Feliz Nuevo Año

I'm getting way behind with this blog. We have been to quite a few interesting places, but I haven't had much internet access where I can upload photos and blogging over cellular data using Michelle's ipad hasn't been working that well.

Mitla has probably the most well-preserved ruins in the valley. That's partly because it's (relatively) new: Mitla was the dominant Zapotec city in the late post-classic period, i.e. from ~1250AD until the Spanish arrived. The Zapotecs didn't leave Mitla even then: the ruins are in the middle of the modern town. The church was built partly on top of a palace, using stones from the palace of course. The remainder of the palace was converted for use as the priest's house and stables. You can see bits of broken pottery in the walls where the conversion work was done.

The rulers of Mitla had remembered or re-discovered how to write and had the resources to build palaces and pyramids, though not on the scale nor to the standards of Monte Alban. The palace complex was made of stone, but outlying pyramids were made from adobe and haven't lasted nearly as well. Someone had built a house into one complex and was using the court for a goat enclosure.

We've finished lunch and I should give up the table, so I'll cut this short. I've put a few photos of Mitla at https://picasaweb.google.com/100719842898341494426/20111222Mitla . I have lots more, including some details of well-preserved murals, but don't have time to post them right now.

Hasta luego!

A little birdie told me

I started a post on birds we have seen, but didn't publish it until today. Blogger in its wisdom, inserted the post back on the date I started it, so it doesn't look like a new post. Here is a link to the bird list: http://principleduncertainty.blogspot.com/2011/12/bird-list.html

Monte Alban

Caves in the central valleys of Oaxaca contain human remains and artifacts dated to at least 9000 years ago. The Zapotecs created city-states at San Jose El Mogote and Suchilquitongo at about the same time as the Olmecs in Veracruz and Tabasco, i.e. between 1800-300 BC. There is certainly evidence of Olmec influence in Zapotec culture. Around 300 BC, a group of Zapotecs created the city of Monte Alban, which dominated the three main valleys of Oaxaca through the classic period, until around 800 AD when most cities in mesoamerica were abandoned for reasons unknown.

Building Monte Alban was quite a feat. The main ceremonial pyramids and plazas are in a group known as the "Gran Plaza", located at the crest of a mountain that rises 400m. The Gran Plaza extends roughly 300m N-S and 200m E-W and is nearly level. Making it level involved removing the top bit of the mountain. The hauling was all done by humans: the Zapotecs had neither pack animals nor the wheel. Some of the stone used in the construction of the Gran Plaza came from the mountain, but much if it had to be brought from elsewhere in the valley, again on the backs of human workers or on sledges pushed by teams of workers for stones that were too heavy to carry. Unburdened, it would take me about two hours to walk up to Monte Alban from the valley floor. I can't imagine making the climb in the heat and carrying a heavy load of rocks.

Monte Alban ruled over 200 other communities in the Valles Centrales of Oaxaca for about a thousand years. The population of the city grew to about 25000 people, most of whom lived high above the farms, which were mainly on the valley floor. Estimates of the total population of the Valles Centrales at the time vary widely, but it would have been at least several hundred thousand people.

The people of Monte Alban developed writing, a sophisticated calendar and probably had the concept of zero right from the time of the city's foundation. There is evidence to suggest that people from Monte Alban taught astronomy to the people of Teotihuacan (astronomical knowledge is necessary in order to create an accurate calendar). As Teotihuacan grew, it in turn influenced architectural and artistic styles in Monte Alban.

Monte Alban was never reoccupied after it was abandoned. The people of the valley appear to have lost their knowledge of reading and writing; writing appears to be absent from the valley for several centuries after Monte Alban's abandonment.

The rulers of the nearby city of Zaachila claimed to have inherited their right to rule from Monte Alban. The Mixtecs who eventually conquered a large part of the Valles Centrales for a time buried their dead kings in old Zapotec tombs in the ruins of Monte Alban. The treasures from the famous "Tomb 7" date from the Mixtec era.

