Hola D.,
Back in San Pancho again after the world's second longest bus ride from el D.F. to La Penita. If you haven't done it yet, don't, not unless you absolutely need to save the money over traveling by air. It was perfectly okay, especially if you enjoy vibrating, which the bus does a lot of, and watching Spanish dubbed straight to video U.S. movies. I'm not big on either of those activities, but my guess is that of those two, vibrating is pretty popular, at least if sex store inventories are any indication. A friend of mine used to have this store called Toys in Babeland that sold bedroom toys, and the bestsellers were always vibrators...but I digress. The bus ride was way too long and extremely boring, even with the vibrating.
I can't read while in a moving car or bus without hurling so I was stuck listening to Spanish lessons for four or five hours until I finally drifted off to sleep. Talking was not an option since I was the only one awake on the bus with the possible exception of the driver (I say possible because he hit the topes going into and out of towns at such speed I'm guessing his eyes were open, but only about half way).
El D.F. was fantastic. I blogged about that experience but without many details. I won't offer many more here, but suffice to say I found the city remarkable. At first it was a little overwhelming, but it became manageable when I gave up on seeing it all and settled into a routine confined mainly within four neighborhoods - La Condesa, La Roma, Polanco (for gay haircuts and walks in beautiful parks and a couple of fantastically expensive eating experiences), and Zona Rosa. Most of our time was spent house-sitting for a friend in La Condesa and caring for her dog Zulema, truly a great treat. We loved Zulema and she in turn loved us back so lavishly we almost had to bring her to San Pancho with us.
The parks in el D.F. are wonderful. The famous parks - Chapultepec, Lincoln, et al - are awe inspiring, but what I loved most of all were the little neighborhood parks in Condesa and Roma. They're full of public art and people and dogs, lots and lots of dogs. Every now and then a gay couple necking on a bench reminded me that Mexico City recently legalized same sex marriage. Funny how so many of us in the U.S. carry around the impression that Mexico is a conservative back water when it comes to social politics. In fact, while it is conservative on many issues (as is the U.S., even in liberal meccas like Portland and Seattle where gay marriage is decidedly not legal), Mexico City, at least in some of her neighborhoods, seems to have fully embraced gay male couples.
We ate in every imaginable kind of dive and a fair number of nicer restaurants until that got too routine, not to mention expensive, and then we cooked in, something we enjoyed especially because of the abundance of markets full of fresh produce. I particularly loved the Mercado San Juan with it's fish mongers and butchers and seemingly endless array of fruit stands and purveyors of ethnic culinary treats including Thai fish sauce and Filipino shrimp paste, freshly made tofu and fine Spanish hams.
And the bicentennial celebration was amazing! The fireworks were so spectacular we could see them from our apartment window miles from the Zocalo. We didn't brave the crowds downtown, but we did walk through the parks in our own neighborhood and saw people walking about dressed as Frida Kahlo, Zapata, or Hidalgo heading to the capitol or to neighborhood parties where most of us watched the festivities on TV.
But, all good things must come to an end. We left D.F. for Cuernavaca, the capitol city of the state of Morelos, a couple of weeks ago for language school. We had a home stay and private classes (because there were no other students). I came to Mexico not speaking a word of Spanish and more than a year later I can speak about 5 words. I had no idea I was such a shitty language learner.
I usually think of myself as a 51% person. I'm no genius, but when it comes to learning aptitude, in most subject areas at least, I'm better than average. But attempting to learn Spanish has been humbling. I'm definitely not 51%. But then, everyone is bad at something and language happens to be my weakness - that and a million and one other things like algebra and science, art, music and geography, but whose counting, right?
The school seemed lost in time. I was surprised by how dated everything was, from the confusing online test, to the books about the Contra war and the life of Sandino, and the even more telling dearth of more recent titles.
My teacher was a woman in her 60s who went to high school in her 30s in order to be able to learn to read and write. I found her story inspiring and thought we'd hit it off, the two of us having a self-professed lack of formal grammar training in common. But, it turns out, her approach to language was all rules and very little intuition. She also talked at what to my less than 51% ears sounded like lightening speed, and on subjects as complicated as the unhealthy eating habits of Mexican teens, liberation theology and the Catholic Church, and the alternative structures of governance being created by the autonomous communities of Chiapas. For bits of time, I found myself emotionally devolving to the days when, as an uncoordinated 10 year old in grade school P.E., I would pretend to have to go to the bathroom or feign illness in order to avoid my turn at bat in softball games.
We did get to go to the pyramids in Cuernavaca and to enjoy weather spectacular beyond belief for this time of year. The city is lovely in parts, and it is, as the locals say, all up and down being built mainly on the south facing slope of the Sierra de Chichinautzin mountain range in an area riddled with deep gulches and ravines dug by mountain-fed streams.
Cuernavaca's remarkable climate has won it the nickname of City of Eternal Springtime. I'm not sure of the meteorological assets that make the climate there so stable, but its famous weather has attracted the rich and royal for centuries. Today, it is known by many as the Beverly Hills of Mexico, with the vast majority of new housing starts at the high end of the market.
In Cuernavaca proper, where most of the poor of city lives and where we lived for almost two weeks, the neighborhoods feel altogether overgrown and over-developed. Over the last 70 years, Cuernavaca's population grew by almost 800%, from around 80,000 to over 800,000, and most of that growth has been in spurts. This rapid and awkward growth pattern is very evident in most of old Cuernavaca where skyrocketing housing costs have caused concentrations of poverty, and is less obvious but no less definitive of the shape and location of the expensive, vacation suburbs of the new Cuernavaca that sprawl away from the city center.
