angrybrowngirlabroad-blog

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Lakedown Breakdown (I need an editor just to tell me not to do things like this....)

As I have said, I adore Antigua, but I also adore Lake Atitlan, for reasons both different and oddly similar.  The birthplace of Mayan creation, spoken about in their language, Lake Atitlan was formed when a supervolcano exploded and collapsed in on itself 85,000 years ago.  This eruption left a layer of ash over the world, and you can date different sediments around the planet by looking for the debris from the volcano that would become Lake Atitlan.  In the wake of the eruption, rain water began to fill the basin, forming the lake that exists today.  New lava vents broke through the surface, too, forming the volcanoes San Pedro, Atitlan and Toliman.  They lay dormant now, though occasionally Atitlan/Toliman vents some gas and ash.  The lake rises and falls with the seasons, though it’s been on a rising trend the last couple of years, swallowing up the houses of those foolish enough to build on the shore.  Most Mayan villages are built further up the steep hills of the crater’s edges, making walks into town an exercise, and making most of the tourist area’s right on the water.  Some of the buildings abandoned by the rising waters now sport brilliantly colored murals, painted by locals and people passing through.  

And they pass through a lot, there are several towns on the lake (and one under it, a Mayan town swallowed by the rising waters, it’s exact location known to only a few to prevent scavenging), each one has a different feel, and draws a different type of people.  Some of the towns are very traditionally Guatemalan, and cater little to tourists, others are all about the seasonal influx of people.  There seems to be something for everyone at the lake, though the beauty of it alone is enough to draw you in, with it’s incredible blue water surrounded by sharp cut crater sides.  A moonrise over the lake, or watching a storm roll across it during rainy season, is enough to make you want to stay forever, even without the variety of interesting things the towns offer.  Having visited a lot (but not all of) the towns on the lake, I’ll leave you with my impressions of each. SAN PEDRO: A friend has a saying, “Every night is a Friday night and every morning is a Sunday morning in San Pedro.”   The only town on the lake that has a bustling, extranjero party scene.  There are several bars, operating at different times of the year, some catering to the strong expat community, others catering to the people passing through.  One club holds reign, with the only real dance floor, and while the service often leaves something to be desired, there is a decent chance for good music.  Other bars take their spots as places to watch sports, hosts for pool tournaments, locations for trivia, or just various drink specials.  San Pedro also lays claim to some decent and better than decent restaurants, various Spanish schools, and a Sunday bbq where the town gets together to eat around a pool and a local band plays.  The town itself holds several of its own celebrations, including a fair the fills half the streets with various games, booths, and clattering rides.  In addition to that is has a well-stocked market with ridiculously cheap produce, delicious coffee, and local artisans making beautiful clothing out of traditional fabrics. San Pedro seems, at least to me, to be the town where the locals and travellers mix the most,  I met several interesting people there, Guatemalan and foreigner alike, and had some incredibly conversations that I don’t know that I would have been able to find anywhere else.  The town sits on the western side of the lake, in front of the volcano of the same name.

Kayaking in front of the San Pedro volcano, art in the abandoned houses on the shores of Lake Atitlan

SAN JUAN:  Just over the hill from San Pedro, a ten minute boat ride or a twenty minute tuk-tuk away for the same price, San Juan is much more chill than frantic San Pedro.  No party scene, San Juan is more the local artisans town, a place for the Maya to show of their traditions and make money doing so.  There is a women's weaving cooperative there, where you can go and learn all about the traditional process of making dyes out of plants, spinning cotton thread, and weaving them together to produce incredible garments, as well as buy fair trade items made by the local women, each tagged with it’s creator’s name.  The town also has a chocolate shop that will demonstrate for you how cacao beans get made into chocolate.  There is also a local leather shop where a Mayan man makes incredible bags, some with one-of-a-kind paintings on them of things he has seen in his dreams.  San Juan also contains some really good restaurants including a wine and cheese place that’s available by reservation only (I think it’s the only one on the lake to do so).  A tranquil place that’s a nice way to spend the day, I wish I had visited more often.

Not actually San Juan, but a photo of the one of the boats used to get to other towns on the lake with a puppy next to it!  The llanchas are the tuktuks of the water, and the easiest way to get to the other towns.

SAN MARCOS: The other most popular town on the lake, and a hippy mecha.  If it’s New Age, you will find it here.  Not as large as San Pedro, the town has one main boulevard, and a lot of it’s more interesting things (yoga studios, meditation retreats, etc) are located in the hills above the town center.  The location boasts a nice dock for chilling in the sun, several hostels including a big one on the water that hosts live music a lot, tons of options for vegan and vegetarians, people selling crystals and wire wraps in the street, and more yoga/contact dance/meditation/reiki classes than you can shake a stick at.  The people who have lived in San Marcos for a long time seem not to take the “woo” too seriously, and can laugh at themselves, while also working hard to give back to the community, supporting the locals, making sure the children have access to education and opportunity, and generally beautifying the town and lake.  Those who pass through are blend of grounded hippies and seriously, over the top, trustafarians (unfortunately, it felt to me like more the latter than the former), the sorts of people who set my teeth on edge.  These are the people who don’t even seem to acknowledge the locals around them, even as they help themselves to a paradise they are only a guest in, and I admit, at times they make it difficult not to write off San Marcos all together.  Let’s just say I would never live there, the way I did in San Pedro.

Looking at volcanos Toliman and Atitlan from a lookout point near San Marcos and my favorite sign from my favorite spot in San Marcos, Hostel Del Lago.

TZUNANA:  My experience with Tzunana is a little limited, as I mostly went there to visit with my friend who owns the Hummingbird Hostel.  Tzunana means “hummingbird” in the local Mayan langauge of Tsu’zu’hil.  The town is small, and generally quiet, the tourist presence is little here.  There are some nice hiking trails that lead to beautiful waterfalls, and a chance to do some swimming by the dock.  Maya Moon Lodge, which is located twenty minutes up the hill from the dock, was one of my favorite places to chill and watch the storms roll across the lake.  More nature than touristy, it is well worth a visit if you like peace and calm.

Stream in the hills above Tzunana, and the view from above the town. JAIBALITO:  My only experience with this place was going ashore to meet someone.  I had drinks with him and his friend at a hotel/bar/restaurant on the lake.  The location was pretty, and had a good view of the lake and volcanoes, plus you could rent the hot tub or a towel to go swimming in the pool.  However, having not gone into the greater town area at all, I can’t say much of anything about local life here.  Between Jaibalito and Santa Cruz there is a beautiful hotel that has a lower level partially swallowed by the lake that’s fun to swim in!

Playing in the sunken part of the hotel around the corner from Jaibalito.

SANTA CRUZ: Another area where the tourist section and the local section were very clearly separated.  Several hotels and hostels dot the lake’s edge, including an adorable cafe that I loved, and the town sits high above it.  Each hotel/hostel is different, Free Cerveza offers glamping in huge, bell tents, and a family style dinner each night will all the beer you can drink but you run out of things to do there quickly if you’re not really into swimming or sitting around.  La Iguana has open mic nights, and a generall friendly and easygoing staff, it was through them that me and friend booked a weaving class with one of the women in town.  We hiked up to the town from our hostel, and waited by a small white church where the woman met us.  She then took us to her house, set us up with chairs, and let us pick the colors for our basic belts we were going to weave.  I thought, with my experience as a seamstress, that while weaving would not be easy I might have some natural aptitude.  I was wrong, I was very, very wrong.  We were doing extremely basic weaving, and I still could not get the hang of it.  Our teacher was patient, and understanding, but it did nothing to assuage our complete lack of talent.  After two hours of toil she told us she would finish our work and to come back later.  We did as we were told, and now I have a black, red, green, turquoise and blue belt, with very obvious delineations between my work and her.  Very humbling, which is good for me now and again.

Glamping in near the lake at Free Cerveza, and learning how to (kind of) weave in Santa Cruz. PANAJACHEL: The most city-like of the towns, other than Santiago, Panajachel boast one of the highest populations on the lake, several large hotels, and a huge area for tourist shopping.  It’s location also makes it a transportation hub, with shuttles going to San Cristobal, Antigua, Guatemala City, and Semuc Champey among other destinations (San Pedro offers these as well, but with it’s road in and out frequently under construction, availability changes).  There are hostels and bars, a market, and a large stone church in town.  Outside of town there is a large nature preserve that’s home to spider monkeys. On Mondays and Fridays there is also a fabric market held at the firefighters station, where Mayans come to sell their used huipils (the traditional handwoven and embroidered shirt Mayan women wear) and cortes (traditional skirts, made out of four pieces of hand woven fabric stitched together, often with decorative embroidery covering the seams, to make one long tube of fabric, held in place by a hand-woven belt).  The variety of colors and designs at the fabric market are a straight up assault on the senses, as a seamstress I was completely overwhelmed, and I can’t wait to go back and buy more one-of-a-kind fabrics from the Mayan woman who have made this their trade.

The fabric market, so many colors and designs, I was completely overwhelmed.

SANTIAGO:  The other more city-like town on the lake.  I have only driven through Santiago, and got a flat tire there, so I did not explore much of it.  It seems similar to Panajachel, but with slightly less hotels and a smaller tourist market.  It’s location, separated from San Pedro by the San Pedro volcano, with its own “bay” (is it a bay when it’s a lake?) makes from some beautiful views and the area outside town plays host to Lake Atitlan’s own festival, Cosmic Convergence, which takes place over New Years Eve every year.

There are several more towns on the lake, and many of them are more traditional than the usual tourists spots.  What the towns share is a strong sense of community, a version of law known as Mayan justice, tradition evident in the clothes and three different Mayan languages spoken on the lake, a preponderance of fried chicken carts, and a dock as many of the towns are only accessible by the little boats that speed across the lake from dawn until dusk.  It’s history is different from Antigua’s, but it is strong nonetheless.  The indigenous Mayan people were heavily targeted during Guatemala’s 20 year civil war, entire towns were wiped off the map in areas, and the lake saw fighting, as well as several natural disasters.  But the people persist here, keeping their traditions alive as best they can as tourism impacts the local environment and culture.  

There is a legend about the lake, during the time when the conquistadors first came to Guatemala (Guatemala was one of the last places to be conquered by the Spanish, the indigenous people resisted for 200 years, long past Mexico’s fall).  It was said that a soldier of the conquistador’s army met and fell in love with a beautiful Mayan woman who lived at the lake.  The soldier’s commander, a conquistador, grew jealous of their love, so he went to a witch because he wanted to make the woman fall in love with him.  The witch gave him a ring that would make whoever wore it irresistible.  The conquistador wore his new jewelry, but one of his soldiers set eyes on him and was immediately smitten.  Angry with the results, in a fit of rage the conquistador killed the soldier and his Mayan lover and threw the ring into the lake.  Now the magic of the ring calls out to those who visit the lake, drawing them in and making it difficult for them to leave. Now I can’t speak to magic rings, or conquistador curses, but I have felt a sort of magnetism the lake holds.  The people who live there already, the people it attracts, the beauty of the lake itself, it’s mysterious and explosive origins and all the legends attached to it…..  If Antigua holds the history of colonialism, of conquest and governance of the new land as the former capital and religious center of Guatemala, then Lake Atitlan contains the history of the indigenous people and their struggle to maintain tradition and dignity for generations in the face of oppression.  Each place represents a different, boldly colored thread in the tapestry that is Guatemala’s story.

Lake Atitlan at sunset from San Pedro’s shore.