It's pretty easy to visit the ruins of all the major cities in the Valles Centrales, from the pre-classic city of San Jose El Mogote, to Monte Alban, to the post-classic centres like Yagul and Mitla. At each site, if you look carefully, you can find shards of pottery made when the city was occupied. At Yagul, some of the shards can be quite large, say 20cm square (except that pieces that big are usually curved). Michelle found a piece of worked flint at Yagul; I'm sorry I didn't take a picture. At most of the other sites, the pieces we found were mostly less than 3cm on a side, but they sometimes had traces of tool marks, ornamentation or the original colour. A large intact clay sculpture was found quite recently near the access road to Monte Alban. There is presumably lots more to be found on the mountain, but visitors are only allowed to wander a small fraction of the old city. Of course, all finds must be left at the site, so we didn't take away any souveniers.

My Monte Alban picasaweb album contains a small fraction of the photos we took there. I'll be more than happy to subject you to photos of nearly every visible carving in the Gran Plaza, some from several different angles, if you show the slightest bit of interest :-) Plus the obligatory photos of every pyramid and wide angle shots to put the buildings into context, of course.

Here are "drawings" made from a few of the shots, with commentary from a native guide (click for a larger version):

Christmas Piñata

Our only Christmas ornament this year is a piñata. Decorating with piñatas is a Oaxacan tradition, though often they are broken by children at the end of the posadas that take place from December 16th to 24th. Anyway, here is a picture of our piñata, as well as a photo of some in the main square.

Noche de las Rabanas

I have put a few photos from the night of the radishes up at my picasaweb page.

I think my next D&D scenario should feature one of these:

Bird list

A list of some of the birds we've seen, mostly in our yard. This list just includes species that we're pretty sure we have identified correctly; we've certainly seen lots of others, most of which don't appear to be in the Peterson Field Guide to Mexican Birds.

Overall I'm not thilled with the Peterson guide. It doesn't seem to include any of the eagles or vultures we've seen, nor does it include many large wading birds. For example, we have seen a lot of white birds that look like herons; there is nothing even close in the guide. On further reading of the "how to use this guide" section, it appears that birds included in the north american field guides are not illustrated, so we would also need at least the guide to western north america. Oh well.

• Black-vented oriole. Probably some other orioles as well, possibly including the baltimore oriole, but they didn't hold still long enough for identification.)
  
• berylline hummingbird (possibly a rufous-tailed hummingbird)
  
• clay-coloured robin (most common bird seen drinking on our patio)
  
• red-lored parrot (possibly a lilac-crowned parrot)
  
• gray silky-flycatcher (all flycatchers seen eating seeds, not flies :-)
  
• social flycatcher
  
• boat-billed flycatcher
  
• yellow-olive flycatcher
  
• vermillion flycatcher (male and female)
  
• western kingbird (not too sure about this one, but it was a small yellowish bird with a grey head and this is the best match I can find. Gray-headed tanager looks similar.)
  
  
• golden vireo (not absolutely sure about this one, as a number of flycatchers look similar. We would be at the southern edge of its range, but definitely in the kind of habitat it prefers.)
  
• great egret (not in our yard, photo to be added later)
  
• juvenile white-faced ibis (hanging out with the egrets)
  
• turkey vulture
  
• many others we haven't identified
  

Merry Christmas to All!

Today we put up our lone Christmas decoration: a festive pinata. Its body is ruffled green and festooned with red and white poinsettas. Seven red cones protrude from the body; each cone ends in a long green tassel. The whole is topped by a green and white cube decorated with snowflakes. It measures about a metre from the bottom tassel to the top of the cube and is quite heavy because there is a clay pot at the core. We didn't add any candy; maybe if we're lucky, Santa will fill it for us tonight. Or perhaps that would be unlucky, given that my waistline appears to be expanding from all the good food here in Oaxaca.

We assume that everything will be closed tomorrow and we're not sure about the rest of next week, so today we went out and bought extra drinking water to make sure we have enough. It was already very quiet downtown today. The locals have their big Christmas dinner tonight, before going to midnight mass and opening presents. Lots of restaurants were advertising elaborate Christmas parties: for around $45pp we could have had what I'm sure would be an astonishing feast, but we decided to save a bit of money and cook for ourselves. Part of the reason is that neither of us brought along any clothes that would be suitable to wear to a fancy Christmas party. Michelle could get something here, but it's very hard to find anything in my size.

