Alex and the Universe

Hola, Belize! Urr, I mean, Hello.

alexandtheuniverse — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 08:02:00 GMT

Laguna Miramar was spectacular. After a 45 minute canoe ride out the far side of the lake, our guide pulled our canoe up onto one of the funky rock formations that ringed the lake like the dirt that would ring a bath tub if I were to take a bath right now. Except, instead of dirt, it's rock and it takes the form of a shelf--the flat top just above the water level, the underside curiving back to the hidden wall of the lake. Since no rivers flow into or out of the "lagoon", the water is unbelievably clear. Despite the clarity, looking down off the edge of the rock shelf, we could see nothing but black. We asked the guide how deep the lake was, and he said 500 meters. That's 1500 feet! So, inspired by the setting, I mustered up the courage to accomplish a feat I've never before completed: I dove head first. The water was not only clear, but warm. From the lake, I could see the red hand painting of a coyote that the Mayans had made many centuries ago. Needless to say, the six-hour dusty gravel road ride in the back of a pickup with 27 others was worth it.

After Laguna Miramar, we checked out Agua Azul and Palenque, both great spots but a little crowded due to the whole semana santa thing. Basically all of Mexico City takes vacation for two weeks and invades the rest of the country.

And so Pete and I decided to take a short break from Mexico and went to visit our friend Anna in Belize. We've been here a day now, and it is absolutely a different country. People speak English and Creole first, Spanish a peripheral second. It is very hot, which isn't much different than Chiapas, but much of it is also flat, at least what we've seen so far. More than anything, it's the first time on our trip that we've officially entered the "caribbean." The culture and language is fascinating, as are the friendly Belize folk we've been meeting ever since we stepped off the bus in Belize City. One great upside to the caribbean is the sea, that we plan on enjoying by spending a day or two on Caye Caulker. Palmed beaches and shallow seas. With the capital "H" heat, island life sounds perfect.

Different, very different

alexandtheuniverse — Sun, 5 Apr 2009 13:48:00 GMT

Ocosingo, Chiapas. More than any other region in Mexico, it is here in the densely-wooded hills of Chiapas that I feel like a guest. We're pretty much the only gringos, gueros, white guys. Here, I feel as though I am being allowed to visit. I am welcomed, but not altogether trusted.

Fourteen years ago, a group of Mexicans fought the Mexican government by taking over control of a variety of communities in the state of Chiapas. Most notably, they took the elegant colonial mountain town of San Cristobal de las Casas, the most popular tourist destination in the state. The radical Zapatistas did not win all of their objectives of peasant land rights and the reversal of NAFTA policies, but peace has slowly returned to the area.

Pete and I arrived to Ocosingo, in the heart of Zapatista country, without a whole lot of information about the troubles that had occurred in the area. We were attracted to the more rural setting, some relatively unvisited ruins, and the possibility of a trip far into the mountains to visit the last of the Lacondon Rainforest--the most ecologically diverse area in all of Mexico(which turns out to be one of the most ecologically diverse countries in the world). After arriving at the wonderful Hospedaje Esmeralda, and further exploration of Ocosingo and the surrounding countryside, we´ve learned far more about the Zapatistas, their cause, and the realities that the people in the area face today.

It turns out that before the Hospedaje Esmeralda, there was El Rancho Esmeralda, a macademia nut farm and ecotourism destination for gringos. In January of 2003, however, Zapatista-sympathizers threatened the US owners until they were forced to leave the ranch that they had been building and growing for the ten years prior. The Zapatista group took over the ranch, but since then, they have let it fall into disrepair and disuse. I can understand why poor peasants would want their own land, and I even understand anti-globalization sentiments(USAns being easy targets for such anger). But what a shame.

Tomorrow, Pete and I are planning on taking a six-hour bus ride via camioneta--a small van with benches that is crammed-full of as many people can fit--to Laguna Miramar, supposedly the best swimming hole in the world. An azul lake, without any developments on its shore except for an open air palapa and some Mayan ruins, and surrounding it, the Lacondon Rainforest. Sounds swell, huh? We were contemplating taking a plane there, but the $5600 peso pricetag was a little too hefty, and the ubiquitous consumption a little too, well, consumptive.

I don't feel totally at ease in this place, but I can´t say that I am scared either. In 2002, the US told USAns not to travel to the southeast part of Chiapas. But here, off the usual beeline track, I´ve found a vibrant, beautiful, and intriguing part of Mexico. I´ve also found some humility, too.