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How Not to Go to Antigua From Lake Atitlan, A Cautionary Tale

I think I’ve made enough mistakes travelling that I could rename this blog: Angry Brown Girl Abroad, A Cautionary Tale.  Most of them are little things, like “don’t forget to bring your own toilet paper,” or “don’t walk across black sand beaches barefoot” or “don’t do shot of absinthe,” or “If you’re going to take your shoes off at the bar so you can dance, don’t get drunk and forget you were wearing them,” or “don’t ride  a quad without a helmet, especially if you don’t really know how to “or “a scimitar will not effectively remove a dead turtle’s head once it’s been laying in the sun a few days” you get the picture.  A lot of my mistakes can be laughed off, a few of them were actually dangerous (see earlier in the blog for the story about my concussion after the quad thing).  This is a story about something that could have been actually dangerous, but worked out in the end and is now kind of cool in retrospect though if it had gone differently I would probably never talk about it because it was totally my fault. I am person with no internal sense of direction.  Can’t tell you left from right, can’t tell where north, south, east and west are without a compass or a sun dipping near one of the horizons.  I get lost in big stores, in marketplaces (I simultaneously love and fear the massive markets of Mexico), in familiar areas that I’ve been to before.  I’d say part of it is that my brain is constantly screwing around thinking of something else while I’m driving, but the other part is I just plain can’t oriente myself ever.  I remember the days before GPS, driving to LA with printed out map directions and hoping against hope that I did not make a wrong turn and have to back track.  Fortunately, I’m good at reading maps, once I know where I am.  I got a GPS for xmas when I was eighteen and that changed everything, no more panic attacks trying to figure out where the hell I was while driving like a grandmother who can barely see over the steering wheel.  Then GPS became standard on phones around the time that mine kicked the bucket and sweet baby Jesus, I COULD GO ANYWHERE.  I still kept a map book in my car, but GPS made life possible, and I used it pretty much every day, even to double check places I’d been before, unless I was feeling reckless or like going an adventure, but I still kept my phone in my pocket just in case. The wonderful thing about my cell phone plan (T-mobile, seriously, I love it, I have had T-mobile as long as I have had a cell phone except for a brief 2 year affair with AT&T for an iPhone and NEVER AGAIN) is that I get service in 170 countries, often slower than home unless I am in Canada or Mexico (works the exact same there).  That means I can travel with my GPS, and let me tell you, that thing has saved me on more than one occasion when trying to ask locals for directions proves completely fruitless.  My GPS of choice is Google maps, as it is for many of us, however there is a flaw in that plan.  In more rural areas and foreign countries, Google simply doesn’t know that roads exist where they do, or stop where they do, or that the roughly cut piece of dirty connecting to areas can hardly be considered a road unless you have serious ground clearance and skills.  Simply put, Google does not have enough up to date information on areas outside the United States to be considered reliable there, so plan with caution and ask the locals what they recommend. Guess what I did not do. Guess what I totally thought about doing, as in straight up went “Hmmmm, I think I’m going to go this way, but maybe I should ask someone about that route who has driven there before.  I mean, I’m going to drive during the day and Google has been pretty accurate, especially on the way in here, so I think it’s probably fine……” Yep, talked myself out of my own common sense.  Learning to trust my instincts has been one of the biggest lessons in this last year and half on and off the road, lemme tell you, they are right more often than they are wrong.  Alas, it would be a bit longer before I truly acknowledged and believed that.  That is why I packed my bag, bid my lovely friends in Antigua and their lovely new home good-bye, and set off to go meet up with my friends who lived in San Pedro.  Typing in my location to Google maps I surveyed the route, about three hours away, and hopped into my car, ready to trade this beguiling colonial city for the beautiful blue waters of the lake.

The ride there was smoother than I expected, at least in the beginning.  The road I took had less potholes than the road into Antigua from the border, and I spend along, past fields and forest.  It was strange being on my own after spending the last month or so with my friends from Minnesota.  Still, I relished the opportunity to sing loudly and out of key with the music on my cracked ipod touch, now ten years old.  Stopping for a bathroom break, I checked my phone and saw a message from one of the friends I was going to visit.  It was instructions for how to find their house once I entered the town of San Pedro.  They seemed pretty straightforward, and I, with my GPS and service everywhere, was fairly certain this was going to be an easy trip, even though driving on unfamiliar roads in unfamiliar countries always made me a little wary. As I neared the lake, and took the road that led around the town of Panajachel, the road became a little less smooth, potholes began to make an appearance, as well as various unmarked speed bumps aka “topes” and places where there was no pavement at all, just a swath of dirt and gravel.  This slowed down my progress a bit, and I began to worry a little.  I had not filled up my tank in Antigua, but I had just enough to get to the lake with a little bit left over.  I had not filled up my tank because I only had a little bit of Guatemala money in my pocket (quetzales are the currency of Guatemala).  Because my bank had decided to cancel my old debit card in order to issue me a new one with a chip that I was not able to get since it was delivered to my parent’s place in California, I had been forced to pull out large sums of money in Mexico before my card was no longer usable.  I had been slowly going through my large supply of pesos, and was now on my last American hundred dollar bills I kept tucked away from emergencies.  However, this meant I had to go to a bank to exchange them for a decent rate, and wanting to be on my way, I decided I would do it in San Pedro the morning after I arrived.  To sum it all up, I had left Antigua, with enough gas in my tank to get where I was going, the equivalent of about $10 in Guatemalan money in my pocket, a slower pace than was comfortable for my “No driving at night in Central America” rule, and GPS that was soon going to prove faulty. So things were going great. I wound my way around the lake, catching the occasional glimpse of beautiful blue water as I made my way into the towns on the lake’s southern edge.  For the most part there were easy to navigate, until I got to Santiago.  Here the main road through was not a simple straight line, also, as I had forgotten or maybe had not learned yet, Google maps has a hard time recognizing 1-way streets in foreign countries, it sees them merely as roads.  Also, 1-way streets aren’t always clearly labelled in Guatemala (or Mexico for that matter), so that only added to the confusion.  Now I was trying to navigate an unfamiliar city, with a GPS that kept telling me to go the wrong way down streets, and very impatient drivers leaning on their horns when I hesitated at intersections, searching frantically for the sign that would tell me which was to go.  

I ended up finding a street that would connect me back to the main road, but as I turned onto it I found that it was uncomfortably narrow, barely the width of my car.  “If someone tries to come up this the other way, we’re screwed.” I muttered to myself, going down the street as quickly as was safe, not eager to be on it any longer than I had to.  Sure enough, as I was nearing the end, a tuk-tuk came up the road towards me.  The road had widened a bit on this end, but even then there was no way the two of us were going to fit.  Instinct kicked in before sense, though, I and I backed up a little bit, trying to make room for the tuk-tuk to get around me.  When I did I felt my tire scrape against the wall on my passenger side and actually heard the tire deflate.  With an irritated sigh, and no choice now but to go forward, I watched through my windshield as the tuk-tuk backed down the hill, and I followed, slowly and carefully on my now completely flat tire.

At the bottom of the hill two roads came together, I pulled over next to this intersection and got out to check the damage.  Sure enough I had ripped open the side of my tire, which meant even if I got it to a tire repair shop, there was no fixing it to make it usable again.  Irritated at this turn of events, and myself for trying to get out of the way for a vehicle that would not fit, I began unpacking the back of my car to get to my spare, which was under pretty much everything I had brought on my trip. Two men, working on a car nearby, saw me pulling out the jack and getting ready to replace my tire.  One of them came over and offered to do it for me.  I tried to decline, I had replaced plenty of tires in my day, but he was politely insistent and I eventually just gave up.  It’s not like I really wanted to be crouching on the side of the road as cars and tuk-tuks went by, belching exhaust, in my green silk skirt.  I let the man handle it while I double checked my route, I was about half an hour away according to my untrustworthy GPS.  I glanced up at the sky, the sun was nearing the horizon, I was cutting it close.  A few minutes later the man was done and replacing the jack in my car.  I thanked him profusely and asked for directions out of Santiago.  He told me to take the road I was on out of the city and to take care and went back to the vehicle he was working on.  I hopped in the driver's seat and drove out of the city on my half-sized spare.   Outside the city I pulled over on the side of the road to double-check my friends directions.  They were written as if I was coming from the other direction, the town of San Marcos on the northern side of the lake.  Seeing this discrepancy, and with little time to waste as I was losing sunlight, I gave her a call.  When she picked up I explained that I was reading her instructions, but that I wasn’t coming from San Marcos, but from Santiago, so I wanted to make sure I had the directions to her house correct. “From Santiago?” her voice sounded like she didn’t quite believe me.

“Yeeees.” I said, not liking where this was going.

“Who told to go that way?” now she sounded concerned, so I was concerned. “Um,” I said, thinking that Google Maps had, “No one told me NOT to go this way.  Why?” “That road is really bad, like bad quality, all dirt, huge rocks, uphill, but also just plain bad to drive.  People get stuck there, and then they get robbed or carjacked.”  She explained.

“Oh.” I said as I looked out the window, sunset was nearing.  “So here’s the thing…. I don’t have enough gas to drive all the way back around the lake.  I don’t have enough money to get enough gas to get all the way back around the lake.  Also, I would be driving at night because the sun is about to go down.  I would get a hotel here for the night, except I don’t have enough money for a hotel.  I have money to exchange, but I can’t exchange money until the banks open tomorrow morning.  Which means I’m pretty much left with the option of sleeping in my car on the side of the road somewhere for the night, which I’m fine with, I just have to find a safe road.” “Ok.” Sheri said, “I have to ask some people some things, let me call you back.” she hung up the phone.

I sat in my car, staring at my phone and thinking of all the ways I had messed up that day.  Not getting gas, not getting money, just assuming everything would be fine instead of over-preparing like I usually did.  I knew it was a bad idea, but I thought that I would be safe, the road seemed pretty easy.  Then again, Google maps had proven untrustworthy before, and I could have saved myself a world of trouble if I had just asked someone’s advice, just asked Sheri what she thought the best way in was.  But I hadn’t, and here I was.  At least my car was comfortable to sleep in, even if it’s lack of window tinting meant the sun always woke me up at some ungodly hour.

The phone rang, I answered it eagerly, “Hello,” Sheri’s voice rang out through my car speakers via the power of Bluetooth, “I’ve been talking to my friend Matt and he’s done this before, I’ll put him on.”  There was a sound of the phone switching hands, and then a cheery male voice with a British accent was coming out of my dashboard.  We made introductions and he explained what I needed to do. “First of all, what kind of car do you have?”  I told him, but he was unfamiliar with it.  I wasn’t surprised, I don’t know the sales figures, but most people don’t recognize the Nissan Juke by name.  I filled him in on the specifics, small, crossover, mini-SUV thing.

“How’s the clearance?” “Good.” I said, which was true. “Ok, because you’re going to need it on this road.  Do you have all-wheel drive?” “No.” Also true, “But I have taken this car off-roading in a lot of places that other cars could not go.” I said, thinking of its maiden voyage to a canyon in Mexico notorious for its giant rocks on the entrance road, or all my times off-roading in the desert, or the various places I had taken it in the jungles around Sayulita, or all the other times that were escaping specific memory, but I knew the car had been around and I was good at getting it there and out again. “Are you sure it can handle it?  This is a really rough road.”  Matt was being careful, and I appreciated that. “Yes.” I said, not mentioning the fact that one of my rear tires was currently a spare half the width of the other three.  I was a little worried, but I also trusted my abilities as a driver, spare or no.  “I can do it.” “All right then, you’re going to need a police escort.  To get one you go to the police station and request it.” “Got it, can you tell me where it is?” I said, turning my car around on the empty road, Matt’s voice guided me through the speakers as I made my way back into Santiago, eventually pulling up in front of the police department.   “One last request,” I said, switching to the phone as I turned off my car, “My Spanish is too limited for negotiations like this, do you mind talking to the police for me?”   Matt confirmed he would do it and I headed inside. “Hello,” I said to the man behind the desk in limited Spanish, “Please talk to my friend.” and handed him the phone. Matt and the police officer talked for what felt like forever to me as I eyed the waning sunlight out the door to the police station. At one point the man handed the phone back to me. “How much money do you have?” he asked.

