Weekend touring

On Sunday, Keating and I decided it was time to run down to Taxco to check out the famous silver markets. We got up early(-ish) and hopped a pesero to the city's southern bus terminal to get our tickets. Ten minutes later, we were happily situated on a very nice Greyhound-style bus enjoying our free beverage and watching Changeling in Spanish.

Living in Mexico has been great for me. It has taught me to let go of some of my embarrassment and sound like an idiot in questionable Spanish and to eat things that would otherwise not cross my lips (anyone up for some local corn fungus? It grows on the corn cobs and looks, well, vile.). More than anything, however, the buses of Mexico City have affected how I handle transportation; riding the peseros to work daily has been like a vaccination for my otherwise miserable motion sickness. I've even become sufficiently acclimatized that I can occasionally read on the bus without thinking that I'm going to die. (Betcha can't tell where this is going!)

Despite this, however, the 2.5 hours bus ride to Taxco through the mountians was waaaay more than I could take. I almost made it all the way there -- we were within Taxco city limits, even -- when I finally lost it. As I clamped my hands over my mouth, Keating dashed to the bathroom at the back of the bus to grab me a barf bag (he had been blocking me in). Finding it locked, he sprinted to the front of the bus, where he proceeded to use broken Spanish and pantomime in a desperate bid to get the driver to understand what he needed. Fortunately, a woman in the front row not only figured out what he meant but also knew where the bags were stashed (they are apparently normally passed out with your free drink at boarding). Keating ran back to me, his hands filled with baggies and paper towels. It was just in time. Moments later, we pulled into the bus terminal. I have never in my life seen people get off a bus that quickly.

Once I felt well enough to walk under my own power again, Keating and I began to explore Taxco by finding a cafe and a pharmacy that sold Dramamine by the dose. Taxco is a beautiful town built into the sides of the mountains are reminds me of the Mexican interpretation of those famous Greek villages with tiered white homes with terracotta tile roofs stacked on upon another up the slopes. There are random arches and second-floor elevated walkways connecting buildings. The streets are cobbled and narrow, and many give up on the pretext of being a road and have entire patches of winding covered stairs connecting drivable stretches. Doorways open intermittently off of the street/stairs, leading into various silver shops and markets.

I'm not much of a shopper, but I have a weakness for jewelry. Keating, who hates shopping, is thrilled to know that he is already covered for our anniversary, my birthday, and Christmas, not to mention Christmas for most of his relatives.

We finally worked our way up through the maze to the central plaza, with its stunning 240 year old Spanish Baroque style cathedral. It was a beautiful, sunny day so we decided to sit on a shady park bench in the plaza and relax while we drank some water. This was a splendid plan for a good 8 minutes, or right up until a bird pooped on my leg. Keating helped me clean it up, laughing at me for my bad luck. Sure that lightning (and poop) never strike twice, we decided to sit for a little longer (to be fair, the bird appeared to have left). Maybe two minutes later, that f-ing bird pooped on my shoulder. As I howled indignantly, Keating snatched the remaining paper towels out of my hand: the bird had managed to get his nose! Thoroughly grossed out but laughing hysterically, we abandoned our shady bench and wandered back into the markets in search of a money clip for Keating and some ice cream to take away some of the emotional pain from the bird attack.

At 6:30 pm, we boarded our bus back to Mexico City. We happily took our seats, free soft drink and peanuts, and Dramamine (well, I did anyway), and settled in for our movies on the return trip (much longer due to Sunday night traffic entering the city). We had our gross-out moments, but it was a wonderful day trip. We've already started discussing how much fun it would be to go vacationing with some friends or relatives, hopping buses between beautiful colonial Mexican towns and ending up with a relaxing weekend at the beach. Any takers? We promise to not let you sit on the magic park bench, and I swear I will take my Dramamine (the drugged trip home was wonderfully uneventful). In the meantime, we're already planning our next weekend escape to Acapulco.

***** Note: True to form, Keating and I both forgot our cameras at home. These pictures were totally stolen off of the web.

Wonderful weekend

Sometimes, it doesn't take much to make a weekend wonderful. Such was the case with the weekend when Keating and I finally found cheddar cheese down here. This weekend was similarly low-key but wonderful.

For one of the first times since we moved here in December, I got to go shopping by myself. I'm not much of a shopper, so roughly 95% of my Mexican shopping experiences have been confined to grocery stores... as was this trip. For those of you concerned that I may have lost my mind to be so excited about going grocery shopping alone, let me explain. Keating is wonderful, but we are never more stressed with each other than when we are in a grocery store. You can actually watch Keating twitch just walking past a grocery store. It's amazing! While that should normally be enough for us to happily leave him out of the food shopping, we are stuck. Without a car, we have to carry all of our food for the half-mile hike home. It helps to have two of us along.

