had been out Dorado fishing had come up completely empty handed. Yep, all credit to Niño. What an epic fishing trip! And not only because of the fish that we caught. It was so cool to see whales, dolphins, manta rays, eagle rays, marlin, sailfish, and a turtle all in the same day.

As I write this, Roan and Jens just walked out the door to catch the bus to Loreto and continue their trip. I'm really glad they decided to come to Mulege on my recommendation as that was one of the reasons I came here as well. I'm bummed to see them go, because some of the best moments of my trip so far has been shared with them. I wish them well in the rest of their trip and hope to see them again soon. That's both the blessing and the curse of traveling: you meet great people who become really good friends, but it's only fleeting as you eventually have to say goodbye. Well, Roan and Jens... good luck and Rød grød med fl­øde!

Guadalajara

On Thursday, May 24, I took a bus to Guadalajara. The tourist literature will tell you it's the most Mexican of cities, and after having visited it for several days I still can't really say what that means. But it is a nice city, and the 3rd largest in Mexico, I think.

Guadalajara has some great parks, especially in the historical center and people really make the most out of them at all times of the day. They were a great place to people watch. One evening in one of the plazas, a group of guys were putting on a breakdancing show. There was a group of about five drummers and several dancers who performed some incredibly acrobatic feats including one guys who did the "run up the side of the wall into a backflip" trick which was really cool to see. Even though there is alot of culture and history in Guadalajara, I felt like I visited all the major sites in two days including seeing some of the coolest murals by Jose Clemente Orozco, including part of his Apocalypse mural (photo included of the "Burning Man" which is painted in the underside of the museum's dome).

One of the highlights was a visit to a huge urban market, supposedly the largest of its kind in the country. Every manner of fruit, vegetable, spice, herb, medicine, trinket and clothing was for sale there. There was a huge section devoted to the butchers who had every conceivable piece of cows and pigs on display, including whole heads (with and without skin), feet, stomachs, tongues and a tail or two. There were so many kinds of fruit I'd never seen before. I wanted to try it all, but I settled for a mango, a banana, and a glass of cane juice pressed straight from sugar cane... it was so sweet I could only finish half of it.

Another attraction on the tourist circuit for visitors to Guadalajara is a tequila tour. The town of Tequila is the birthplace of the drink made from the blue agave plant, and I took a tour with a group from my hostel. The first hour of the tour was devoted to learning about the agave plant and the methods of extracting the flavor from the "piña" (the heart of the agave) and the distillation. The rest of the day was devoted to sampling several varieties of tequila. Many of them are quite good and the two distilleries we visited both had strikingly different tastes.

After a few days in Guadalajara, I decided it was time to head back to Baja, where I had planned to catch up with some Danish guys I met in Mexico City, and also to visit Matthew and Nate who were going to be visiting for the week. A quick flight from Guadalajara and a bus from La Paz brought me to Mulege on Sunday. I've been here all week and will provide another update soon of what the five of us have been up to... (it's been a fun week).

I'll post some more pictures later, since I'm having difficulty uploading them right now.