“90Q is all,” I said, (about $10). “Give them all of it, for gas they say, but you always have to pay for an escort.”  he explained.  I said I would and handed the phone back.  The two finished their conversation and the man behind the desk radioed for my escort after I handed him all the Guatemala money I had.  I waited patiently until a man armed with a shotgun came out of the back.  He asked the man behind the counter what was going on, he explained, and the man looked at me.  I introduced myself awkwardly, yeah, I’m the stupid gringa who went the wrong way and now needs a police escort to get their safely, I thought to myself.

My escort led me outside to the pick-up truck they would be using to escort me.  A few minutes later another man and a woman in uniform and also armed showed up.  We exchanged greetings and they motioned for me to get in my car, we were almost out of sunlight.  As I turned the car on they indicated for me to drive ahead, which seemed odd to me, as I was unfamiliar with the city and would do much better following them.  Still, I wasn’t the one in charge here. I began our awkward exit from Santiago a second time.  Each intersection I came to I stopped, looked in my rearview and waited for the driver of the pick-up truck, the first man I had met in the office, to indicate which way I should go.  We repeated this charade at every intersection until we were finally out of the city again. I breathed a sigh of relief as the pick-up truck emblazoned with the local police’s paint job pulled ahead of me on the road.  Now to play follow the leader and hopefully not get involved in anything requiring the use of those shotguns I had seen.  As we drew nearer to the end of the paved road and the last light began to fade I took a few deep breaths.  Soon we would begin the drive around the volcano San Pedro.

“This will make a great story later.” I told myself, turning up the music on my stereo to calm my nerves. The pavement gave way to dirt, and we were suddenly on the VERY BAD ROAD, twenty minutes outside of Santiago.  This isn’t so bad I thought as the car rolled over dirt and the occasional big rock.  Famous last words. The road began to ascend, the dirt became powdery soft under my tires, and the rocks were bigger, jutting out at odd angles from a ground carved up by heavy rainstorms.  It took more skillful maneuvering to get around the oil pan threatening stones, while also not sliding or sinking into the soft dirt.  The light was almost gone, making it even more difficult as our headlights bounced off the dirt particles in the air, obscuring the ground before us.  “You can do it,” I whispered to my car, using the steering wheel to pull myself up so I could see the road rising ahead of me, keeping a safe distance from the police truck. The truck was having a bit of a hard time.  I watched as it got stuck in a patch of soft dirt and tried to turn a couple of different directions that only resulted in the wheels spinning.  After a minute or two of this, the back-up lights came on.  Needing to provide more space, I backed cautiously down the road, too.  Once it had backed up a few feet and was able to approach at a different angle, the truck started up the hill again.  This time I gave it a little more space. We’d gone less than a hundred feet when it happened again, the truck found itself stuck in the powdery dirt.  Once again I made sure where was enough space, sitting with my foot on the break so as not to roll backwards down the slope as I watched the police back up carefully in my headlights.  It was nearly full dark now, and the air was full of soft dirt, coating my windows and windshield.  Then the truck was free and we were moving again.  I exhaled a breath I didn’t realize I was holding, and concentrated on my music and the road. Fifty more feet maybe, it was definitely less than a hundred, and the police escort was stuck again between rocks and a soft place.  I looked around nervously, these frequent stops would make us an easy target for bandits if there were any waiting in the shadows to try and rob us at gunpoint.  I looked up as the woman exited the vehicle and yelled something to me.  I rolled down my window and she repeated her words, motioning with her arm, which made it loud and clear. “You go ahead of us.” I wasn’t in love with this idea, but I also wasn’t in love with spending the entire night playing red-light, green-light on a dangerous dirt road behind a volcano.  With another deep breath to calm my nerves, I very carefully hit the gas and began the climb uphill, moving in front of the police car.  Now illuminated in it’s headlights I continued my crawl up the hill, my car handling the soft dirt and giant rocks with ease under my direction.  I barely even noticed the lack of four full-sized tires.  I lurched upwards, eyes on the road, mental eyes on the prize.  I began to pull away from the police truck, what felt like an uncomfortable distance from the people who were supposed to be my guard, and stopped, waiting for the headlights to catch up. That was how we continued, me surging ahead, clearing a certain amount of road, then pausing, waiting for the police to catch up.  Once I saw headlights bright in my rearview, I would start moving again, grinding on towards the town and the paved road where my friends promised to meet me on the other side.  Other trucks passed me, going the same direction or the other way on the road, kicking more dust into the air.  After what felt like hours, but was probably more like forty-five minutes, my headlights reveale paved ground ahead of me.   Pulling onto the flat surface with a sigh of relief, I stopped, noting the headlights in my mirror and uncertain what to do next.  Did I wait for the police to catch up to thank them?  Did I have to sign a form saying they got me there safe and sound?  Did I just keep going?  I decided to wait a moment, after all, I didn’t want to be rude.  The headlights pulled closer, then a pickup truck pulled up next to me, lacking any police markings.  The window was rolled down and inside was a middle-aged man and who I assumed was either his son or grandson.  He said something to me, gesturing.  It seemed like he wanted me to follow him into town.  Thinking back to the time when I had to go off-roading in Oaxaca I remember the decision we made that time, go with the people who have kids, they’ll make sure nothing bad happens near them.  I decided to trust my gut (FOR FUCKING ONCE) and got behind the man’s truck as he led the way. As we drove down the delightfully smooth, completely unlit road, a thought occurred to me.  I had been watching for headlights ever since I got in front of the police, but this man’s headlights looked exactly like theirs.  Clearly, they had told him about me, too.  What if it hadn’t been the police behind me that whole time, but rather this man carrying the police’s instructions to lead me to the town?  What if the police, seeing that I could clearly handle the road better than their pick-up truck weighed down with three people in it decided that the gringa had things under control and just turned around then and there?  That would not surprise me at all, and the truth is I will never really know. On the way into town we passed a red SUV going the opposite direction.  I slowed, thinking that it must be Matt.  Sure enough, it pulled a U-turn in the empty road and pulled up alongside me.  The window rolled down and Sheri and Matt greeted me from inside the cab.  Matt told me to follow him to the garage where I could park my car for the night, since parking it on the street in San Pedro was not a good idea.  I watched a new set of tail lights, happy that my order was almost over and glad to see a familiar face and a new friendly one.  Once we got to the garage I pulled my car in and Matt noticed my rear passenger tire. “Is that one half-sized?” “Yeah,” I said, “I got a flat in Santiago. I didn’t mention in because I didn’t want you to worry.  I knew I could drive it.” “How was the drive?” Sheri asked.  As we walked back to her and John’s place, which was right next door to Matt’s, I told the story of the ride in, and the possibility that my police escort had abandoned me.  They agreed that it was very possible.  When we reached the house I thanked Matt profusely for all of his help.  He said he was glad to lend a hand and vanished into the gated yard at his place while Sheri led me the house she and John lived in right next to the lake.  I stole a quick glance at the body of water just two hundred feet from their front gate, not realizing that I would end up, in total, spending almost half a year looking at that view.

[angrybrowngirlabroad-blog]

Once Upon a Time in Guatemala AKA THE ANTIGUA MASTER POST

This post contains my crew’s entry to Guatemala and also photos and history of several places in Antigua I explored.  All photos by moi!

There’s not much to say about border crossings other than they tend to be (occasionally) long and (always) tedious.  Having a cary further complicates things, as they require their own set of documents, fees, and lines to take care of.  Bringing a car into Mexico requires registration, a copy of your driver's license, Mexican car insurance, a copy of your passport, and the put down (in my case) a $400 deposit saying your car will leave the country when it’s permit, which begins when you enter the country, expires.  To get that money back, you have to go to the office that handles that, in addition to filling out forms and getting your passport stamped.  I hit another snag with that because my card had been cancelled while I was travelling, and I had to fill out another form to have to money put back on a different debit card.  Fortunately, I remembered that the card the original deposit was tied to had changed before we left the country or that money would have been gone forever.

The drive into Guatemala was beautiful, but also long and tedious.  The first hour or so was through a large canyon, following the path of a river, dotted by small towns that clung it’s banks between the road and the cliff walls.  After that things opened up a bit and became rolling hills, large overlooks and distant volcanoes.  However, this scenery was marred by the road itself being terrible.  Potholes the size of cars in some places, straight dirt road in others, unpainted speed bumps, suicidal street dogs and the occasional spattering rain.  While the scenery was something to look at, I could hardly appreciate it with everything I had to dodge.  The day was a taxing one, and I breathed a sigh of relief when we reached Antigua at sundown.  It was officially my first day in Guatemala, little did I know I would end up spending the better part of the next year in the country.

For the first few nights in the city we stayed at a hostel owned by their friends, a couple, he from Mexico, her from San Diego.  Their spot, affectionately named “A Place to Stay” was home to several cats, two rabbits, and comfortable, homey vibe.  Chris and Elena were only there a few days before they located their new home, an apartment on the north side of the city, up a hill that had a view of the volcanos Fuego and Acatenango.  I did not spend as much time as I would have wanted exploring the city, as I had to make a trip to Lake Atitlan to leave my car with some friends, then jet back to Guatemala City to fly home for Christmas.  However, even the little bit of time I got there made a huge impression on me. A lot of travellers seem to glance past Antigua, see it is a place to pass through on the way to something else.  Granted, it is more expensive to stay here than many of the other places nearby, and it isn’t very big, either, but that never dissuaded me.  I was besotted with the city once I first laid eyes on it the daytime, it seemed like something out of fairytale, a place with a strange and complicated history (like so many other cities) but this one existed as a partial time capsule, a monument to itself, a decaying snowglobe.  I imagine cities that share the narrative of being built centuries ago, and largely abandoned by their populace, likely share a similar feel.  I imagine Venice may be a sibling, though the sinking city draws far more tourists than this rustic town.

The famous Santa Catalina Arch, that once was a walkway between a nunnery and a church that no longer exist.  Volcano Agua is in the background.

I think that is why I love it.  Coming from a country that’s younger than many of the ancient buildings within the city limits, I have an appreciation for things from another era.  I feel it especially coming from California, a state that has only boomed in population in the last century, where land is at such a premium that old buildings are constantly being torn down and replaced by new ones, leaving us with very little standing history.  And that which still stands, is usually scarcely more than a century old.  The only exception to this rule are the missions, built by the same kinds of people who built the churches of Antigua, during the same time period, but unlike the churches of Antigua, the missions are not at the center of California cities, and many of them you have to venture to find.  In Antigua there are the remains of one of the oldest churches in Antigua, sitting abandoned on a hill stand just a hundred steps from my friend’s front door (pictured below, built in the mid-1500s).