Without Keating along, I was able to read moisturizer labels (mine from the states was running out and the store doesn't carry my brand), find a yoga mat, and even pick up some exfoliating body scrub and a replacement lipstick. When I got home I had a wonderful time pampering myself and feeling incredibly indulgent. Spoiling me further, Keating decided to cook dinner so that he could work out a Buffalo Wing Pasta recipe he'd been thinking about. Pampering and Anchor Bar wing sauce? Amazing!

The next day, Keating and I made the long walk to the town's central plaza where we enjoyed amazing Mexican food. If you haven't tried tacos al pastor, you need to find yourself a legit Mexican restaurant. Get a side order of grilled baby onions and guacamole, and finish it off with a cold Victoria beer (Keating) or horchata (me). We wandered the local markets and visited a book store to buy Spanish translations of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Narnia: The Magician's Nephew to help us with our learning. The weekend reached dizzyingly perfect heights when we got to play with 2-month old chihuahua puppies in the plaza. Cuteness overload!

For dinner, we ate candy and read in bed. Come to think of it, Keating had eaten ice cream for breakfast (we were having a power outage and didn't want to see the ice cream go to waste). Isn't that one of the advantages of being a grown up: getting to eat junk when you want to? That, and staying up late.

Anyway, we had a wonderful weekend. (Even though I didn't get to steal one of the puppies.)

Vacation!

Mexico City pretty much closes down for Holy Week as people flee the city for the beaches/mountains/non-urban anything. Keating and decided, however, to bank that time off and use it this coming week when my parents will be in Cancun. Like the completely grateful moochers that we are, we will be happily crashing in my parents' suite with them for a week of sunshine and beaches. (And we've begged them to bring us more Swiss Miss. Fortunately, they still love us!)

Have a wonderful week and enjoy a couple of photos my mom sent me from their visit last month:

Us with our new friend the Aztec death god. He is pretty seriously creepy looking and could use a sandwich or something. Just look at those ribs! This creepy fellow lives at the National Anthropology Museum.

Built in the 16th century, thus church in Coyoacan's main plaza features incredible art. The plaza itself turns into a sort of gathering place and street fair every weekend.

And finally, a totally gratuitous shot of my baby (Asher). He has been living with my parents, and I miss him terribly. We would bring him down here, but something in his previous life as a stray has left him absolutely terrified of being crated, making it very difficult to safely move him here.

Rent!

Keating and I had our very first house guests recently. My parents flew down from Michigan to spend a long weekend visiting us in Mexico City. They were absolute troopers: Keating and I dragged them all over town (on public transportation) for three days, and they're still speaking to us!

Since they insisted on staying in a hotel (we only had a fold-out love seat to offer them), they

might not technically have been house guests. Regardless, they have helped us to define the "rent" we will charge to future visitors who stay with us (never fear, we now have a spare bedroom with a double bed in it). Want to enjoy a fun, cheap vacation in Mexico City, complete with manic guides? Simply peruse the suggested packages below:

A) Long weekend, comple

te with trip down to the famous floating gardens of Xochimilco, all the Mexican pastry you can endure, exploration of the Chapultepec war memorials, and one terrifying night-time taxi ride with a cabby who speaks no English and is horribly lost. Optional case of food poisoning, no additional cost. Price: two tins of Swiss Miss cocoa mix (with the little marshmallows... we like to pick them out of the cocoa powder and eat them), a box of tea (not chamomile or mint, for goodness sakes. That's almost all I can find here.), and a bottle of horseradish mustard.

B) Everything from Package A, plus three more days spent dodging insistent Mexican craft sellers, a climb up a pyramid, a long visit to the world-class Anthropology Museum (I guarantee that you still won't see half of it!), a performance of Mexican "fliers" swinging upside-down from a rotating metal pole while playing some sort of pan flute (Yes, it's strange and inexplicable. I don't get it, either.), and, as an added bonus, we will at some point promise to lose you in a crowded metro station and expect you to find your own way home (It's totally like and urban version of Survivor! Think how proud you'll feel when you make your way home!). If you're lucky, Keating will treat you to his now-famous fresh squeezed orange juice. Cost: a tea kettle, English-language cookbook, books you've finished reading, and Milky Way 100% caramel candy bars (at least 2).

