Puebla, Day One

Well, I got here, as I am often fond of saying.  It wasn´t at all difficult.  I had an overpriced but delicious breakfast at La Pause then returned to my guest house to finish packing and clear away all my personal detritus, to make it a bit nicer for the good person cleaning my room.  I return there in two weeks.  I had a half hour wait for my taxi and passed the time seated in the patio where I began a new drawing and chatted with the owner´s graddaughter, a girl of about four.  She likes animals and drawing and showed me some of her drawings.  Seems like a very bright, very honest kind of kid.  Funny, I am not into kids but I tend to take them more one by one, the way I take adults.  The cab driver was really nice and is quite used to gringo passengers practicing their Spanish with him.  In the bus terminal I had a hell of a time getting into the pay washroom with my luggage because the turnstyle is very narrow and twice, on the way in and out the same gentleman helped pass my backpack over the turnstyle for me.  Note to self: next time pee before you get in the cab.
     The sprawl that is Mexico City is something undescribable and must already be the stuff of legend.  On the outskirts there are many really sad looking slums.  The landscape towards Puebla is quite lovely with lots of open fields and pine forests and hills.  Entering Puebla itself was a bit of a sad experience.  As with Mexico City Puebla appears to be ringed with slums and even as the congenial cabdriver drove me to my hotel a lot of it seemed rough and hardscrabble till we moved towards the city centre.
     The city itself has breathtakingly beautiful heritage architecture.  As soon as I checked into my hotel I went out to find a vegetarian restauant, following the cab driver´s directions.  It is on a rather elegant boulevard called Avenida Juarez and goes uphill.  I passed the restaurant.  It is called la Zanahoria (or the Carrot.  Go figure!).  It seemed a little early to eat so I continued walking uphill determined to stop only once I reached a white domed church at the top of the hill.  The church itself is closed but there is a memorial plaza, called the National Flag Memorial with a huge Mexican flag waving above.  It is at the top of the hill and I think it might be one of the highest points in Puebla.  There was a youth group of maybe a dozen or more teenagers there playing a game with multi-colour hoops.  One of them was also carrying a large wooden cross shrouded on top by what seemed like sack cloth.
     On the way back down the hill I stopped for a bite in la Zanahoria.  The food was delicious but the ambience crowded and so noisy that I had to wear earplugs.  I´m still going back.  The food is good, economical and I don´t mind wearing earplugs while eating.  From there I walked towards the zocalo and visited the cathedral.  There was a mass going on and I didn´t want to stay because it was already getting dark and I am new here so not really wanting to get lost at night.  The crowds on the pedestrian mal were incredible and this kind of reminds me of just why I usually don't go out Saturday evenings while I´m in Mexico.