The remains of Manchen

To walk through Antigua is to walk through history itself.  Many of the buildings you casually stroll by are centuries old, and those that aren’t were built to mimic that same style.  This gives the entire city central a feeling of falling back through time, somewhere in the 17th century.  Much of the city has been felled and rebuilt, time and again, but many of the larger, more ornate buildings, have been left where they fell.  Seismic activity has been the plague of this land since the Spanish first set foot here.  The second Spanish capital, the one immediately preceding Antigua, was called Almolonga.  On September 11, 1541, it was swallowed by a giant mud and ash slide triggered by heavy rainfall, that slid down the volcano Fuego.  The slide killed many of the residents, including the first femal governor in the new world, Beatrice La Cueva, who had only been in power a few days, haven taken command after the death of her husband. The slide buried most of Almolonga, covering the local church in a layer of ash and mud so deep, that only the bell tower remains, standing at the crossroads of an intersection in the town that was built upon the remains, Ciudad Vieja.  With no choice but to relocate, the capital was moved 5 miles away to the Panchoy Valley, and Antigua would remain the capital of Guatemala (which at the time was comprised of all of modern day Belize, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, and southernmost state of Mexico, Chiapas) for over 200 years. Moving the capital to the valley, however, did not solve the geological issues.  Due to its proximity to the volcanos Fuego, Agua and Acatenango, Antigua was rocked by violent earthquakes all throughout its history that damaged or all out destroyed several of its beautiful structures.  The first church built in Antigua was the church of Santa Lucia in 1541, and it still stands on the outer edge of the city.  The next three small churches built in Antigua, Manchen (1548), Candelaria (1565), and Los Remedios (1574) were built to serve various workers in different sections of the cities.  The remains of these still stand, though they are not as revered as other, more magnificent structures.  Candelaria, with what's left of an impressive Baroque facade, now sits behind a basketball court, surrounded by a low fence.  Los Remedios stands along the road bears the stations of the cross, splitting the difference between two bigger and more famous churches, fenced in on what appears to be a family’s private land, judging by the small edifice set up in a corner.  What is left of Manchen, which was later replaced by the larger church of San Sebastian further down the hill, is just a few hundred feet from the doorway of my friend’s apartment, open to whoever wishes to wander around it.  I actually had a little bit of difficulty finding the names of these churches, as there are so many others still standing or partially standing in Antigua that are newer, better maintained, and more famous.  These three are among the originals, even if their names and purposes are being lost to time.

Volcano Agua, as observed from Cerro de Cruz

The first version of Antigua’s cathedral, at the end of the central plaza, was also built during this time, with the first edifice constructed around 1545.  Through the end of the century, earthquakes struck every decade or so, starting in 1565, 1575, 1577 and 1583.  The original cathedral building was especially damaged by the earthquakes of 1583 and 1600, before being demolished in 1669.  The new cathedral was completed in 1680, and an eight day celebration was held to celebrate it.  The Santa Marta earthquake of 1773 that caused the city to be abandoned did extensive damage to the cathedral.  After the capital was relocated, locals attempted to restore San Jose in 1830.  They sealed off the back of the cathedral where the main altar was, and focused on repairing the front that faced the plaza.  The bell towers of the church were removed in 1876, and the newly restored front was open for business, while the ruins of the 1680s building still stand behind it.  You can wander through these ghostly halls, made extra eery by the fact that after the 1773 earthquake, the church ruins were used as a graveyard.  The walls and pillars still stand, with high arches and crowns open to the sky, a layer of the dead resting peacefully, and some mysterious tunnels beneath them.  There are also crypts beneath the church that are still used for Mayan rituals to this day.

There are old convents aplenty in the city.  The Convento de Capuchinas has a particularly interesting nun’s quarters.  The convent contains a circular room, with one entryway via a hallway and twelve doors, each leading to a small closet of a bedroom for the nuns.  The rooms are open, and you can walk in and see for yourself the simple accomodations the women made due with. The convent���s remains also house a beautiful garden area.

The Convento de Santa Clara has lovely gardens and a beautiful baroque facade on the outside.  It lost most of it’s roofs to earthquakes, but the two stories of halls around the central garden still stand.

The Convento de Santa Teresa has an interesting history, as it was used both as a wine-making facility and a prison after the capital was relocated to Guatemala City.  The last prisoner walked out it’s doors in the 1950s after the building was found to be unsafe for people to inhabit, probably because of earthquake damage.

The last photos is the wine-making facility.

Semana Santa is huge in Antigua (though I admit, I have not attended it, mostly because I hate crowds).  In fact all Catholic holidays are huge there, and it’s not unusual to witness a procession in the streets.  One of the most famous churches, San Francisco, stands near the edge of town, along a road marked by stations of the cross that ends in a bright yellow church called El Calvario.  During Semana Santa, each station is thrown open to reveal…..something ( I don’t know, I wasn’t there).  

El Cavalrio

San Francisco is still a functioning church, the part that has been restored.  The ruins house the museum of Hermano Pedro, the patron saint of Antigua, in its ruins.  Hermano Pedro, devoted to charity, founded schools for the poor, helped heal the sick, and planted trees around Antigua.  In the courtyard of San Francisco there is a tree said to have been planted by him, and it’s flowers are placed inside candles that you burn to call upon his aide, sold right by the church entrance.

There is one church that functions as a charity hospital still in his name.  Hermano Pedro is the name of the (other) yellow church with a beautiful baroque finish, located near the pilas (wash stations) in the city.  The church operates a hospital for the poor that runs on donations only, offering free health care to the sick and needy.  The first hospital in Antigua was founded by Hermano Pedro in the 1600s. The hospital that bears his name was founded in 1663 by Dominican friars, Capuchin nuns took over its upkeep in 1800s and work was done on the building in 1869.  While it was damaged by earthquakes several times throughout its history, it was rebuilt every time.  In 1984, the Franciscan priest Guillermo Bonilla, felt called to follow in Hermano Pedro's footsteps in ministering to the poor, sick and outcasts of society. He rented small homes to house the abandoned elderly and orphaned children and appealed to the citizens of Guatemala for help. Eventually he began rebuilding the ruins of the hospital destroyed by the 1974 earthquake and the present day hospital facility continues in the Franciscan tradition of taking in those who need help and care. The hospital receives no government support and relies solely on donations. It is operated by the Franciscan order of the Catholic Church and is directed by Padre Jose Contran. I actually got to meet one of the doctors who worked at the hospital by chance and he filled me in on some of the details.  The church still holds regular services as well.

The Pilas, oddly enough, I don’t have a photo of the hospital on hand, even though I know I took several.  It might be saved somewhere else.

There is another (other other) yellow church in Antigua that holds services as well.  La Merced church was founded by the Mercedarian order in the 1700s and completed in 1767.  A lovely church on the north side of the city, with a yellow exterior, baroque details, and a beautiful dome flanked by lion statues, it was designed with lower arches to better withstand earthquakes.  True to its design, it was less damaged by the earthquakes than other churches in the area, but was still abandoned after the capital was moved, and subsequent earthquakes caused the convent walls to collapse.  It was then used as a stone quarry by locals, which further damaged the site.  In 1853 reconstruction began and the main nave was restored, and now holds services, while the ruins were preserved and in the process of restoration.  Among the ruins, Merced boasts the largest fountain in Antigua, so big that it was once used to raise fish for the inhabitants to eat.    

My favorite set of ruins, second only to the grand Cathedral itself, are those of La Recoleccion.  One of the last churches to be built in Antigua before the capital was moved, they had to ask for a dispensation to erect the massive structure at the edge of the city.  Constructions began in 1701 and the church was inaugarated in 1717.  It was one of the largest in the city of Antigua, it’s huge nave and dome dwarfing that of many of the earlier churches.  Unfortunately, it was not to last, it was first damaged by and earthquake just months after construction finished in 1717.  It sustained further injury in the earthquakes of 1751, and, like so many of its siblings, it was nearly destroyed by the Santa Marta earthquakes of 1773.  After the city was largely abandoned it served as home for various other endeavors such as a stable, soap factory and sports complex, which caused more structural damage, before eventually being retired as a landmark. Unlike it’s siblings (at least the ones that allow people in) a great deal of La Recoleccion rubble has been left where it lay, mostly inside the nave.  This, combined with the two-story walls, still standing albeit at slightly odd angles, full of cracks, and what remains of the doorway arches, octagonal windows, and attached structures, gives it an ethereal feel of stepping back in time, like you entered the place just after it collapsed from the earthquakes.  Bright white walls against blue skies, their facades peeling away, surrounding a floor you can only explore by finding your way through fallen pieces of columns and arches that once upheld the high ceiling, creates a dreamscape that harks to a time long gone, or maybe one that has never been.  La Recoleccion would not be out of place in a historical epic, a fantasy world at war, or a high fashion photoshoot.  My photos of this place barely do it justice.

There are several other church ruins scattered about Antigua, El Carmen in the market with its numerous winding columns for one, La Iglesia de Jesus Cristo, its red paint still intact, part of which now houses a school.

La Iglesia de Jesuscristo

El Manchen to the north side of Antigua, Nuestra Senora de los Remedios on the road to El Calavario, and Candelaria, a beautiful example of heavy baroque embellishments, were some of the first churches built in Guatemala to serve the indigenous workers that built Antigua.  El Manchen was built on a hill in 1565 for ironworkers and carpenters, now it’s surrounded by apartments in a neighborhood dubbed “Colonial Manchen.”  Nuestra Senora de los Remedios was constructed in 1574 to the southeast for rope and mat makers.  It now resides on a private lot behind locked gates, sharing the plot of land with a small home.  Candelaria, the first of the three, was built in 1548 for farmers and artisans.  Today it sits, surrounded by a low fence, behind a basketball court.

Casa Santo Domingo used to be a monastery, but after Antigua’s growing popularity as a tourist destination, parts of it were restored and turned into the only 5 star hotel in Antigua, which opened in 1989.  There is also a museum on site, and the ruins remain, what’s left of a massive fountain, as well as the crypts, some of which still contain the full skeletons and bone fragments of the former friars.

These are just some of the churches.  Several were further out of the way, harder to find, or completely destroyed and rebuilt.  There were more that, despite my digging, I could not find a title for, boarded up, undergoing restoration, or just sitting there, not being torn down, but nothing being done with them either.  By the end of the 17th century there were 38 churches in Antigua and 16 monasterys and convents, and more came after that, it would take me many more months of living there and research to document them all..  It’s not just churches, either, there is the Palace of the Guards on the edge of Antigua’s square, row after row of neatly restores columns, or the college that shares a border with it, once attended by the sons of Spanish nobility.  

Palace of the Guards, a face on the side of the college, and an elaborate doorway on the Hermano Pedro hospital.

There are the pilas, with their little fountain, erected so that women without running water in their homes could do their laundry throughout the city.  There are the various fountains, still working after all these years, dotting various small parks and courtyards.  There are the buildings themselves, though it’s difficult to say what is restored colonial and what is new, made to look like old.  The fact that the whole city seems to agree that colonial is now and will continue to be the theme gives Antigua a cohesiveness other cities lack.  Sure, the cobblestones are a pain to drive over, and the streets are narrow, the sidewalks uneven, and the market loud.  But you just take your time, driving slowly, take your time in the market, crowded with various Mayan languages being threaded with Spanish, a cacophony that can be musical sometimes, overwhelming at others, maybe watch the volcano Fuego erupt, from up close or at a distance, as it does every month or so.  All of this creates a curious tapestry of tradition and progress, a place laden with history, trying to compromise that past with the modern era, a net that so perfectly ensnared me for part of a year in 2017. 

Fuego spitting ash and gas at sunset.

#antigua guatemala churches ruins catholicism monastery convent iglesias ruinas volcano history architecture

[angrybrowngirlabroad-blog]

Amber and Stones

This blog post is going to be a little less editorial and a little more pictorial, because I like pictures and I take a lot of them.