C) For longer trips, we will likely eventually run out of local ideas and will ultimately pack you off to something a little farther out. We're looking for volunteers to help us explore the beaches of Acapulco and the markets of Taxco (the silver capital of the world). We have more pyramids within a couple-hour drive than you can shake a stick at. Looking for something truly unique to do on your vacation? Shazta is always looking for sherpas (uh, I mean "assistants") for field work in Veracruz (just don't read that other post too carefully, huh?). We might even let you eat some of the fruit from our uber-cool kumquat tree that we've got growing in our garden*. Cost: More Swiss Miss, more candy bars (That don't contain chili powder. We've already got that covered, trust me.), Frank's Red Hot (!!!!!), and maybe some beef on weck and sponge candy. If you can figure out how to smuggle us some Duff's wings, we will probably just let you move in for as long as you like.

Unfortunately for my parents, we managed to fit a terrifying amount of those activities into their three days here. One high point came when we brought them back to our apartment for a home cooked dinner. My poor dad looked fairly perturbed by our ghetto-like neighborhood. Dad was a bit perturbed by the raucous party going on across the alley, which we could see and hear fairly well through the gaping holes in the neighbor's corrugated metal roof (we were on the fourth floor). The only thing capable of briefly overpowering the noise from the party was the occasional engine misfire or downshifting from the major road out front. Fortunately, the neighbors on the 2nd floor decided to not pick that evening to flood the building with heavy incense (the kind that no one has ever used for anything other than to cover the smell of pot). Dad definitely looked relieved to know that we would be moving the next weekend to the safest borough in Mexico City (we were on the fringe of the worst borough). Mom, for her part, was too ill to care much. It was after this charming and intimate dinner party that I placed them in a taxi with a cabbie who only pretended to know where their hotel was when I told him and tried to leave them at a hotel with a similar name in a different part of the city.

On the plus side, not only are my parents still speaking to us, they've offered to let us crash with them in a couple of weeks when they will be staying in Cancun. I suspect that they will be happy to enjoy some enforced relaxation with us instead of being pulled all over town by a couple of loving, though incompetent, tour guides (that's us!). In preparation, Keating and I have started stockpiling the rent that we will be paying them for the crash space: Trix, Honey Nut Cheerios, various pastries, etc. We might not be able to get some things we want (Swiss Miss!!!!! Why is there no normal cocoa mix here???!), but at least we have the inside track on basic groceries that are hard to find in resort towns.

P.S. -- We really do welcome friends to visit, and we really are out of the ghetto now and in a lovely apartment with a spare bedroom. It even has a bed. And sheets. We promise that we have learned our lesson and will not subject anyone to the "All of Mexico City in 3 days tour" again. Unless they specifically ask for it by name: "Packages A-C in 1-2-3."

* As a general note, do NOT try to catch a taxi while holding a kumquat tree you just bought from a nursery. Cabbies will actually FLEE from you the instant they see that tree. This makes it very difficult to get your lovely new plant home.

Butterflies

As mentioned in the last post, my reward for clawing my way back to my loving husband in Mexico City after a terrible week of food poisoning and horse-inflicted abuse in the field was to get up at 5 am the next morning to go horseback riding. Keating and I were bleary-eyed but awake and (mostly) dressed when the phone rang at 5:10 am Sunday morning. It was our friend Monica, who had been kind enough to make the reservations for the tour. She was calling because she had just realized that, being a Sunday, the public transportation system would not yet be running and we would have no way to get to the rendezvous point for the tour. Thank goodness that Monica is 100% amazing: she had already called a taxi service to come get us.

About 20 minutes later, Keating and I sat in the dark in front of our apartment building waiting for our taxi. Monica had stressed that the taxi would be a dark blue sedan and that the driver would know both our first names and the code number "98." (There's nothing like the Mexican taxi service to make you feel like you're either in a Bond movie or doing something illegal.) Keating and I watched the minutes tick away nervously as we scanned the nearly-empty streets. Finally, Keating pointed to a car down the block:

Keating: Have you been watching that car? Do you think maybe it's our taxi? It looks kind of like he's looking for someone.

Me: Yeah... he keeps driving in reverse down the block, then pulling forward around the corner. Really weird. It's a white compact, though, so it can't be ours. Monica said it's a blue sedan.

Keating: (simply staring at me for a moment) There have been, what 4 cars on the road? And one of them looks lost on our block? How many Mexicans do you think would be looking for an address on our block at this time of day? Maybe they sent a different car. Are you sure you understood her right? I could just walk over there and ask him.

Me: Don't do that! That guy has been driving like a lunatic. He's probably doing something illegal. I'll call Monica back to check.

Monica confirmed that we were looking for a blue sedan, and I continued to stare suspiciously at the white compact car. Moments after hanging up the phone, the white car ghosted forward and rolled down a window.

Driver: (translated) Are you Sara?

Me: No, I'm Shazta. (realizing that "Sara" and "Shazta" are pretty darn close to the same word in Spanish) Are you supposed to be picking two people up here?