Gallery: Guanajuato and Beyond

alexandtheuniverse — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 04:34:00 GMT

wanderings

Photos

alexandtheuniverse — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 07:06:00 GMT

If you haven´t checked out my photo galleries, you should do it. The toad will be worth it. Pete and I aren´t the best photo documentarians, and the pictures that we do have we can´t yet upload. We´ll just have to turn the pictures into slides so that we can have a slide projection presentation on our return.

How About Guanajuato?

alexandtheuniverse — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 06:37:00 GMT

Pete and I had planned on heading south all the way to Chiapas, but after a maldestined couple days in La Manzanilla, a sleepy fishing-turned...surprise... tourist town, we woke up in the morning both quite ready to make a break for the mountains.

Despite a few happy incidences of only-when-your-traveling magic, including running into our Finnish friend Laura whom we met in La Paz, as well as befriending Sebastian, a perma-traveler from Belgium, and Andre and Alain, two chill cats from Montreal, we were done with the beach for a while.

Instead, we ended up that night in the second largest city in Mexico, Guadalajara. A city of 8 million people, it somehow felt absolutely like same-sized Chicago. No skyscrapers to speak of, no interstates, and instead of the Loop, at its heart was a five-hundred year old city center. We stayed at the cheapest hotel yet in our Mexico adventures, only a few blocks away from the massive cathedral, surrounded by four busy plazas that makes up the center of the city. And seems to be the rule, rather thant the exception in this country, we found out that a huge festival was taking place. Instead of a religious festival however, it turned out to be the Viva La Tequila Festival, blocks and blocks of Tequila booths from all over western Mexico, each with their scantily-clad buxom women offering free tastes of their particular award-winning liquors.

Pete and I decided to go to the symphony. Yeah, I know. But it was a fun concert of French composers in a quite spectacular theater. I didn´t have nice enough clothes, so I even bought a cheap pair of fancy shoes and new Mexican Man Pants. I even showered, and so after a long while of feeling scuzzy, I finally felt fit for the town.

Unfortunately, the big city caught up with us rather quickly, and we made a run for Guanajuato, the small university town tucked into the mined mountains of the central highlands. A few days turned into a week of language school. During that time, we met some great fellow travelers who we explored the very-Italian-feeling city. We attended a free baroque/opera concert in the beautiful Don Quixote museum, we rode the funicular, we dodged hail on a daily basis, we drank beer inside of a cave-room, we saw a Mexican rap/reggae concert, we ate and drank a lot, and just last night we even attended a Klezmer concert in the cavernous Juarez Teatro in the heart of the city. It was another dream moment. Witnessing these Eastern European folks rocking out in Hungarian with their electric violins and saxophones and drums and haunting voices. I was overwhelmed with the knowledge that there are so many beautiful cultures, beautiful people, beautiful places in the world. And I am resigned to the truth that I will do just about whatever it takes to witness them. I was astounded by the Klezmer Band Vodku´s performance, actually. Their chords moved me somewhere deep.

And now, Pete and I are returning south. Back to Oaxaca, a more "American" place, in the indigenous sense of the word. And I think we´re ready for the beach again.

Palapas, Boobies, and Snatam

alexandtheuniverse — Sat, 7 Mar 2009 05:50:00 GMT

After the otherworldly landscape of the Baja, Pedro and I took an 18 hour ferry ride across the Sea of Cortez to Mazatlan, where we had a two hour break before we took a seven hour bus ride to Puerto Vallarta. Two nights and a day of travel brought us to the massive resort town of PV at 5am. Of course the one time that we could have used a couple hour delay on the bus, we arrived right on time.

A few weeks earlier, I had invited my family to come down for a week on the coast. I had hoped that they would come, but I wasn´t expecting it. As it turned out, my parents took me up on the invitation, and after our 6am check-in to Hotel Rosita, an older, quaint hotel right on the beach at the end of the PV Malecòn, Pete and I took a city bus back out to the aeropuerto where we welcomed my ´rents to Mexico.

That morning was one of those mornings that feels more like a dream--one that whose reality turns to much if you try to analyze it. Like in dreams, you just have to accept the reality. Yes, I am riding in a small aluminum boat in the Pacific Ocean. Yes, those are my parents, pale and happy next to me. Yes, that was a fin of a manta ray that slid past us in the water. Yes, the wind is warm and those are palm trees and that´s Spanish that the captain is speaking. And yes, after a year or two of Pete and my repeating the mantra: Missoula, Missoula, Missoula, I did find out this morning that I was accepted into the environmental writing program there.