My crew spent a few days in San Cristobal recovering from our long drive from Oaxaca.  This city is beautiful, all Spanish colonial with stone streets, a bustling market, an incredible artisans market, and amazing food, all done up in lights and decorations for Christmas.  It was cold, colder than I normally like, but that added to city’s beautiful mystique.  I got all my Christmas shopping done when Elena and I spent two days browsing every stall in artisan’s market before deciding on things for others and ourselves.  We also explored the Amber Museum together.  The region of Chiapas is famous for its amber, and the museum spoke of its history, displaying several pieces of incredible amber including a delicately carved amber marimba, and even explained how to tell real amber from fake amber.  Eventually it was time to move on, though, and bit Mateo, our friend for most of our journey through Oaxaca to San Cristobal, good-bye.  We hit the road again, on the way to the border town of La Mesilla onto Antigua, Guatemala, where Chris and Elena would begin looking for a permanent place to stay.

On the way to the border we looked around to see if there was anything worth checking out on the way.  There was an archaeological site located not too far off of the highway, named Tenam Puente.  We left San Cristobal in the morning, stopping by a market about an hour outside the city where we grabbed some fruit and indulged in freshly fried whole fish that were actually some of the best food I have had in Mexico.  It was another hour and half to Tenam Puente, located in the hills outside of Comitan.  Following the signs for “Pyramids” (similar to the signs we see in the United States along highways that mark food, shelter, and gas, Mexico has ones with pyramids on them, which is not unusual when you consider how many pyramids there are in Mexico).  Driving up to the location didn’t look like much, just a gradual climb in the hills past some residences, but eventually we arrived at the location and paid the entry fee (roughly $1.50), and strolled in.

Tenam Puente is not a large site, at least not compared to the more popular sites like Tulum, or Chichen Itza, but it’s pyramids were still impressive.  Walking around you could see that many of the pyramids had been reconstructed, but just as many lay in mounds of stone and dirt, covered by trees.  There was the ball court, lesser buildings, and then the main pyramids.  Climbing up to the tops of the largest ones puts you above the tree line and that’s when you realize why the ruins are located where they are.  Like Monte Alban, the pyramids are set up on a hill overlooking the valley below, a strategic location.  

Tenam Puente is not a large site, especially compared to other sites in Chiapas like Palenque.  However, this might have aided them as the Maya collapse in 900AD seemed to have affected larger sites much more, allowing small sites in the highlands of Chiapas, like Tenam Puente and Chinkultic, to hold on until 1200CE, which makes Tenam Puente’s occupation time from roughtly 300CE-1200CE.  Tenam Puente controlled much of trade beceause of it’s strategic location between the Guatemalan and Chiapas highlands and the central valley in Chiapas.  Ceramics and shells from far away cities have been found at the site.  The city is also notable for it’s construction techniques, the carefully cut and assembled limestone blocks were put in place without the use of mortar or lime to hold them.  The city is an example of the transition between the Classic Maya (250CE-900CE) when the civilization was at it’s height, and the period and the Post-Classic (900CE-1250CE) when they city states declined and some cities in the lowlands were abandoned for new locations in the Yucatan. 

All in all it took us about an hour to walk around the site and lounging in the shade of a tree, enjoying our last day on Mexican soil.  The trees, breeze, sun and shadows of the pyramids all had a very calming effect.  I didn’t want to leave, but we still had a bit farther to go before we reached the border town where we would be spending the night to get a jump on driving the next day.  Regretfully we rose and piled back into our vehicles and onto the border, where we found a cheap motel for the night and fell asleep watching James Cameron’s Avatar in Spanish which was a surprisingly amusing and fitting end to months of adventure in Mexico.

#sancristobaldelascasas sancristobal chiapas mexico tenampuente maya mayan ruins ruinas roadtrip travel traveler

[angrybrowngirlabroad-blog]

A skull in the hand is worth two on the beach

WARNING: Stuff gets kinda gross in this one, talk of decomposition so proceed with caution.

I woke up to the sound of the ocean, which is my preferred alarm clock if given the choice.  Rubbing the sleep from my eyes I went over the plan we had decided on last night.  It was roughly six and a half hours to San Cristobal, Chiapas.  The plan was to set out in the morning, get lunch in the city of Tehuantepec, a city famous for its strong women who ran the markets there (Frida Kahlo’s famous traditional clothing, the Tehuana style, is from this area), and then straight on to San Cristobal de las Casas.  But before all of that, I had a turtle head to collect.

I got dressed and with a nod to my companions, who seemed a little surprised that I was going through with this particular endeavor, walked down the hill to get what I would need from my car.  With me came my scimitar (blunted, but swung with enough force it cut through pumpkins like a hot knife through butter), my slightly bigger knife than the folding one I always carry on my person (with a heavy wood handle and a Damascus steel blade) and a plastic bag for carrying my quarry once it was removed.  I also grabbed my grey and white scarf, and wrapped it around my scimitar.  The local fishermen seemed happy to ignore the foreigners frolicking on their beach, but I was sure that walking with a naked bladed, three foot long, curved sword was going to draw some attention.  Sword securely wrapped and dreams of beautiful turtle skulls dancing in my head I set off across the beach to collect my prize.

It was a cloudless, humid day, and the turtle was on the opposite side of the beach, near where the rocks rose up above the sand to meet the sea and cut off any attempt to explore further.  By five minutes in I was already sweating bullets (I sweat at the slightest sign of a change in temperature, so this was nothing new) but with the humid air to contend with as well, I felt particularly gross and soggy.  Stripping off my boots I walked in the ocean to cool my feet a little, glancing over the many, many dead things that still lay in the sand from the day before.  Eventually I passed the first dolphin, gazing longingly at the bits of white bone peeking through where the leathery, sun-baked skin peeled back.  A dolphin skull would have been a great addition to my dead things collection, but the thought of hacking through all that flesh to get to it, and how much time it would take to clean it inside and out, plus the sheer size, was too much for me contemplate without having access to a kitchen of my own and several more tools and time.  I kept walking.

By the time I reached the turtle it was around 9:30am and the November sun beat down furiously.   I was far enough away from anyone on else on the beach that to everyone else near the water I was a distant dot.  Taking my hat off to fan myself I circled the remains slowly.  They were exactly as I left them, the turtle laying on it’s back, shell belly exposed to the sun, flippers askew on the sandy ground.  Standing upwind of the turtle I set down my bag, I removed the plastic bag and then began to unwrap the scarf from around my sword.  I decided that the turtle was already in a good position for a beheading, I just had to straighten out the neck a little more so that I wouldn’t nick the massive shell with my downswing.  I laid the scimitar on top of my bag and pulled the plastic bag over my hand.  Careful not to breath through my nose, I approached the remains, crouched down and took hold of the head with my bagged hand, slowly and carefully stretching the leathery neck out so I had a few inches to work with.  Backing away I removed the bag and picked up my scimitar.

I took position next to the turtle, feet spread shoulder with apart, readying myself to bring the scimitar down on the dead thing’s neck like a lumberjack chopping wood.  Even with the dulled edge I had reason to believe this would be an easy cut, I had sliced and diced several things with this scimitar, but never bone.  However, with enough force (and scimitars are specifically designed with weighted ends for chopping off limbs) I figured it would do the trick, and hopefully without spraying me with remains.  I position I raised my sword high over my head and said a quick thank you to the creature for its sacrifice, before bringing it down with all my strength onto its neck.

I felt nothing, no skin parting, no bone breaking, just a dull thud.  I picked up the scimitar and looked.  Nothing.  Not even an apparent dent in the skin.  I sighed, this was going to be harder than I thought.  Grabbing the plastic bag, I made sure the head was in position again, then, discarding it again, I picked up my scimitar in the two-handed grip I was using for this particular technique and raised it high.  Bringing it down with all my force for a second time.

I felt nothing, nothing but disappointment that is.  Pulling my sword back up I looked again, not a mark.  Deciding that maybe quantity was the way to go with this one, I took a few more swings, one of after another, at the turtle’s exposed neck.  Each time the blade connected exactly where I wanted to, each time nothing happened, other than to drive it further into the soft, damp sand.  Stopping to take a breath as sweat poured down my sun beaten face (I had to take my wide-brimmed hat off to swing correctly) I surveyed the complete lack of damage.  Getting closer I realized two things, one: that the sand was cushioning the blow and I was going to need a chopping block to do this right and two: the turtle’s skin, already thick when the creature was alive, had dried to an even thicker, less pliable turtle leather.  Even with a chopping block, which I was not going to find on that beach, I still might need a sharper weapon.  With another sigh I knew it was time to abandon the sword for the blade. WARNING: AFTER THIS PART IT GETS KINDA GROSS WITH DECOMPOSITION TALK

I carried my sword to the water's edge and washed the sand off of it in the low waves before splashing some cool water on my face.  On the way back to the turtle I dried the sword off with the scarf, then re-wrapped it and laid it down on the sand, grabbing my knife in its stead.  Unlike the sword, my knife had recently been sharpened and held both a fine point and keen edge.  Slipping the plastic bag back over my left hand, I crouched and seized the turtle’s head, then began the unpleasant labor of cutting the skin of the neck.  Though my blade was sharp, the skin was resistant.  While I pulled the blade through the thick hide, I barely breathed, trying not to inhale turtle stench.  The turtle corpse rocked gently with my efforts, and that was when I noticed the curved shell roof was filled with decomposing turtle goo.  As I sliced my way around the neck I was careful not to move too quickly, while I was good at dealing with decomposition, being splashed by turtle soup was my line in the sand.

Sweat poured down my face as I sawed away at the turtle’s neck, finally making a full circle.  Once that was done I sat back on my heels to contemplate my next move, I had the bones to contend with.  Without a proper base to set it on, the scimitar was going to be useless, but I had to do something to seperate the head from the neck.  Looking around I spotted a large piece of bamboo, the same one I had used to prod the turtle the day before.  With no better ideas, I grabbed the bamboo, braced it vertically against the turtle’s shell and drove one end into the sand.  In my plastic bagged left hand I still gripped the turtle’s head.  Holding onto the bamboo, using it kind of as a pry bar, I pulled as hard as I could on the turtle’s head.  With a little pop, and no splashing of turtle innards, it neatly disconnected from the neck.  I picked it up, looking it over as sand and maggots fell out of it, surprised by how easy that part had been.  Then I walked over to the water's edge to rinse and shake out as much of the maggots as I could.  Having done the best I could with my limited tools, I wrapped the head in the plastic bag, put it in my purse, and set off across the beach back to my friends.

“You really did it?” Chris asked when I returned.  

“Yep,” I replied, “It’s in here.” patting my bag.

“Was it gross?”

“Very, I won’t go into details, but it did not go as smoothly as I would have liked.”

As everyone else prepared to leave, I loaded my things in the car, burying the turtle skull down by my spare tire and returning my sword to its usual place.  Once we we ready we loaded up and began the long trek to San Cristobal. We had only made it about forty minutes down the road when I noticed the smell.  It was subtle at first, musty, but then it got worse.  “The head…..” I groaned, I hadn’t factored in its overpowering stench.  I had to roll down the window and get some air flowing through the car to banish it, but even then it wouldn’t disappear entirely.  I wanted to keep the air conditioning on because of the heat of the day, but being forced to roll down the window every ten minutes was destroying that plan.  Finally I signalled to the guys that I wanted to pull over (my timing was impeccable, since it seemed everyone needed to pee).  While the group took care of business, I unloaded the back of my car and found the turtle skull.  The maggot that had been previously in the head, the ones I had not managed to shake out on the beach, were now attempting to escape the bag.  I gently shook the turtle skull out onto the ground, then furiously shook the bag to remove all the maggots.  Once they were gone I re-wrapped the turtle skull, then wrapped it twice more in two extra plastic bags that I had saved.  After it was re-entombed we hit the road again, aiming for Tehuantepec.