Budgeting And Other Thrilling Stuff

Yes, travelling on a budget. What fun. Someone asked me the day before I went on my trip if I was going to see shows and concerts while in Mexico City and Puebla.  I said no, but really even if I wanted to, I would likely blow my entire travel budget in a week, so it is a good thing for me that night life and entertainment are not high on my list of priorities while I´m on vacation.  In fact, I make myself stay within a very strict budget and still make sure that I am having a fairly good time.  This year I have figured that, including meals, transportation, internet cafes and the odd treat or surprise I would be spending a bit less than forty bucks or four hundred pesos a day.  I have brought enough money to ensure that I can easily blow seven hundred pesos or around sixty dollars every day, after hotel costs, but I am still limiting myself to five hundred pesos max, the hundred pesos a day that I save I am reserving for transportation costs to Puebla and back and the likelihood that I will be spending a bit more while in Puebla on museums and other sites of public interest.  I also plan to spend some of that on books in Spanish that I plan to bring home to Vancouver with me.  The extra funds otherwise are in case of emergency, otherwise I hope I have enough left over when I get home to nicely fatten my bank account.  It isn´t at all a pain or drudgery maintaining this budget, in case you are wondering.  It does help me to stay grounded, and anyway I already know that during my last couple of weeks I will have horded enough to spend on some things I might really enjoy.
     One thing I really try to maintain while I´m abroad is a level head and I really ensure that my natural good common sense hasn´t been forgotten in Vancouver or left to languish in my suitcase.  Especially when travelling alone in a poorer country where I am a racially visible minority, and one that is generally assumed to be stinking rich, I try to watch my back at all times while still appearing and feeling relaxed and at home.  It is a balance that I can easily strike because I try to use a kind of prayerful mindfulness, or an ongoing awareness of my surroundings and of my own interior state. This also helps me stay calm and centred.  For those of my younger, or simply immature, readers who like to get stinkin`wasted when you´re on vacacion, all I can say is more power to you, but make good and sure you have health insurance and easy access to your national embassy because if you are not careful you just might need them.
     It´s been altogether a pleasant day.  I am back inside that nice cybercafe where they play classical music (Vivaldi and I think Brahms right now, but it could be Schumann. In fact I think it is Schumann.)  I had a really decent and full night`s sleep last night, attended mass at San Jaun Bautista, went for breakfast at the usual cafe where they serve up a decent Manchego cheese omelete with fresh squeezed orange juice, coffee and baguette all for the tune of around five bucks Canadian.  And the people there are nice and they seem to like my art or at least they are really fine with me wasting a couple of hours in there working on a drawing.  I later did a walk in Los Viveros, then took the Metro into Mexico City where I sat in another familiar cafe with my art while enjoying coffee and chocolate cake, after which I walked on Reforma into Chapultepec Park and sat for a while again in the Audorama which was strangely silent today.  Then I went for a walk in the park, stopping at the lake with the Gator-Aid green water where there are now seven white egrets hanging out. There used to be just two.  They are a delight to behold and I think I will be drawing or painting them again soon. I also stopped by an excavated Aztec ruin in the park of the stone structure to conduct from three springs at the foot of the Chapultepec Castle through aqueducts the water supply for the city before the Spanish conquest.  Odd, isn´t it, how advanced a civilization can be in so many things yet think nothing of performing ritual human sacrifice to keep the sun shining, or from burning witches and heretics in honour of a Lord and Saviour who would have utterly condemned this kind of practice, or send their sons and daughters to fight other people`s battles in foreign countries and I promise to go no further with this theme...
     Tomorrow I leave for Puebla.

Cats

This post isn´t really about cats, but I did see three on my explorations and even to see one in a day in Mexico City is a bit unusual, especially given that the cats were almost identically coloured.  I saw two while wandering through the rather charming mews of an otherwise nondescript and boring but for the wonderful flowers middle-brow sort of neighbourhood, just following a visit to one of their humongous supermarkets.  It dominates a mall and is called ¨Mega¨and for good reason.  Try and imagine, if you will, the Great Canadian Superstore, but with two floors, each the size of a single Superstore.  Yeah...Big.  I bought two 220 mg. bags of mixed dried fruit and nuts to help sustain me on my first couple of days in Puebla as I figure out where to eat there.  This preemptive bringing concentrated food, like the cashews I bought Saturday at theVancouver airport, has turned out to be a very good idea and this is really keeping me from going hungry.
     Back to the cats.  While wandering through the mews I noticed a large lanky long-haired cat, white with a dark bushy tail and face, not quite like a Siamese, approach a young father and son enjoying a snack together seated on a stone embankment.  Lying next to them on the embankment was an identical cat, probably the other cat´s sibling.  The dad called the first cat over who came to sit with them for a while.
A bit later, in a park, a young couple were seated together on the grass when a very thin looking stray cat approached them.  The young man had a tin of cat food which he promptly presented to the cat.  This cat, although a short hair, was identically coloured to the two long haired cats I saw a bit earlier.  Just before, I went for a walk through the labyrinth of winding streets cobbled with stones like beach rocks in a very well- to-do neighbourhood of San Angel, the town right next to Coyoacan.  I stopped there in a small chapel that I have previously written about in earlier trips.  A man caretaking the place told me that it is nearly six hundred years old.  the interior is gorgeous with a lavish gold-plated altar set off beautifully with the purple cloth of the Lenten season.
     As I continued my walk I came across two young, very thuggish looking men, and couldn´t really figure out why they were in this neighbourhood as they didn´t appear to be working there.  They might have been casing the ´hood for possibilities for break-ins. Anyway the vibe didn´t feel at all good so I let them continue walking ahead of me and I took a different route.  Then, when I left the neighbourhood I saw them again coming towards me.  Not wanting to take unnecessary chances I walked ahead of them quickly and turned onto a crowded street where I disappeared into a book store.  The two guys might have been completely innocuous but I have my doubts and, as a white visitor, I know that I could be perceived as an easy target here in Mexico, so I am watching my back.
     I had a great dinner in a rather hip eatery near my guest house, then, on my way to this cybercafe (not a bad place this one, they play classical music, eapecially Vivaldi, and the vibe is relaxed, quiet and respectful, and their rates are super cheap).  As I was walking past the square I noticed again a crowd of nearly a hundred or so locals yelling, banging and whistling, with a few riot police on standby so I asked one of them what´s going on.  He told me with a rather weary and cynical expression, that it was another protest against parking metres.  I smiled, shook my head then walked on.