And so after the 45 minute water taxi ride, we arrived at the carless fishing/ex-pat village of Yelapa. Online, Pete and I had found a Palapa, or thatched-roof, wall-less hut, set into the side of the thickly forested hillside for the four of us to live in for a week. The water taxi dropped us and our bags off at Playa Isabel, a beach a few hundred yards from our Palapa home. Despite our wet feet, we all quickly became quite comfortable there. Pete had his kitchen, I had my hammock, Mom had her choice of quiet rock benches and (sometimes malfunctioning) chairs to read, and Dad had his new friend, Iggy the Iguana.

Yelapa was an eccentric, if not bizarre mix of real-live Mexican village and funky artistic English-speakers. The four of us got comfortable navigating the unplanned paths and streets that often were clogged with burros, dogs, Catholic Masses, baby birthday parties, 3rd-grade librarians, and paragliders on their way to the top of the mountain.

Some days, we just snorkeled, swam, kayaked, watched the breaching humpbacks, and sun bathed around town. We did, though, take a great hike up to a waterfall which you could swim up into and attempt to scale as the warm water batted down. We also took a boat trip to the next town over, much more Mexican, much less USAn, where an on the spot guide brought us to¨"the big tree" and then the best beach.

The landscape and wildlife was absolutely tropical, such a radical change from Pete and my week in Los Cabos. I´ll never doubt the incredible diversity of landscapes, cultures, and climates in this country. I had no idea how many worlds existed in Mexico.

One of those worlds that took me completely by surprise was the Marietta Islands. Out on the ocean-side of Bahìa de Banderas, another 45 minute water taxi ride from Yelapa, our own personal guide in our own personal boat gave us a tour of the "Mexican Galapagos." One of the first features to see was the white cliffs delineating the two small islands. Next, was the total lack of trees. The third, when we came close, was the profusion of birds, some of them with bright blue feet, that inhabited the islands. They were Boobies, Blue-Footed Boobies, and they are a very endangered species. We snorkeled beneath their nests set up on top of the cliffs, exploring a huge natural bridge that we could swim beneath to an enclosed room of a beach. We spent the afternoon on one of the only beaches on the islands, watching the Boobies flying overhead, snorkeling, and eating the Ceviche, a raw fish lime juice deliciousness that our guide made for us on the spot.

After our very rough trip back to Yelapa across a white-capped Banderas, we finished off our week by stopping by a free "chanting" performance held at the end of the beach at the other end of town. It was the fancy, resort side of Yelapa, and beside the overly dramatic setting of the white tent and lighted stage, it turned out to be the last night of a two week long chanting retreat. We felt a little bit like outsiders with the inside jokes about chakras and yogis, but at least Dad got to practice his meditation. Actually, I already had some of the music of the world reknowned chanter, Snatam Kaur, who was leading the gathering. And in her own right, her music can be beautiful. But let´s just say that the big toads that hopped past us in the dark were the most exciting part of the night.

Our week in Yelapa, I´m pretty sure we´d all agree, was almost too idyllic. But as it was, I had a wonderful time sharing that surreal place with some of the most important people in my life.

Gallery: Yelapa

alexandtheuniverse — Sat, 7 Mar 2009 05:48:00 GMT

Hammocks, Boobies, and Palapas

¿Como estamos aqui?

alexandtheuniverse — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 04:09:00 GMT

Well, I hope everyone took it as a good sign that I haven´t updated my blog for some time now. I never imagined that living this itinerant lifestyle would be so demanding! Every part of the day demands my attention and admiration: in Oaxaca, it was the colorful streets and markets, the sunsets over the dry green mountains, and the dynamic energy of the people who lived amid them. In Baja Sur, it has been the cerulean Sea of Cortez as it meets the Pacific. The big ocean truly earns its name here.

Pete and I flew from Oaxaca to Los Cabos, the tip of the nearly 2000 kilometer peninsula of the Baja on the west coast. It was difficult to say goodbye to Oaxaca, and I hope to share a few more of our stories from the rest of our month there in the mountains.