This time it took longer for the smell to reach us, but reach us it did.  It was more muffled this time, less disgustingly terrible, but still the stench of decay hanging in the vehicle was an unwelcome passenger.  Still, it was this or no skull, and I hadn’t risked a turtle soup bath to give up now.  We continued to Tehuantepec, rolling the windows down every twenty to thirty minutes to clear out the smell of rotting turtle flesh.

The stop in Tehuantepec was quicker than we anticipated, mainly because it was so unbelievably hot and parking was difficult and we were all grumpy (though the guys didn’t have a terrible smell to contend with).  After a brief wander we saddled up again, and I got to experience my car’s turtle stench after spending forty minutes in the hot, Oaxaca sun.  I let the air conditioner run and kept the windows open for a few minutes before I would even let Elena get in.  On the road again we continued the pattern, windows up, windows down, windows up, windows down, as we began to climb the foothills into Chiapas.  It was a slow climb, the roads in that area are very windy and we were frequently behind large trucks that could not go more than 30mph up hills.  This was the first place in Mexico I started to get good as passing near blind corners, as I was given little other option for getting around the bigger vehicles.  I felt sorry for the guys behind us, though, the van didn’t have nearly as much power, especially not going uphill, so even if I could pass a truck I still had to wait in front of it for the guys to make it clear, too.  This stretched out the trek, and our easy six hours began to spread.

Night had fallen with two hours left until San Cristobal still.  On our last roadside bathroom break we had talked of possibly stopping in Tuxtla Gutierrez, since none of us were fans of driving at night in Mexico.  We all came to the conclusion that we would drive through Turxtla and see what we thought, though the goal in our hearts was still San Cristobal, and the hostel where Mateo’s friends were about to be surprised by his unexpected return.  Climbing up dark, mountainous roads, trying not to stare into the bright headlights coming at me, we reached Tuxtla, a city of bright lights that seemed foreign after so many hours on dark roads.  Elena and I took a look around, “It’s too big,” I said, it seemed a truly modern city, “And ugly, and I wouldn’t even know where to start to find a place to stay.  San Cristobal is only an hour away still.”  Elena was in agreement with me, what was one more hour after all?  We pushed on to San Cristobal, still rolling down the windows occasionally to take in the much cooler night air.

Finally we reached the city, and the guys took their place ahead of us so Mateo could lead us to the hostel.  To my relief we parked right out front (finding parking and lodging too is always so exhausting after a long day on the road).  Entering the cozy inn we were greeted by several kind, quiet people, who gave joyful exclamations upon seeing Mateo.  After introductions and greetings were done, we were shown around.  The place had three floors, the bottom floor had a comfortable living room with a fireplace (a necessity in that city), a few rooms and an outside patio. The next floor contained a few more rooms and a bathroom, as well as the four person dorm room I stayed in.  The top floor had a few more rooms and open space on the roof, I made note of this as I had to turtle head to clean and no convenient place to do it.

Everyone got themselves settled in, grabbing what they needed from the vehicles and putting everything where it belonged.  I was hungry, but I also did not want to keep a stinking turtle head in my car any longer than I had to.  I was pretty sure the smell had already leached into the seats.  For a moment I considered how nice and easy it would be to simmer the flesh from the bone on the stove, but then I considered that it might make the whole hostel smell like dead turtle and give everyone a reason to hate me, so I banished the thought.  No, I would have to do it by hand, something I had never done before.  Voicing my thoughts aloud, Elena told me that vinegar was very useful for cutting smells and that I was welcome to hers and their laundry bucket.  Thanking her profusely I headed up to the roof with the bucket, vinegar and bag of turtle head.  

I found a chair and a table on the roof, and dragged them as far away from the door as possible.  Setting up a flashlight as a light source, I found an outside faucet and filled the bucket with ⅓ vinegar and ⅔ water, then unceremoniously dumped the turtle skull in.  Holding my breath I let it soak for a bit, then finally took a tentative inhale through my nose.  While the smell had not disappeared, it was significantly reduced, at least while underwater.  Pulling out my knife and putting on some music, I prepared for what was going to end up being a very long process.  

The water was cold as I plunged my hands in, the roof was cold as a matter of fact, and dug out the skull.  Maggots that had died that morning or hand not made their way out now floated, dead in the water.  Ignoring that as best I could, I started pulling at the skin over the turtle’s face.  Realizing that removing it would my fingers, numbed by cold as they were an unable to get good purchase on the skin, I grabbed my multi-tool from my bag and opened it to reveal pliers.  Then I painstakingly began to remove skin, flesh and tendons, by loosening them with my knife and then peeling them off with the pliers.  It was slow going, hard, and very cold work.  December in San Cristobal is way too chilly for my California blood, and it wasn’t long before feeling in my fingers was a faint memory.  

Each of my friends came to visit once to see how the progress was going, and after a moment of disgusted fascination, each backed away because the smell was too much.  I didn’t blame them, I didn’t want to be there anymore either, but I hadn’t come this far to give up now.  At one point another hostel guest wandered out on the roof.  I warned her to stay back, as I was doing very smelly work.  I hoped she would listen, and not get closer, as the idea of explaining why I was defleshing a turtle head on a hostel roof might be a little much (the why being, “well, I wanted the skull and it wasn’t using it anymore”).  To my surprise she was fascinated, and came to sit nearby, though not near enough to taste it, and ask questions while she rolled and smoked her cigarette.  We ended up having a very pleasant conversation and she wished me luck on my endeavor before vanishing back inside.  

I finally finished the skull about an hour after she left.  It was near midnight, I was chilled to the bone, and unable to feel anything in my hands other than a dull ache after 3 hours of pulling the fleshy bits out of and off of the skull.  Parts of the bone had separated when I pulled the tissues of them, though I figured it was nothing a little glue couldn’t fix.  Satisfied with the mostly de-fleshed skeleton, I re-wrapped the pieces of the skull in a plastic bag, then turned to the bucket of offal.  All the pieces of flesh I had pulled from inside and outside the skull I had been dropping in the vinegar water of the bucket, now I had problem, I had no idea what to do with it.  There were too many solid chunks to wash down the drain, they would get stuck, and then there would be rotting turtle flesh in the hostel drain and these people did not deserve that.  I couldn’t throw it in a trash can, either, the turtle flesh had already proven it’s plastic bag penetrating stench abilities, and in the warmth of the inside of the hostel it would be ten times worse than it was out on the cold rooftop. I could put it back in my car, but that would give the stench another chance to penetrate the interior.  Finally I decided that I would put the remains in a plastic bag, set it under my car and retrieve it for disposal sometime in the morning.

#beach travel traveler roadtrip turtle skull bones decomposition oaxaca mexico

[angrybrowngirlabroad-blog]

Chipehua: the Third Beach of the Dead

As our crew headed through Oaxaca I was often given free reign to suggest stops along the trail. This meant I spent some time each night we spent at a hostel pouring over Google maps and seeing what each stop on the road ahead had to offer.  Usually I would look up something that seemed like a fascinating place to pass through, show the photos I found to Chris, Elena and Matteo, and they would agree or disagree that it looked like place we should pass through.  My scouting had found us San Jose del Pacifico, Puerto Escondido and the Cascadas Magicas, so everyone seemed pretty content with letting me set the course.  And that was how we found ourselves further off the beaten trail than usual, spending the night in a weird and wonderful place that I affectionately termed “the beach of the dead.”  Now, I had already encountered two playas de los muertos on my trip so far, the one in name only in Puerto Escondido, and the actual beach of the dead in Sayulita, where the local graveyard met the ocean.  While one was named from a (very untrue) local legend, and the other for it’s joining of the locals final resting spot and the sea, Chipehua featured a beach covered in death.   That being said, the drive there and our arrival portended nothing so ominous.  Instead of taking the inland route through Oaxaca and into Chiapas, I found a route that would take us along the coast of Oaxaca for as long as possible before pulling inland closer to the state border.  We were all eager to stay near the ocean, knowing that afterwards we would be landlocked for who knows how long.  I had been checking out pictures of the route on Google maps and found the pictures of the beach town of Chipehua beguiling.  There was only a handful of photos, and they showed rolling dunes, the last remains of a crumbling barbwire and wood fence, and an expanse of blue water.  The place seemed strange, desolate and mysterious, everything I love about new destinations, so we made our way there.  Our original plan was to stop for a few hours, splash about in the water, and then make our way inland.

Leaving in the morning, it did not take us much time to get there.  The winding road from Huatulco to Chipehua took us away from the ocean and back again, dodging inland and out, through terrain broken up by large, black rocks, sharply cut hills, and trees shedding the brown leaves of late autumn.  When we found the town it was a gravel road that turned of the main road.  The gravel road led past one small convenience store, that was actually the front of someone’s large house.  We stopped for beers and snacks and asked the way to the ocean, the owners pointed us down the road we were on, so we kept going.  As gravel gave way to sand we saw a blue bay stretched out before us and no one else there except the fishermen down by the water.  If this was a tourist destination, or had been, it wasn’t a very popular one.   Reaching the end of the road, which was on a berm a bit above the sand of the beach, we pulled our vehicles to a stop.  After we got out and old man approached us, his Spanish was too quick to understand, but Chris and Matteo spoke to him, after a brief conversation Chris told us that the man said there were cabanas nearby that we could rent for the night if we wanted to stay.  That had not been the plan, but I liked the look of the beach and the lack of other people.  After a few days in a city and other popular tourist spots this place felt right, so we went to talk to the woman in charge.

Driving our cars over to where the cabanas were we stopped in something resembling a parking lot, noting the structures on the hill ahead of us.  As we got out, I saw a street dog, well, beach dog would be more accurate, approach us.  I was used to curious street dogs begging for food, so I wasn’t startled.  As I was digging around in my car I heard something that did surprise me, the dog made of a sort of familiar whining sound, “Kind of like a coyote,” I thought.  I turned and the excited dog looking up at me with golden eyes was wagging its tail and making the keening, whimpering noise.  Looking it over I could see the coyote blood clearly in the colors of the coat.  The dogs markings were shaped like Husky markings around the face, but the black fur was mottled a color all too familiar (I own a coat made out of coyote fur).  When I reached out to pet her I found the texture oddly similar to my coat, too.  This beach dog was part coyote, but with all the affection of a house pet.

The dog, who I later named Dune, followed us up the hill for a bit as we walked towards the cabanas. The cabanas turned out to be a cabin divided into two large rooms, two full sized beds each, with a decent sized bathroom, hot shower, and front porch with hammocks.  The place was set up a bit on the hill and overlooked the blue bay.  The whole thing was picturesque, something out of postcard.  The price was right for what was being offered, even better than right, so we decided to stay the night.  Minds made up, we walked back down the cars to unpack, grab a few beers, and head down to the beach.

Fishermen stood on the shoreline, untangling nets and bringing in the days catch.  The sunlight beat down on us, turning the water a light turquoise color.  Sweating, we set our belongings down near a large piece of driftwood and stripped down to our swimwear.  Walking toward the water I noticed something odd about the waves, they were coming in at an angle.  At first I thought it was the occasional angles that happen when different waves collide, but after watching the waves for a bit I saw that every wave came in that way, on a diagonal that had something to do with the way the bay was positioned and the strong onshore winds.  I swam around the water for a bit, as the sky began to grey with misty clouds that started to roll in, but my eyes were on the dunes that stretched out away from the area where we entered the water.