Santa Maria Ribera

It is a challenge writing this blog in internet cafes, especially in this small corner store where space is limited and everyone is in my face but this is part of coping and adapting to a different culture.  Mexicans seem to be a lot more tolerant of noise and space than Canadians.  I think that this is because they are a much more social and family oriented people and so they are better accustomed to closeness and noise and to put it bluntly less spoiled than we are.  There is also no point saying anything to anyone because I am the foreigner and I have some anecdotal evidence that there is some racism here against gueros, or white people.  But this is to be expected here because this is a mono-culture and they have absolutely no concept of multiculturalism as we know it in Canada.  For my part I let it pass and really work at being kind and respectful, even though my first instinct might be to bitch-slap, but this has never turned out well so I really try not to do this any more.
     This morning I visited the Church of Saint John the Baptist (parroquia de San Juan Bauptista) where a tall austere looking Franciscan priest dressed in the traditional brown robe daubed ash on my forehead in observance of Ash Wednesday.  There was no service and no ceremony.  You simply walk in and there he is standing at the very front waiting for the faithful to come and receive this poignant blessing and reminder that we are made of dust and to dust we shall return.  Then I had breakfast in a cafe nearby, from where I had a view of an almost uninterrupted steam of people entering and leaving the church for the anointing of ashes.
     I spent the afternoon on and around Paseo de la Reforma, where I sat in a favourite cafe drinking coffee and eating rich chocolate cake while working on a new drawing.  Then I walked further to explore an area I learned about recently on the internet, called Santa Maria Ribera.  It is fascinating, and as soon as I got onto one of the streets I had this incredible sense of deja-vu.  I am certain that I have seen this place in several dreams.  Try to imagine, if you will, those of you  who are already familiar with Vancouver, and for those of you who are not there is always Uncle Google to ask, a combination of Main Street and Commercial Drive, before gentrification, with a slightly seedy touch of Main and Hastings, but with beautifully built and carved store fronts and building facades painted in a whole spectrum of colour, trees and sidewalk vendors and flowers and people and a certain vibrancy that gives its own light.  On the way back to Reforma I stopped in at a small cafe for a bottle of mineral water.  The young staff didn´t appear to understand my Spanish, which is odd, because I almost never have this problem, so after I apologized for my accent they could suddenly understand every word I was saying.  My theory is, I am probably one of the only white people they see around for days or even weeks on end and I might be the only one who speaks Spanish and this can be quite a lot to absorb, so of course I cut them slack.
     This evening I am going to hand-wash my dirty laundry, rinse it in the scalding hot shower in my room and hang it to dry.  The costs of the guest house doing my laundry are through the roof and the local laundry service isn't much cheaper.