We're spending tonight at home, listening to the fireworks from other celebrations. Tomorrow will also be a quiet day at home, though we may go out for a walk in the hills above San Felipe in the morning before it gets too hot. We will be thinking of family and friends tomorrow as we sit on our rooftop deck, watching the sunrise and the little birds flitting about the trees in our yard. (As I write this, the hummingbirds are making scolding sounds outside as they settle down for the night.) In the afternoon as we prepare chicken in red mole for our Christmas dinner, Michelle and I will raise a glass of Sangria in a toast to absent friends.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Before we left Vancouver, we had expected to make skype calls to family and some friends on Christmas day. That won't happen now, as we will have no internet for the laptop tomorrow and possibly not for the next several days. Feel free to call us if you have our number.

Night of the Living Radishes

Five days since my last post, eh? I guess we've been too busy to get much internet time.

We've been very busy ticking off ruins. We went back to Yagul for a hike with some folks from the lending library, and also to Zaachila and Mitla. All three of those cities reached their peak in the post-classic period, i.e. the few hundred years before the Spanish conquest. And of course, we also visited Monte Alban, the first great city in the Americas.

Monte Alban is amazing and deserves its own blog entry. Suffice to say, the builders of Teotihuacan probably learned astronomy from the people of Monte Alban. Monte Alban was abandoned around 800 AD for unknown reasons. The same thing seems to have happened to nearly every city in mesoamerica at about the same time; no one knows why.

Zaachila is quite near to Monte Alban and its kings claimed to be the inheritors of Monte Alban, though their city was on a much smaller scale. The current town of Zaachila is built over top of many of the ruins. The church sits atop an old ceremonial site, but nothing was built on a few of the pyramids nearby. They are now covered with grass and somewhat eroded. There is an old tomb that was excavated in the 60s which has some cool paintings and fretwork, a bit like Mitla.

Mitla was the dominant city in the valley of Oaxaca at the time of the Spanish conquest, so it has a number of fairly well preserved ruins. However, some of the pyramids were built of adobe instead of stone, which suggests that the city was not as wealthy as the cities of the classic period. Mitla is famous for the geometric patterns in its fretwork. Those patterns are reproduced in a lot of modern day Zapotec art, especially in carpets but also in designs on people's clothing.

The modern town of Mitla is also built atop the old city. Some buildings have foundations that were probably the foundations of old palaces or ceremonial complexes. Someone had built a shack and tethered a goat in an old ceremonial square. Part of the ruin was refurbished in conquest times to provide a home for the parish priest. You can see bits of old pottery that were incorporated into the wall of the priest's house. Stones from the old city were also used to construct the church.

I'm blathering and this is probably getting dull for some, so here are a few photos from Zaachila and Mitla. I've also included a shot of an ex-monastery we stopped at on the way to Zaachila. Apparently the monastery builders went way over budget and were ordered to stop contruction by the king. What they managed to complete is pretty impressive: something you would expect to see near a major city rather than in the middle of nowhere.

Now, about those radishes. Every year on December 23rd, the main square of the city of Oaxaca is devoted to displays by local artisans. There are fabulous scenes contructed of dried flowers, flowers and figures made from corn husks, but the main event is the scenes constructed of carved radishes. People line up for blocks to parade around the square and look at all the art on display. Some of the radishes had wilted a bit in the heat by the time we got there, but it was still pretty impressive. I'll post some pics later; right now I unfortunately don't have the cable with me to download them from the camera.

Chocolate and corn come from around here

Traders travelling between Tenochtitlan and Honduras dealt in chocolate, among other things, but much of the chocolate that reached the Aztec capital came from the Isthmus region of Oaxaca (and from Chiapas and Tabasco). Oaxaca is also one of the first places where people started cultivating corn (maize). So I guess it shouldn't be a big surprise that there are a lot of traditional holiday beverages from this region that include both corn and chocolate.

On Thursday, we visited the contemporary art museum. Nothing of particular note there, other than that on the way out, Michelle spotted a flyer for the "first annual" Posade de Chocolate, to take place at 8pm that evening. Even though we weren't sure exactly what would happen, any event involving chocolate sounded good to us, especially since it was free!