Walking back to the sand I set out to explore the strange topography of the area.  The bay was ringed by a sand beach, but in one area there was a field of sand dunes, that abutted up against a mountain (maybe, it was too tall to be a hill, but not large enough to be a mountain).  As I walked towards the dunes I noticed that the mountain they pushed up against had something strange about it.  I got closer and realized that there was a large cross set at the base of the mountain, a big metal thing placed on a cement base with writing on it.  It was in Spanish, of course, and because my Spanish still sucked, of course, I couldn’t make out if it had been put there for a specific reason or just a general honoring god kind of thing.  Either way, it struck me as a bit creepy in the same way that the whole area struck me as a bit creepy, not threatening, or scary, just a little….off.

Deciding that I did not want to spend any more time contemplating religious works I continued onto the dunes.  Here, past the mountain, the wind was stronger and it threatened to rip my hat from my head on several occasions.  It was now clear how the dunes had come to be in this area, the strong winds that contributed to the angular waves seemed to have pushed a lot of the sand off of the beach and into the nearby flat land next to the mountain.  As I walked across the dunes I saw the leftover bits of what had once been a fence, the same one I had seen in the photos when I looked up the location the night before.  What the fence was trying to keep in or out was difficult to say, it seemed to appear out of the ground in no special place, run a few hundred feet, then end just as abruptly, a hundred yards from the shore, in the area where beach gave way to dunes.  I chalked it up to just another oddity about the place and continued on.

I encountered my first piece of remains soon afterwards.  As I was walking up a hill I noticed some bleached bone sticking out of the sand.  Being something of a bone aficionado (that sounds like a double entendre, and I’m going to go ahead and say it is) I stooped down to pick it up.  It was a dog’s skull, burned bright white by the hot Mexican sun.  I turned it over in my hands, it was about four inches long, not a very large dog, probably related to one of the half-domesticated beach dogs we saw running around.  It was interesting to find it this far from the shore, but perhaps the wind had carried it, or maybe some carrion bird, either way, it was mine now.

As I continued down the beach I came across more and more bone bits in the sand, a piece here, a piece there.  The closer I drew to the water’s edge, the more frequent they became.  Sea snakes, dried out like thin, leathery shoelaces, the skeletons of fish, a bird’s skull,  the shells of crabs, a set of jawbones next to what looked like a pile of spikes (after a couple more similar decaying corpses I realized that these were puffer fish remains, their jaws are bone, but their spikes are cartilage, and thus the last parts to decay after the flesh and skin have gone).  I had begun picking up bones as I walked, but soon my hands were overflowing as I came across more and more dead.  There were so many carcasses and bone bits I could not have kept track if I tried.  Then I started coming upon sea turtle remains, first the cartilage of a beak, then a bleached out piece of a shell, then a whole shell, lying on the beach, the flesh inside long since eaten away.  Then I came across the dolphin.

CAUTION: From here on it the descriptions get a bit gross since this part of the adventure involves decaying bodies on a beach

At some point during this time, Elena had come to join me, and we wandered the beach together, poking and prodding the various dead things or trying to figure out what the skeletal remains we were looking at were from.  Further and further west we headed, filling our hands with bones, and then trading them out as we encountered a new dead thing every few feet.  I surmised that it must be the angle of the waves that caused it.  If the waves faced the shore dead on, they would push the remains up on the sand, then, as the tide rose, pull them back into the water.  Here, the combination of the angled waves and the wind seem to mean that once something came to rest on the shores of Chipehua, it stayed.  Elena and I were discussing this when I saw the dark forms gathering in the distance.

“I think those are vultures,” I said, straining my eyes, “There are quite a few, it has to be something big.”  I was immensely curious, especially after what we had come across so far.  We drew closer and I saw that I was correct in my guess, they were vultures, and they moved away reluctantly as we approached.  Holding my breath so I would not have to smell the odors of flesh left rotting in the sun, I approached the two forms on the ground.  One was a dolphin, about six feet long, lying half buried in the sand.  It had bloated, and the sun had turned the skin a leathery black/brown color.  The agents of decay had not had much time to work on it, as there was no bone visible yet, just the sad, limp form.  I turned to the other body.  It was a sea turtle.

This one struck me, even more than the dolphin.  Maybe it was the way it was lying, on the curve of its shell, it’s “back,” which left it propped at a weird angle, flippers askew. Maybe it was the way that the skull was already partially defleshed, empty eye sockets and white bone clearly visible between strips of leathery skin.  Maybe it was the fact that it was one of the largest sea turtles I had ever seen, it’s shell easily three feet long.  Or maybe it was just because I love sea turtles and always have, and had seen more sea turtles in the last month than I had in the last twenty years of my life.  Either way, I was struck by this scene of elegant decay, and one thought came to my mind, I wanted to take some of it with me.

Elena stood back, so as not to be sickened by the smell, as I poked at the carcass with a piece of bamboo.  The contents of the shell had liquified at this point, I felt them slosh as I pushed against the side of corpse.  Idly I tried to see if I could flip it over, but it seemed impossible without actually grabbing it with my hands.  As cool as I am with death and decay, the thought of touching sun cooked turtle with my bare hands was not an appealing one. Instead of touching it, I walked around it, continuing to prod it and considering my options.  The shell was huge, no way I could take that, plus trafficking turtle shell was very illegal, I was pretty sure, even if I had just found it.  Plus we were leaving in the morning, I didn’t have enough time to clean it, and a giant shell stinking up the back of my car on the eight hour drive to Chiapas was unimaginable.  No, I knew what I needed to do.

“I’m coming back for the head tomorrow.” I told Elena, “In the morning, before we leave.” This didn’t seem to faze her at all, but then again, she had watch me poke and prod every dead thing we came across on the way to the turtle.  Not ten feet away sat the pile of bones I had collected, momentarily forgotten while I examined the vulture’s lunch.  I looked back at the turtle, “I’m think I’ll bring my sword, it doesn’t have an especially sharp edge, but with enough force is should sever the bones and the skin of the neck.” I had my scimitar in my car, usually used for balancing while belly dancing.  It’s true, it’s edge was blunted, but because of the weight of the blade, it still cut through things like oranges, or pumpkins, or whatever my roommate would lob at me when we’d play games in the backyard, like a hot knife through butter.  Mind made up, I gathered up my bones, hoping that some fluke didn’t wash away the turtle overnight.

We walked the long length of the beach back to the driftwood to collect our belongings.  When we drew closer to the twisted tree remains I saw a figure sitting near the tree.  It was Dune, wagging her tail eagerly and making her strange whining noises as we approached.  I could just be ascribing traits to an animal because I was already fond of her, but it certainly seemed like she was guarding our possessions.  I petted her, thanking her for her loyalty, and she followed us back to the cabanas where we showed the rest of the travel party our quarry.  I had to narrow down my collection, but I ended up bringing with me the dog skull, a bird skull, two sets of puffer fish jaws (one set was very large, four inches across), a bleached piece of a turtle shell, turtle beak cartilage, and the jawbone of a turtle.  While our friends looked over my quarry I told them about the larger bodies we had come across (we saw another dolphin on our walk back to the cabanas) and my plan to take the turtle’s head.  The men only seemed slightly skeptical of my proclamation, but I’m used to people having that reaction to me, so it did not bother me at all.

After showers and changing we decided to go in search of dinner.  This proved difficult, however, as there was not much to be found in the way of restaurants.  Chris mentioned something about a restaurant by the water, but I told him he had to be mistaken, there had not been a restaurant on the beach, we would have seen it.  When driving around did not reveal any other options we decided to park back near the cabanas and walk down to the beach to see what we could find.  It felt weird to me, to be stomping down the beach in the dark to look for a restaurant that seemed to be hearsay at best.  Still, everything about this place had been unusual so far, so why not this, too? We approached what looked like someone’s large, cement house, with a large, palapa covered patio outside.  Inside someone was watching tv, Chris called out, saying that we had been told that there was a restaurant down here where we might be able to find dinner.  A woman came outside, looking surprised, but she immediately got down to business.  “Si!” she said, this was the restaurant, there was a table right there, why don’t we have a seat.  She called out to her son who came outside to take our drink order, we asked for three beers and the woman sent him off with a bucket to run to the nearest store and bring us back beer.  While he was running his errand she informed us that she had some very fresh fish, caught just that day, and would be happy to make us a dinner of fish, rice, beans, and tortillas, served family style.  Everyone was on board so she went to get started, and her son showed up with our drinks.

Sipping the light beer that I’d learn to love during my time in Mexico I contemplated the situation.  The fish we were going to eat had been caught maybe a hundred yards from where we were sitting.  I doubted I had ever eaten anything fresher in my life.  The boys (who spoke Spanish fluently) talked to the woman about the local gossip, and what brought us here, and her son showed us his favorite song he was listening to on her phone.  We traded jokes and I even made a few attempts to engage in the conversation, even though my Spanish was halting.  It felt so casual and home-like, hanging out with the family who made our food.  And, oh the food!  I developed a taste for whole fried fish while travelling southern Mexico, but this one was arguably the best I had.  It was perfectly cooked, and accompanied by rice, beans, and homemade tortillas and salsa.  It was incredibly fresh, amazingly flavored, and filling.  We had one more round of beers with dinner and when we were done I was so content I was ready to fall asleep in my seat.

Everyone seemed to be in the same state so we paid gratuitous compliments to the chef and left a hefty tip before starting on the trail back to the cabanas.  As we walked we marvelled at the stars, so clear above the ocean, far enough away from any city that light pollution was non-existent.  We also marvelled at our luck, that our little foray off the beaten path had turned up strange beach full of curious souvenirs, a beautiful place to stay, and a wonderful meal.  The boys filled us in on what they had been doing while we were bone collecting.  Apparently they had encountered the owner of the cabana while they had sat on the porch smoking and the three of them had proceeded to have a conversation about the town life.  As Chris described it I felt a little sad that we only had one night in to spend in Chipehua.  I could have spent a week here happily, but the fact that we had even been able to stop at all would have to satisfy.  But I knew where it was now, a blip on a map on the southern coast of Oaxaca, and I could pass this way again.

#chipehua oaxaca mexico beach dunes ocean carrion corpses bones

[angrybrowngirlabroad-blog]

Hiatus and the Cascadas Magicas

I am really behind on this blog.  Like, really really behind.  Like over a year behind.  But I haven’t felt motivated to post super frequent updates because I have actually been in the same place for awhile (Guatemala) and while I have been going on adventures in Guatemala, I’ve also spent time just....being.  I’ve split my time between Lake Atitlan, Antigua, and San Diego for the last year, returning to California twice for work, and it has been lovely.  The time I spent in Lake Atitlan and Antigua were periods of deep introspection, instead of moving from place to place on the outside, I moved from place to place within.  I had the time and the space to focus on myself, to try new things, to work on myself, to learn and to heal.  After a year, half spent in California and half in Guatemala, I’ve grown a lot.  My Spanish is vastly improved by the month of private lessons I took in Antigua.  My soul is greatly improved by searching out new ventures at Lake Atitlan, and overall, my time spent here has had a wonderful effect on my overall.  However, I am feeling the pull of the road again, which means I have to do a write up of both my last days in Mexico and my time in Guatemala before I’m off to new countries and new adventures.  So let me catch you up on the end of 2016 and how I ended up where I am today.