Cotton Candy In The Air

I am in a cyber cafe in Polanco, that affluent district near the Museum of Anthropology.  I walked through nearby Chapultepec Park on the way and stopped to wander in the bird area of the zoo, where I saw a few of my faves, especially peacocks, including a white peacock, and a golden pheasant.  On the way out I sat on a shaded bench where I was joined by a lady pushing an elderly woman in a wheelchair and the elderly gentleman she was also escorting.  We had an enjoyable chat for a while, then I went for a walk in Polanco which is full of pricey stores, restaurants and cafes.  Even in this cybercafe I am paying fifty pesos for an hour or four and a half dollars Canadian, while in Coyoacan it´s around one dollar or a dollar fifty.  Even food prices in Mexico City are almost as high as in Canada.  Given that the average income here is less than twenty grand a year I really wonder how they cope here.  I am trying to supplement the meagre portions I am eating in restaurants and cafes by buying fruit, mostly oranges or bananas, and nuts.  I have noticed that my appetite is often fairly low when I am on holidays and I will likely again be losing some weight this month.
     Taking the Metro subway here from Coyoacan wasn´t quite the endurance test that it was yesterday.  It takes getting used to but it is a wonderful way to engage with the everyday people who live here even if we don´t talk to each other.  It is a great place for people watching.  Often in the stations there are people begging, old women, indigenous women with small children, men with disabilities.  One man had so many dreadful wounds on his partially amputated legs that I would shudder to describe what I saw.
     While I was waiting for the interminably long traffic light to change while trying to cross Reforma in order to get from one part of the park to the other there was a man working with a cotton candy machine.  The breeze was causing bits and scraps of cotton candy to go flying in the air around me and other bystanders and it was kind of fun harvesting the cotton candy bits from the air and eating them.  The gentleman was kind enough to not charge us for them!  Then, on my way into Polanco I walked by once again the memorial statue of Mahatma Ghandi which accurately features every one of his ribs.  Well, he was one for power fasting, eh?  I have always deeply admired Ghandi and in many ways he has been like a role model for me, but I draw the line at fasting, especially as a way to force my will on others, though I expect his motives were considerably higher.  I do find it kind of interesting and a bit incongruous to find his memorial statue here in Mexico, given that there doesn´t appear to be a clear historical, philosophical or cultural connection here, especially given this country´s history and legacy of violence.  In a Spanish conversation group I am part of in Vancouver we were talking about the subject of peace and social justice in Latin America and that there were never any role models for peaceful resistance or protest in those countries which likely accounts for the many blood-drenched conflicts that have occurred here.