We arrived at the venue at the appointed hour, to find a line of other attendees stretching down the block and around the corner. It looked to me like the crowd was about 30% gringos and 70% locals. It seemed to me that every gringo in town must be out for the occasion, but that was obviously not true since none of the other 15 gringos we went hiking with the next day were at or had even heard about the event.

Once the gate opened, the line moved pretty quickly. As we got inside, we were each handed a cup made from half a gourd, a woven cane ring to use as a stand for the cup, and a carved wooden stir stick. An announcement came over the speaker, asking everyone to be patient and to refrain from partaking of any of the beverages until after the presentations.

There were two speakers. The first was an agronomist who waxed poetic about how cocoa is the perfect crop for restoring jungle, since it both likes shade and provides a good environment to help other tropical plants get started. The other speaker was an anthropologist, who spoke about the range of traditional chocolate beverages in the Oaxaca region, what they were made from and how they were made. Both talks were quite interesting, even if my spanish wasn't up to following everything they said.

After the speakers came the speeches. The whole event was sponsored by a local company named Chocolate Mayordomo. The Mayordomo system dates back to pre-hispanic times. Every couple of years, each village chooses a wealthy and respected person to be mayordomo. The mayordomo has the honour of organizing and paying for all the local festivals during his term of office. It can be a very expensive honour, but those who discharge their office well get a lot of prestige. The owner of Chocolate Mayordomo paid for the Posada de Chocolate and certainly didn't spare any expense. We had a few words from him and some other dignitaries, then the tasting began.

The organizers had selected ten traditional beverages from ten regions of the state of Oaxaca. A few women from each village had been brought in to prepare and serve the drinks. All of the women wore the traditional costume of their village, so it was a visual as well as epicurean event. Each attendee was invited to sample up to five of the beverages. The servings were so generous that we could only manage four. The line for each beverage was about 20 people long at any given time, but the servers were efficient and the lines moved quickly.

First up was tejate. There is a striking difference between the strong cinnamon and chocolate flavours in the foam and the milder corn flavours in the liquid part of the drink. The two together are magical: tejate was our favourite beverage of the evening.

Next up was chaw popox, another drink with a strong chocolate flavour, but one where they serve mostly the foam, not the liquid. It was also very nice, but we didn't like it quite as well as the tejate. Perhaps that's a common opinion: tejate is widely available in markets around the state, while many of the other drinks are only available during fiestas in the villages whence they come.

Michelle and I each drank a full serving of tejate and chaw popox, but as we were getting full, we decided to split our servings of the next two drinks. I picked up a cup of chone while Michelle lined up for bupu.

Chone seems to be a corn drink, with just a bit of chocolate flavour in the background. It was thick, almost a corn soup and pretty much a meal in itself. Tasted a bit like a tortilla in liquid form, with some spices. Michelle's bupu was essentially what we think of as hot chocolate, with some unfamiliar spices. It was a bit sweet four our taste.

All in all, a fabulous evening. I hope they manage to repeat the event for many years to come.

Birds in the bushes

Here are photos of a few of the birds that visit our house every morning. See Michelle's blog for more about our other activities.

Lots of internet problems

It has been awhile since I posted any pictures.

The HSPA connection from Michelle's iPad wasn't working this morning and anyway, we can't use it to post photos as we have no easy way to get photos from the camera to the iPad. I went to the Oaxaca lending library, but the laptop battery was low and they didn't have a plug available anywhere the wifi signal worked. I charged the laptop for awhile and wrote a blog post, but when I went to another room to post the blog entry, the internet wasn't working anymore. Grrr. Am now in a cafe where the connection (touch wood) seems to be OK.

Anyway, here are some photos: a bird on our deck for Patty, a few items from the Museo Cultural de Oaxaca, a local wedding and the virgin of Guadalupe celebrations in Parque Llano (not in that order).

Fire in the Sky

The Blessed Virgin of Guadalupe likes big cohetes.