Driver: I'm looking for Sara and .... (trails off to nowhere)

Me: We're supposed to wait for a cab that knows both our names and a security number. (I'm pretty sure this is our guy, despite the wrong car and wrong name, but I refuse to just get into an unmarked car with some man I've been eyeing suspiciously for 20 minutes because Sara sounds vaguely like Shazta.)

Driver: (Gets on radio. Mutters back and forth.) Sara. And Char-ley? (looks hopefully at Keating)

Keating: Well, I think that's the closest that anyone has come to actually pronouncing my name since we got here, especially after it's been broadcast second-hand through a radio. Get in the taxi, Shazta -- otherwise we won't make it to the rendezvous.

As I got into the taxi, still muttering about not having the securi

ty number and how James Bond wound know better than to get into the car without that number, the phone rang. It was Monica calling to tell us that she had phoned the taxi company to figure out what was going on and had been told that the driver was sitting around, confused, waiting for us. It was great that Monica called just then since our driver had completely forgotten where he had been hired to take us to and refused to believe me when I told him (most people aren't looking for closed metro stations at that hour). In frustration, I passed him the phone and let Monica (who is a native Mexican) explain to him that we were not crazy, stupid gringos. (Mostly, anyway.) He agreed to drive us to our destination, but kept repeating that he thought it was terribly strange and very likely a bad idea. I found this reassuring, as you can imagine.

This is how we came to be standing in front of a closed metro station in a semi-seedy part of town at 6:30 am, waiting for anyone else from our tour. At the stroke of 7, Monica appeared from one direction and our mini-touring-bus arrived from the other. Within moments, we were all loaded in and gone.

Our tour left the urban sprawl of Mexico City and wound through the surrounding mountains until we reached Valle de Bravo. At the butterfly sanctuary, we each paid our 3 pesos to use the facilities before mounting the horses for our ride up the hill. Unlike the work horses of my crippling experience two days before, these horses were outfitted with comfortable leather saddles and lazy dispositions appropriate for adult-scale pony rides. Each horse had it's own minder to make sure that the horse didn't suddenly decide to play the old game of "Ditch the Tourist." My horse was so completely indifferent to its prospects that it had no intention of either climbing up or walking back down the hill; my horse-minder had to actually drag the horse both ways. (I felt so bad I gave him an extra large tip.) We had missed the peak butterfly time by about a week, but the view was still incredible atop the hill. The air swirled with monarch butterflies making their final preparations before departing on their long migration north. Parts of the forest floor were carpeted in the orange and black wings of butterflies who had made the long journey south to die in the quiet pines and sunny meadows. It was amazingly beautiful.

Butterflies in the Valle de Bravo sanctuaries. My camera battery died, so I found this photo online to show you what it looked like. Credit: http://veryveryfun.com/index.php?Itemid=1&id=25&option=com_content&task=view

Following our visit to the butterfly sanctuary, we stopped at the nearby Bridal Veil Falls and the actual town of Valle de Bravo. The town, situated on a large reservoir and surrounded by mountains, is a favorite resort location for Mexico City's wealthy. It is a picturesque mix of grand haciendas, artisan's markets, public squares, and old village, with plenty of opportunities for hang gliding and boating.

Another internet-snagged photo, this time of Valle de Bravo's central square. Maybe next time I'll remember to bring spare batteries. Photo from: http://travel.webshots.com/photo/2122445550064444924wnGeZz

Keating, Monica, and I went in search of the main Artisan's Market which our guide had assured us was only a couple of blocks up a hilly street. After about 10 blocks, we decided to ask directions. I have previously complained that Mexicans use a strange and complicated conversion system when giving distances in their directions: "two blocks straight ahead" could easily mean "thirteen blocks north, four blocks east." Thanks to getting lost in Valle de Bravo with Monica, a real, live Mexican, I now know how to translate Mexican directions: go as far as the person suggested, and then find someone else to ask. I was still pretty sure that I was going to die from physical pain and exhaustion from my week in the field, but I refused to give up the search for the market -- I was on the hunt for a cool birthday present for my mom. At least 5 sets of directions later, the three of us finally crawled into the Artisan's Market. I found the gift for my mom, and Keating found a nice present for his dad (whose birthday happens to be the day before my mom's). Presents in hand, the three of us left the market and immediately got lost again.

Note: I use the term "lost" loosely. Geologists are never lost; we are simply exploring the area. (Even if we are confused as hell, holding the map upside-down, howling with frustration. We are not lost.)

Traffic jams on the way back kept us on the road a couple hours longer than planned, and we finally crawled up the 3 flights of stairs to our apartment at 11 pm. We were exhausted and dirty (and may have smelled faintly of horse poo), but we felt good. It had been a great day outside of the city.