Bougainvillealand In The Morning

Yesterday I chatted for a while with two of the many police who patrol this neighbourhood from street corners.  I kept getting, well, not lost, but was looking for an internet cafe and while I was walking around later they asked me how I did and we stopped and talked for a little while.  They don´t seem to believe that the environment is in danger (this came up when in reply to the question about whether all the buildings are heated in Canada, I replied that yes, of course, it is very expensive and some areas of the country still rely a lot on fossil fuels which is not great for the environment.  While walking in Los Viveros, that big park full of trees I walked by three or four times a group of about thirty people sometimes sitting and sometimes standing in a prayer meeting.  It was rather interesting.  The woman leading would pray in short phrases and they would repeat after her.
     The couple staying in the guest house with the little girl are from Colombia (she) and Mexico (he).  We had an enjoyable chat in the kitchen.  They asked what I do so I said I´m a mental health support worker.  They both smiled and each suggested I might apply therapy to the other, but I graciously declined, replying that I´m on vacation.  Strange that it didn´t occur to me to ask what they do, since I´m usually the first to ask.  But I think it´s also because of the exotic element about being here.  I mean, that I am considered exotic because I am from a different culture and people are going to be curious.
     There is also a beautiful plaza that looks exactly the way I would envision the quintessential Mexican plaza, neatly laid out paved walkways and trees, a fountain that unfortunately doesn´t work right now and the bust on a pedestal of Raul Anguilano, Artiste Universal, El Orgullo de Mexico.  Or, Raul Anguilano (I might be misspelling his name, so Mexican readers please be patient with me) Universal Artist, the Pride of Mexico.  Yesterday in this same square someone was playing bagpipes (Scottish music, no mariachi) and I told him he played very well and that my father was Scots.  Later in this plaza there was a group of around a hundred people or so gathered round in a protest demonstration against the installation of parking meters in Coyoacan.  One lady was circulating a petition and asked me to sign.  I declined, since I´m only visiting and when I asked her if maybe the use of parking meters might help control congestion she gave me a rather pitying look, smiled and walked on.  Interesting how much I learn around here since I speak Spanish.
    I got up early this morning and went for a walk in the direction of the sun which made the pavement in front of me look like liquid light.  I stopped in the Frieda Kahlo Park.  There is a statue of her, quite large, up on a pedestal in a corner where she sits rather like an Aztec Princess.  This left me thinking about how natural it was for ancient peoples to worship the sun since without it everything that lives would perish.  I still don{t understand though why this would have led the Aztecs to practice human sacrifice.  And then the Spaniards came and instead of just stopping them from this vile practice they introduced their own form of brutality.  I wonder how things might have turned out had they all taken a more collaborative approach, say, ¨You stop sacrificing people and we´ll stop burning witches and heretics.¨
     The ambiance here is not to be missed.  These narrow streets, many with cobblestones, colourful building fronts spray painted in graffiti,  the flowers everywhere, especially the bougainvillea, so shameless in it´s gigantic sprays of magenta, scarlet, purple and golden flowers, and the people everywhere often crowding sidewalk cafes and cantinas.  I walked through a poorer area of town this morning as well but still, everything festooned with colour.

First Day In Coyoacan

I have twenty minutes to write this and no time to send it to everyone so I hope you will all have the resourcefulness to look it up here on my blog.  I am also doing this inside a noisy internet cafe and it is hard to concentrate and the guest house where I am staying does not provide computer access for guests which seems a little bit limiting to say the least.  My flight went well.  The passenger on my left (I was in a middle seat.   not so bad, really) kept wanting to engage me in conversation and I really don´t mind this.  I know that most people are antisocial grouches when they are on airplains and hate it when the person next to them wants to strike  even a minimum of conversation but I say to all you misanthropic grouches, please get over yourselves.  There is nothing wrong with being friendly and acccomodating towards strangers and actually an awful lot that is right about it.  This person I at first wrote off as a young jock but he appeared to have a brain and an interest in talking about a wide range of topics.   His parents are Libyan and he grew up Muslim.  He works in the oil patch in Alberta and seems to have mixed feelings about making a living off of environmental devastation.  Mind you, these days, I am increasingly treating perfect strangers and almost everyone else like they´re my clients so everything goes a little more smoothly these days in my interractions with folks.
Coyoacan is beautiful and my room is big and peacful with a view of the garden.  There is a larege communal kitchen but there is a young family staying there right now and I kind of want to give them space, and besides I have already budgeted for eating out.  There are big towering trees everywhere and brightly coloured building facades and walls festooned with multihued bougainvillea.  Many of the walls, unfortunately are also adorned with tag graffiti. The couple who own the bed and breakfast are a pleasant middle aged couple, but seem quite absent from the premises.  The mother of one of them, a tiny anciana (little old lady) is a lovely, friendly lady.  They also have an affectionate golden retriever dog.
I attended mass in the parroquia San Juan Bautista, that magnificent and huge baroque church that I have already bored everyone about.
I expect to send the afternoon walking around.