Cohetes = fireworks. We missed the celebration on the 8th of the Virgin of Jucintla, because we discovered too late that the schedule of events is posted by the main door to each church. We therefore made a point of getting to the local church in San Felipe an hour prior to the 9:30pm fireworks to celebrate the December 12th day of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

On our way there, we discovered that the perigrination through the town was already under way. We joined the tail of the procession, but since we couldn't see much from there, we left the procession and made our way to the church, so we could see everything as they arrived. The perigrination consisted of a 10-15 member brass band (I didn't count) and maybe 40 townsfolk. Four children were bearing a large cloth image of the virgin. Three adolescents led the procession: two bearing candles and the third with a crucifix on a 1.5m pole. Three very tall banners brought up the rear. The banner bearers had to carefully thread their way through the maze of overhead electrical and telephone wires as they made their way through the streets. We didn't see anyone get electrocuted.

The procession made its way into the churchyard, paused a few moments to hear a message from the sacerdote, then the banners were borne into the church and it was time for the cohetes.

OK, this wasn't exactly the start of the cohetes, just of the main event. Up until this point, one of the celebrants had been launching a rocket every few minutes, mostly alternating between small, quiet coloured bursts and brilliant white flares which would rise, then explode with a tremendous band. The rockets would launch up above the houses, do their bit, then fall somewhere. We didn't see anything catch fire. Even though it's very dry, most houses have clay or fibreglass roofing, which is not too flammable.

The main event was much more personal. It began with the mortar launch of a couple of very pretty large fireworks. Then out came the first dancer. A woman donned a heavy shawl, then on top of her head she held a large wicker construction with fireworks attached. The show began with a spinning wheel, perhaps representing the bull's nose. The band struck up a tune and the woman danced her way into a semicircular space left by the 40-60 onlookers. A man wearing a white mask and holding a white cloth danced in among all the flying sparks and waved his cloth at the bull. Then the dance got more vigourous as the bull's face caught fire and its ears started spitting sparks, which were directed at the other dancer and the crowd. To end the dance, the bull's horns began to shoot fountains of sparks, then exploded with loud bangs. And that was just the first dance: there were about 20 in all, mostly either bulls or human figures. The goal of the flaming dancer was to put on a good show and make life difficult for the other dancers, whose goal seemed to be to touch the fire dancer with a cloth or coat and generally to display their bravery by dancing among the sparks as close as possible to the fireworks. It's impossible to describe and remarkable to see.

The sleeve of one of tne of the fire dancers ignited from a spark: another girl beat out the flame with her shawl in time to the music. The fire dancers swung their wicker figures vigorously about: a couple of times, the wicker accidentally struck another dancer and bits came off and the fireworks went spinning or whirling away on the ground.

An old woman came up to us with a gas can full of moonshine and insisted that first Michelle, then I have a drink from her glass, telling us it would be rude to refuse. The moonshine was a bit spicy and went down easily enough.

Near the end, a rope strung across the front of the church was ignited and a curtain of sparks showered down over the (stone) facade of the church, bouncing from the shoulders of the saints. It was lovely. There were a few more fireworks launched into the sky as we made our way home.

There might have been a bigger fireworks display in the main city, but the spectacle at the San Felipe church was more than satisfactory.

Who is shelling San Felipe?

For several nights, we have been hearing what sounded like raucous parties, with fireworks and live bands. The first night, we awoke at 4am to the sound of two explosions loud and close enough to rattle our roof panels. Last night, the festivities were in full swing by 9pm. I went up on the roof and saw that the square in front of a nearby church was full of people. A few minutes later, the group started a procession. Some people were dressed in costumes. One group carried a large box with glass sides, presumably containing the icon of a saint. Others carried large figures. We couldn't see all that well, because it was dark. The procession went to another nearby church, where the band started up again. I presume they went to every church in the village and maybe some other places besides, because the festivities continued until after 2am, with the band striking up and fireworks going off at irregular intervals.

Tonight they started up at 5:30pm. We think these are calendas, and that they are likely to continue at least until the fiesta of the Virgin of Guadalupe on December 12th, and possibly until after Christmas. Local character to be sure, but I alas am feeling rather short of sleep and out of sorts tonight.