After a relaxing week in Los Cabos, spending the days on the beach with our new friends, Diego and Alex, we´ve taken the bus to La Paz, just in time for Carnaval. It´s Fat Tuesday today, and the Malecón, or seaside boardwalk, is a miles-long fair of dizzyingly fast and bright rides alternating with stage after stage of Mexican bands and entertainment. It reminds me of the old VP Fair down on the Arch grounds, except everyone is eating potato chips with salsa and the drunk people dancing in the streets have rhythm.

I have enjoyed the Baja far more than I thought I would. I´ve been to so many places that feel as though I should have been there thirty or forty years earlier, before the pretty locales were filled with hotels and luxury condos. Here, it still feels a little untamed by retirees. The mountains, at the least, rising from the white sand with their tan, sun-bleached rocks, are most certainly wild.

¡Feliz Cumpleaños!

alexandtheuniverse — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:18:00 GMT

I celebrated the warmest birthday of my life on Sunday. For our first weekend off of school, we decided to travel to Benito Juarez, a small pueblo literally on top of a 9000 foot mountain. What a difference four thousand feet make! Large, shady, verdant trees. Pines forests and wildflowers. Hummingbirds and massive spikey plants with thirty to forty foot towering flowerstalks that look like Century Plants except bigger.

We arrived by way of an adventurous colectivo driver, who pushed his keyless old beater up the windy, gravel road up and up and up. The cabbie was so excited with the views that he ran us pretty nearly off the mountain on a few occasions. We climbed from the desert of the dry-season valley floor to the lush montane forests of the dry-season peaks. When we finally arrived, every villager greeted us, ¡buenos tardes, buenos tardes, buenos tardes!

We used a zipline, we hiked up to El Mirador, or watchtower, with unbelieveable views of the endless green-blue mountains, and we even went horseback riding to a waterfall. The horses looked suspiciously like mules, and each was led by a local guide. Safety did not seem to be a big concern, and I guess they knew our rides weren´t the kind to make for a wild gallop. Las Tres, my horse, the only one with a name, was particularly moody and needed quite the pulling to get her up the steeper hills. I couldn´t blame her, although I could blame my friends for calling my "gordo".

There are six communities, los mancomunados, that support themselves by subsistence agriculture and ecotourism. I would have loved to spend a whole week exploring the area, but we had classes to return to in the big city of Oaxaca.

That same night, after a very bumpy two hour ride at the very back of the local bus, we had a fiesta for my birthday. We invited a few spanish school friends, and we drank cerveza and tequila, ate pastel, and even took turns at a piñata. I felt quite loved and quite mexican.

Gallery: Benito Juarez

alexandtheuniverse — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:02:00 GMT

mountains!

Gallery: Toda Oaxaca

alexandtheuniverse — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 10:21:00 GMT

random

La Principia Semana

alexandtheuniverse — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:00:00 GMT

Classes at Amigos del Sol are wonderful. Four hours a day, the four of us are studying español, talking, learning tenses, and laughing a lot. The school is outside of town and the director, Rogelio, is about the nicest guy on Earth. Our maestros, Sandra and Esteban, are incredibly patient and their sense of humor is absolutely necessary after some of the things we´ve said-unwittingly-in español.

The first week, three out of the four of us got sick. The day I was ill is a story worth sharing.

After a torturous night of pipi caca, Pete woke me in the morning letting me know they´d be leaving for class. I decided, of course, to stay home in order to sleep and recover.

A half hour after they had left, while reading Angle of Repose, I heard a knock on the door, Elizabeta, our landlord, was knocking on the door. When I opened the door, I saw she was standing with a man that turned out to be a plumber, ready to get the stove hooked up to a propane tank. I amiably accepted the intrusion, expecting nothing more than a few tubes spliced and screwed together.

I continued my reading, but after a few minutes of banging from the kitchen, I heard the plumber yelling at me. In the process of punching a hole through the wall for the gas line, he busted the main water line to the apartemnt and a fountain of water was spraying across the length of the kitchen. All in hurried spanish, he told me to get Elizabeta to turn off the water valve on the roof and then turn off the water in el baño. I ran to get Elizabeta, and when she returned she started shouting, ¨"Que me digas!", or What are you telling me! After turning off the water, she came back with a mop, and they proceeded to clean up. After the adrenaline rush, I had to leave the apartment for una ¨"ahorita". I walked to the zocalo, which was full of loiterers and vendors, surprisingly so for a Tuesday at 11am. I felt waifish and thin, but happy enough.