In spite of the heavy traffic and overcrowded sidewalks, I loved the city, mainly for it's amazing weather. It is cool in the mornings and warm but not hot in the afternoons. The evenings quickly cool and nights can be a bit nippy, just the way I like them. I ended up spending a bunch of time hanging out at an old hacienda near the centro, drinking beers and decompressing after the daily routine of 4 or 5 hours of classes. The hacienda was beautiful, capturing and magnifying all that was great about the place and its mountain location, what with it's grand old trees, rainforest landscaping, and wide verandas full of shaded, open air tables and lounge chairs. Like the school, that place, too, seemed lost in time.
Classes stretched out over two weeks, and the weekend was open so we took advantage of the free-time to take a little trip to Taxco. Taxco is a beautiful colonial town in the hills of the state of Guerrero about an hour and a half by bus from Cuernavaca. Taxco grew up around sliver mining and the crafting of fine silver jewelry, and its main industry these days is tourism. It's obviously successful as it was packed to the gills with touristas engaged in one of my least favorite activities - shopping.
In spite of the crowds, Taxco is beautiful. The vistas were breathtaking and our hotel, a converted colonial convent, was stunning both for it's beauty and it's low, low price. Staying there cost only $40 a night. In Taxco we found our way into a hippie restaurant with vegetarian menu items and decor representative of an aesthetic that seems ubiquitous throughout neo-hippy Mexico. It was full of Hindu and Buddhist iconography(one is led to believe they are basically the same thing), airbrushed wall murals, over-sized novelty candles, mirror beaded shawls, and other relics of 70s era hippydom, and not a little bit of old fashioned hippy food and music. Appropriately, the next day we happened into a funky old antique shop where we had fun meeting a fascinating elderly paleo-hippie antique dealer who sold us an overpriced old plate for our home stay mother who collects tourist plates representing what she refers to as "travels," taken through the experience of students' stories.
Our old hippy acquaintance had wonderful stories to tell. It felt like a privilege to pay too much in order to support his remarkable lifestyle.
Of course, you know I can't resist describing our home stay mother. She was something, nearly 70, a recent widow, and a lover of gay men and others who, but gently, stray from the path of tradition. She had another boarder staying with her who is a deaf, gay college student named Diego who she has counseled into accepting his sexuality and, apparently, becoming a weight-obsessed, serial dating disco queen. Boy she could talk. The constant talking was fine for Jon who could understand her, and Diego who couldn't hear her, but Ascaut, as she called me, could only really follow about 40% of the conversations. I was sleepy by around 9pm every night from the strain of listening and trying to understand.
The stories were long and complicated and as often as not populated by ghosts and strange dreams, unfaithful relatives, her weekly dance classes, Diego's love life, and her errant daughter who lives in Houston, has leukemia, and refuses to marry for immigration papers. It's an accomplishment for me to have gathered that much from our talks but I'm pretty sure this was only the tip of the iceberg. Jon has mercifully chosen to spare me the rest of the details.
Our home stay mama was very sweet and we would have stayed with her for a few more days, but our trip to Cuernavaca was interrupted by news of our house having been broken into in San Pancho. We returned to deal with whatever there might be to deal with and, honestly, to escape spending more time at school. Don't get me wrong. The people there were absolutely great. It was just the pedagogy that left something to be desired, at least for me. I'm sure many benefit greatly from the earnest tutelage offered there.
Break-ins have been happening a lot down here as you know. We didn't lose anything personal and the damage was minimal. The only thing broken was the screen in a kitchen window and the only valuable thing stolen was our gas tank, some speculate by the gas man himself. They left the year's accumulation of coins on our kitchen table, a laptop computer, our landlord's TV and DVR, and loads of other things including new clothes still in their packages. Odd, huh?
And that brings us to the present. I'm sitting in my kitchen watching the gas man replace the gas tank I suspect he might have stolen.
We were kind of stunned to see the town when we got here, though we're told the worst is over and that much has already been repaired. The bridge is still gone and the footbridge that has replaced it isn't exactly what you'd call solid. The river is still rushing but cars seem to be getting through it at the usual secondary crossing. One friend apparently drove through it in her bug, but then she'll will do almost anything - not someone to emulate in these matters. I'm unsure about going through it in Bosque (the name of our Jeep) but we'll have the brave it soon if we're to get any decently priced groceries.
The beach is a ruin, but beaches heal pretty quickly on their own, as I'm sure you know from having lived through tropical storms in Hawaii. I haven't had a chance to take a close look, but it's a pretty amazing transformation. Most people seem to be proceeding as though everything is fine and nothing has happened. Funny how once things start getting back to something like normal, folks just forget the past and move on. The families who were washed out of the arroyo have even returned to their former lots, and before the end of the rainy season, confident that nothing so bad can happen again. Keep your fingers crossed that we don't get more rain this year.
I hear your house is fine and that it turned out to be a real refuge for your neighbors. Their house leaked like a sieve. It was kind of you to let them live in your place until the rain stopped.
I'm about to do some investigating to see what else is up, but it looks like businesses are re-opening and that folks are bracing themselves for what will likely be a terrible high season. I guess that's good for people like us who don't care for the tourist rush, but I think the economic consequences will be pretty serious and we need to brace ourselves for some hard work this winter.
That bridge isn't likely to be up again for a while, and news of the damage has spread far and wide. Between not having a bridge, the damage to our beach, and bad news about airlines bankruptcies and narco trafficking, I'm afraid folks will stay away in droves. Oh, and the hospital reports that they have had 500 cases of viral pink eye.
I'm not touching anyone, just so you know. Air kisses are fine but touching will have to wait until pink eye season is well over. There are lots of things about being a teenager that I miss, but pink eye, mumps, and mononucleosis aren't among them.
When you coming back?
xoxo
P.S. No pictures this time. I just got a new computer and haven't transferred the files yet.
0 comments:
Post a Comment