At 2am I went up on the roof to look at the stars for an hour or so. It was quite hazy, but I still had a lovely view of the Orion nebula up near the zenith. With the 35mm eyepiece, I can see a field of view stretching from the point of the sword almost to Orion's belt. That's a big contrast to what I'm used to with my big scope, where only the tip of the sword fits within the field. There is a lot of pretty stuff in the region and it's nice to see it all together.

I looked at Mars, but seeing was so bad I could only see that it was a disc and get occasional glimpses of what might have been the polar ice cap. Jupiter wasn't great, either, but I thought I could see a couple of dark knots in the south equatorial band and the north polar hood extending almost all the way to the north equatorial band. Starry Night says the great red spot was rotating into view as I packed it in; by then, both the moon and Jupiter had moved behind a nearby apartment building.

I spent some time looking at clusters in Canis Major and Puppis, which were relatively free of haze. Pretty, but I don't know what I was looking at and haven't had time to check.

We started Spanish lessons on Monday. Jessica, my teacher, is a 28 year old single mother of a two year old, who said she was happy for the extra work even though she found out at noon on Monday that she would be working three hours extra every afternoon for the rest of the week. Jessica has lived in the same house all her life and never travelled outside Oaxaca. I think she thinks I'm a bit strange.

Mornings here are beautiful. I saw at least a dozen hummingbirds visit the four flowering trees in our yard within a 20 minute period. Other birds come to drink at a pot containing a water lily. It's mostly nice to have wildlife in the yard. Yesterday we dumped the water from the lily pot, along with its mosquito larvae, and replaced it with fresh water. Hopefully that will prevent more nocturnal visits from small, noisy pests.

Tried our hand at making tortillas yesterday. I couldn't make a thin tortilla from the masa, so we ate small fat ones. Probably we didn't have the right amount of water in the mix, but we're not sure whether we need more or less. At least they tasted like tortillas and were pretty good with chicken breasts and guacamole. We now have some idea where to shop, which is nice. We both felt unreasonably triumphant when our morning shopping trip was a success.

I was going to write some other stuff about museums we visited, but I'm tired so that's it for now.

Life on Mars

OK, life without internet.

Yesterday the free introductory period on Michelle's mobile data plan ran out. Since we spent the whole day on a trip to the ruins at Yagul and have no internet at home, it meant an entire day with no net access. I've got withdrawal jitters.

The trip to Yagul was great: arranged by the Oaxaca Lending Library, the tour was led by an archaeologist who has been working in the Oaxaca valleys for 15 years. He gave us lots of interesting info about what's known about early post-classic Zapotec culture and got the guards to unlock the door to a tomb that we otherwise wouldn't have been able to see.

We also stopped at a marked in Tlacolula on the way back: whole deep-fried pigskin, anyone?

Here are a few photos of the house and Yagul.

Ah, for the life of a country boy

and to ramble in the new mown hay.

The past few days have mostly been filled with finding ads for places to live, contacting them and learning that the best ones are already booked for December. Except for the craigslist scammer: his place has everything you want, is always open, and he'll send you the keys provided you send him the rent in advance. No thanks.

We have seen a couple of possible places to live. One is behind the Pepsi plant, not too far from downtown. It's quiet, but doesn't look like the kind of neighborhood I'd be comfortable walking around in after dark. Still, it's a nice little place. The other is a four bedroom house out in the country. The lobby and bathroom off it are tiled with marble. The rest of the house is lovely. There is a caretaker who lives on the property. But the house doesn't have internet and it's 25 minutes from town by car, part of which is over a road full of killer topes (Mexican speed bumps) that would be very hard on the car. We likely wouldn't get into town that often if we lived there. The furniture is all covered in plastic and doesn't look terribly comfortable. Still, the country life would be a big change from Vancouver and might be interesting to try. It also has a great place to set up my telescope.we're looking at a couple more places today, then will likely make our decision.

On another note: yesterday we moved to a hotel on a hill in the north end of the city. We have much better access to our car here, and I was able to set up my scope last night and show the moon and Jupiter to some of the hotel staff. Seeing was crappy: I could barely make out the bands on Jupiter. I should have taken the scope out again when I woke up in the middle of the night, be I was lazy. Maybe tonight. It will also be quite a bit darker if I set up over by the pool.