I returned to the apartment, and the two were still working away. The plumber stayed for several hours, shuttling back and forth between the kitchen and the bathroom, by way of the bedroom in which I lay, reading. I felt a bit self conscious, which became only more acute as the afternoon passed unchangingly.

Finally, at 3 in the afternoon, the plumber came to give me advice, of course all in spanish, about how to work the stove. As he gave me a demonstration, the burner he had just lit exploded in a ball of flame, went out, and then we heard the sound of gas. We raced eachother out of the small doorway of the kitchen, and he ran to turn off the propane tank. After a second, more succesful attempt, he was satisfied and left me in peace.

About fifteen minutes after he left, Anna, Eric, and Pete came back. The apartment looked as if nothing had happened at all.

El Mercado

alexandtheuniverse — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 10:44:00 GMT

We´ve definitely had some growing pains as we´ve learned how to live like the Oaxaqueños. The day after we found our apartment was a Sunday, and we decided to take a colectivo, a red and white taxi that is invariably an early nineties nissan, to Tlocolula, a village half an hour down the eastern valley.

The market was incredible, fruits of all kinds-papaya, pineapple, coconut, watermelon, and many that we had no idea what they were. There were vegetables just as varied, a distinct string-cheese like cheese that they roll into balls, thinly sliced slabs of meat hanging on the side of stalls, chicken, live or roasted, and the list goes on. All of this in January! Flowers and clothes and toys and crafts and even yokes of oxen! Many of the vendors were indigenous villagers who came into town for the day. Mexico, it turns out, has one of the greatest numbers of indigenous languages of any country in the world. The majority of the people at the market in Tlocolula spoke Spanish as a second language.

I was feeling adventurous, and I tried the tejote, or curded corn milk. It tasted like a sandy, sweet coffee, and it looked like something half digested.

It is always risky to drink any liquid here that isn´t bottled, but I was feeling adventurous. I didn´t regret it, a day and a half later when I was facing Montezuma´s full wrath, but I haven´t had any of that delicious corn water since.

25 hours to Oaxaca

alexandtheuniverse — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 13:40:00 GMT

After 25 hours on a single bus, we arrived in Oaxaca at 11 en la noche. The bus, like all first class buses in latin america, inexplicably played a variety of bad, bad American movies, either subtitled or dubbed in Spanish. The second one Ben Stiller movie ended, a superhero movie began. The views out the window, at least until it got dark, helped distract. The bus followed the Gulf coast, and I was surprised to find such steep, tree-clad mountains falling down right to the edge of the sea. South of Veracruz, it looked like I´d expect Vietnam or Thailand to look.

We stayed at a hostal on the north side of the downtown district the first two nights, and we wasted no time to explore the city. By noon on our first day, we had already enrolled in language school(at Amigos del Sol) and found an apartment a block and a half north of the zocalo, the central town square inhabited by towering, shading trees, balloon vendors, and general loiterers of all shapes, sizes, and nationalities. Most, of course, are Mexican, but that means about as much or more variety in appeances as any US city. There are many indigenous communities in Oaxaca, and people come in from these pueblos to vend their crafts and skills.

My favorite part of the zocalo are the large, long balloons that twenty or so children are playing with at any given moment. They toss these balloons twice as tall as they are up into the air. The toy rockets up thirty or forty feet in front of the Cathedral, then tips and falls back to the earth, the children all the while racing after beneath it.

The Beginning or Thereabouts

alexandtheuniverse — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 12:01:00 GMT

Nosotros comienzamos. My journey with Pete and our friends, Anna and Eric, will officially begin tonight, when we cross the border at Brownsville, Texas. We have spent an idyllic couple of days at Anna's childhood home, canoeing among alligators in the backyard canal, or resaca, relaxing on the beach at South Padre Island, and running final errands before we make the long haul to Oaxaca.

The first-class bus trip will carry us south through the mountains to the city of Oaxaca, the center of indigenous Mexican cultures and glorious, glorious food. At least that's what I've heard. After the 24-hour bus ride, I'll actually know if the rumors are true.

The plan is to study spanish in a Oaxacan language school, the four of us renting a room for a month in the historic city center. Afterward, we'll travel as the recommendations push us, hopefully sending us to the coast for some relaxation, but also to the other southern regions of the country volunteering, learning more spanish, and soaking in the sights and the heat.