We'll try to get some pictures of the place this evening when the light is nicer.The locals are all complaining about the very cold weather, but I was quite comfortable in a short sleeved shirt until 8pm or so. As I write this, we're sitting on the porch of our little cottage and watching an eagle soar over the village of San Felipe. The sky is cloudless cerulean blue, though there is some smog from the city. Long live aircare, I say: Mexico is a fine example of the difference emission controls can make (on the negative side vs Vancouver, alas).

Posting from the iPad can be annoying. Lots of blogger's buttons work only occasionally and with the new blogger interface, it's difficult to tell whether I'm in compose mode or raw html. I usually prefer compose mode, so I don't have to put in all the paragraph tags. Grrr. Also, the preview mode isn't working for me at the moment, which means I have to publish the post in order to find out what it looks like (or get the laptop back from Michelle.)

Everyone loves a parade

Fortunately, we had been up for awhile already when the band started to play at 6:30am.  The band members and all the other participants were garbed in archaic military costume.  Maybe November 27th is an important date in the Mexican Revolution?  I found a website with this summary:

Nov.27 > Orozco defeats the Federals at Pedernales - Villa is repelled in a reckless attack on Ciudad Chihuahua (the Battle of Tecolote), narrowly escaping disaster 


At least 20 men on horseback were taking part in the parade: we saw them heading toward downtown as we were leaving the city.  At least a hundred people were also walking on the highway toward Guadalupe.  I haven't been able to find any news about this on the net, but that might be because it's Sunday. 


Our Zacatecas photos were uploaded in a hurry; I'm not sure why some of them got uploaded two or three times, nor why both processed and unprocessed versions were uploaded.  So far my internet connection has been too crappy for me to delete the album and upload just one set of the decent images.


It was good to take a rest day yesterday: we both felt refreshed when we set out this morning.


The drive today was pretty uneventful, until late in the day we missed a turn and in attempting to get us on the correct highway, I navigated us along a very minor road through several rural villages.  Those villagers are serious about slowing traffic through town: they had topes (giant speed bumps) every 100m or so on the main street through the village.  That made for slow going.  Topes are also less entertaining than the mixed herd of goats, sheep, cows, horses and burro that caused the other significant delay along that side road.  The herdsman and his dog moved them past the car in under 10 minutes, so that wasn't too bad.  Unfortunately the rain and thick clouds made it too dark to take pictures of the herd moving past.


We passed the 6000km mark on the trip odometer before we stopped for the night.


Tomorrow we should make it to Oaxaca!

A rolling stone

We passed the 5000km mark on our trip odometer today. I guess it will wrap before we get home. Last night we stayed in a cheap no tell motel in Chihuahua. The desk clerk was very friendly, the room was very clean, if rather basic, and the noise was about what you would expect: couples coming and going and the noise of the freeway outside. Tonight we paid about twice as much for our hotel. The room is much more nicely appointed, certainly with a better grade of toilet paper, but there is a very loud rock stage in the square outside that may continue until the wee hours, and as I write this at 8:30pm, the wall behind me vibrates occasionally as workmen on the other side hammer or drill into it as they renovate the street-facing shop. Hopefully they'll knock off for the night sometime soon. We are now veterans of the Mexican highway system. The toll roads make for easy driving. In Durango, the non-toll highways follow the convention that slower vehicles must pull onto the shoulder to let faster vehicles pass. However, the road is narrow enough that vehicles traveling in the opposite direction also need to pull over onto the shoulder to allow the pass to complete. The upshot is that you always need to be alert for traffic coming in the other direction in your lane. Makes for more challenging driving. It has been interesting to observe the variations in the desert flora along the trip: mesquite and occasional Joshua trees in the Mojave, mesquite+saguaro cactus+barrel cactus in the Sonoran desert, sand dunes+mesquite+prickly pear+pistachios in Chihuahua, giant Dr. Seuss yuca+pecans+pistachios in Durango. Our travels today were uneventful. We encountered several army patrols along the highway; even drove in convoy with one for half an hour or so before they stopped using both lanes and let us pass. I'm not sure whether the extra patrols make me feel safer or more concerned, but either way, nothing of note happened.

Mexican Adventure: Photos from the US