Last we left our intrepid adventurers (Elene, Chris, Matteo and I) we were on our way from the only naked beach in Mexico, Zipolite, Huatulco.  Zipolite was small, the surf was brutal, but I could not pass the chance to be naked on a beach, and neither could Elena.  The boys kept their shorts on, but she and I frolicked in the waves, naked as jaybirds as the old saying goes.  Honestly, I prefer to swim naked if given the chance, it reduces the possibility of sand getting trapped in....places, so I relished this rare opportunity before we moved onto the city. Huatulco is a big, tourist-y city, so not my favorite kind of place, but we figured we’d stay a few days and see what there was to offer.  We went to many of the beaches, but I found them not nearly as interesting as the reefs of Mazunte or the rock formations on the shores of Puerto Escondido.  The real beauty of Hualtulco was in it’s nature preserves and it’s waterfalls.  On the way to Huatulco, and on the road to many of the beaches, were nature preserves that were home to magnificent tropical birds of a variety of species.  They would fly overhead, some with long tail feathers fluttering behind them, perching in trees and yelling to each other in tongues we could not hope to understand.  Every day I saw bird species I had never seen or heard from before, and I found myself reaching for my phone to figure out what to call these strange creatures before me.

When we weren’t chasing beaches and birds, we went chasing waterfalls.  About an hour and a half outside Huatulco were the Cascadas Magicas (magical waterfalls for those who are not studying Spanish).  I read conflicting reports about getting there, the roads were bad, the roads were good, take a guide, don’t take a guide, but my trusty hatchback had made it over everything so far, so it was decided that we would take my car and I would drive us to these waterfalls. The four of us piled in around noon and set off to find the waterfalls.  The driving instructions we had found were pretty clear, until they weren’t.  Getting the majority of the way there was fine, and we went from paved road to dirt, then passed through what appeared to be the entrance of some sort of park, and dirt gave way to dirt road covered in small rocks and steep hills.  I even had to take my little Diablito that hung off my rearview mirror down because she was swinging so wildly I worried that she might break when she hit the windshield.  Still, after much up and down, over and around, we came to a clearing and a place to park the car.  After that, we started down a beautiful trail that ran next to a stream.

The four of us headed down the trail, stepping around the thick roots of the tall trees that formed the canopy overhead.  Everywhere there were butterflies, brightly colored, a myriad of sizes, flitting about and landing on the damp trail.  The stream next to us began to widen and as it did it took on an unearthly hue that I would eventually discover was common in bodies of water in this part of the world.  I marveled at the color, nothing back in California looked quite like it, and stopped for a few photos before we headed further upstream.

Further upstream the creek widened, and then we began to see the falls.  They rose in a series, plateuing above each other, flowing into pools, all the same opalescent turquoise color.  We also noticed we weren’t the only one’s there as a Mexican family was frolicking in the pools and taking photos as well.  Near these pools there was a little structure with benches and shelves where we could place our belongings.  After stripping down and setting our stuff down, we hit the pleasantly cool water.

The various falls and pools offered a lot to explore, there was a section of cave that the water flowed through that you could climb through with the aide of ropes to keep you from falling.  There were various falls, rocks to jump off of, pools to swim in.  There was even a rope swing suspended from a tree that we took turns jumping off of.  It felt like a naturally made water park, and the fun and welcome break from the heat was well worth the rocky drive there.

Once we were done mucking about in the pools we went to collect our belongings and head on.  The waterfalls we had played in weren’t the only ones in the park, and we were enticed away by the promise of a 100ft waterfall down another rocky road.  As we were dressing we struck up casual conversation with the family that was there, they had a guide and, I guess as part of the way he was entertaining the family, gestured to my tattoos.  The next thing I knew the family was standing around me while the woman who I took to be the matriarch, commented on my back piece (for those who don’t know, my entire back is covered with a black and grey steampunk wing design).  Some of the family members seemed like they didn’t know what to do, but the grandmother complemented the design over and over again, “Que padrissimo,” she exclaimed, (”que padre” is Mexico specific slang meaning “that’s cool,” basically the woman was saying that she thought my back piece was “very cool.”).  It was an awkward moment for me because my Spanish was very limited at that time, and so I wasn’t quite sure what the family members were saying as they stood around me, but once I heard that, and realized I had the matriarch’s approval, I didn’t care about the rest of them so much.

I want to take this moment to note that as far as tattoos go, I was not the only one in our group that had them.  In fact, I would argue that Chris probably has the same amount of ink as I do if we’re talking about just the amount of skin covered.  But one thing I have learned while travelling through Mexico is that tattooed women are not as common in that country as I might have assumed.  Many of the women who I have befriended on my travels through Mexico have said the same thing, that they would love to get tattoos, but their parents would disown them.  When I began to understand the strong cultural disapproval of tattoos on women, I began to understand why I stuck out wherever I went.  While I look like I am from Mexico, and indeed people would approach me speaking rapid-fire Spanish as if I had been born there, I was also marked in a way that most Mexican woman weren’t.  These moments, of Mexican people coming up to me to talk to me about my tattoos, happened again and again over my time in the country.  And while people were generally very respectful (it was rare that anyone tried to touch my tattoos), and usually gave me compliments I only half-understood, I still never really got used to that “under the microscope” feeling.

Still, the family was lovely, and I thanked them for their kind words, before we got on our way.  Back at the car we agreed to give a man who worked in the park a ride back down to the main road and, in turn, he said he would lead us to the largest of the cascadas magicas.  The road to the largest waterfall was no less rocky or steep, but I could feel my little engine that could struggling a bit more under the weight of one more passenger.  As the boys yammered to each other in the back seat in Spanish, I focused on getting us over he next hill without one of us having to walk.  The faithful hatchback did it’s duty, and after parking on the side of the road and a ten minute walk, I found myself staring at the grandest waterfall we had laid eyes on that day, well worth the detour.

The fall was beautiful, but this was clearly not a place to swim under threat of painful death, so after a few minutes admiring the scenery we were climbing up the many stairs to the road again.  After this it was a lot of uphill and downhill, retracing our steps until we brought our passenger to the town near the main road.  We took a moment, after seeing him off, to check out the local vendors selling delicious Oaxacan chocolate and mezcal.  There was a table set up with more types and flavors of mezcal than I had ever seen and the vendor eagerly offered us tastes of the bottles he had already opened.  I tried a few, curiously, but, unfortunately, the one I was most interested in was not open.  There was mezcal, double distilled mezcal, mezcal with a scorpion in the bottle, vanilla cream mezcal, coffee mezcal, maracuya (a type of fruit) mezcal, but the one I was curious about (but not willing to buy if I could not have a taste) was a bottle full of emerald green mezcal in which pieces of an unidentifiable herb, garlic, and scorpions sat.  To this day I regret it because, even if it had tasted terrible, how often in your life are you going to get to say “I drank garlic, herb, scorpion mezcal”?  

I ended up picking up a bottle of double distilled mezcal to take back to the states.  My companions selected a few delicious chocolate-y treats and then we were on the road back to Huatulco.  On the way back we came around a bend in the road and saw a beautiful scene of sun cutting through clouds above the jungle floor.  I paused so we could take it in. Even after a day of incredible sights it seemed that Oaxaca was not done showing us its charms.  Tired and cheery we made the rest of the way back to the hostel munching on chocolate and contemplating our next map point.

#cascadasmagicas huatulco santamariahuatulco oaxaca mexico cascadas waterfalls roadtrip traveler travelers

[angrybrowngirlabroad-blog]

The Fountain of the King

I was going to take this next blog post talk about the Cascadas Magicas (literally “magical waterfalls”) that we explored in southern Oaxaca.  I realized, however, that I can’t go forward without first going back a bit and talking about another magical, watery place that had a profound effect on me, but has not made it into a blog post.  It is one of the most magical places I have ever been, and I dare say that I’ve been to quite a few magical places at this point in my journeys I tell you whut.

My journey through Central America began in July of 2016.  The first leg was through Baja California, then across the Sea of Cortez to Mazatlan, then, eventually Sayulita.  Sayulita, a beautiful surf town near Puerto Vallarta, was my home for two delightful, raucous, challenging months. There is so much to tell about my time there, that I’m sure to hark back to it several times as my journey and blog progress, but the spot I am specifically referencing in this post can actually be found about 40 minutes outside of Sayulita at a site called Alta Vista.

The location of the magical site was near a beach town called Chacala.  I was told about it by other residents of Sayulita that I had met working in the hostel.  “There’s this place, about 45 minutes from here, where there are waterfalls and rock carvings.  You have a car, and we have another one, we should get a group together!”  I was down, bodies of water and ancient art being two of my favorite things.  Our first excursion, though, was a bit of a disaster.  Between trying to wrangle 14 different individuals in different locations, with no cell phones, no one knowing the exact location, getting lost, getting there late in the day eventually with the help of a guide we paid, and variety of other small inconveniences I have forgotten about at this point, I did not get to spend as much time at Alta Vista as I would have liked.  Still, the place took my breath away, and I would end up going back two more times with much smaller groups.

To get to Alta Vista you have to depart Sayulita and head north on the 200.  You drive through and past several beach towns on the way, and there is one particularly lovely roadside destination where you can buy all sort of fruit, candy and excellent banana bread (though where it is I honestly can’t say, I only recognize it from sight).  About 25 minutes outside of Guayabitos (the biggest town you pass through) there is a road on the right called Alta Vista that soon gives way from paved road to dirt, that will take you to the archaeological site of Pila del Rey, “The King’s Fountain.”

Finding the actual entrance to the land that the site is on is difficult, and we never would have done it the first time without a guide.  I memorized the look of it (basically just a dirt road with a barbed wire gate) and was able to find it the second and third times from memory.  Driving onto the land, there is a small space to pull over and park a car.  After that, there is a road descending down into a valley, past rows and rows of Guayaba trees.  On your way down, you’ll often pass trucks heading up the other way, laden with fruit and the farmers who collect them.  It felt strange to be wandering farmland in search of petroglyphs, but everyone we passed on our way down waved and said hello, which assuaged my concerns.

The actual path to the creekbed is a bit confusing to find, and I got lost every single time I tried.  “Follow me!  I’m not sure what I’m doing!” I called out to my friends, like the worst tour guide ever.  We found it eventually, each time, mostly by stomping through tall grass and listening for the sound of water over rocks.  The creek itself is called Las Piletas, and it is surrounded by dark grey stones, beautiful trees, and a variety of bugs including many species of vibrant butterflies that almost seem to divebomb intruders in their realms.

A walk along the creekbed will lead you to the entrance of the petroglyph trail.  It is marked by barbed wire fence, and a sign.  Sometimes the caretaker sits outside, an old man who asks money for the trail's upkeep.  I saw him two out of the three times we went, and his prices varied on the day and number of people present, but never more than 20 pesos a person (around $2.50/$3 US at the time).  From the start of the trail there are metal signs posted here and there, painted with white letters in English and Spanish, detailing the history of the site.  The Spanish descriptions contained more information than the English ones, and while my Spanish was pretty limited at the time, I had the fortune of having Spanish speakers with me every time I went.

The story of the petroglyphs is that the area of La Pila del Rey was occupied by Texcoquines, and Aztec tribe that settled the valley between 2,000-2,300BCE and disappeared from the world in the 16th century after being ravaged by disease brought by the Spanish.  The Texcoquines, a name which means “throat-cutters” occupied much of the coast of Nayarit and Jalisco and were mostly farmers and fishermen.  The Texcoquines were shamans that took psychotropic plants to communicate with the gods.  The symbols carved into the rocks at Pila del Rey reflect these communications, showing sacred trees, water cycles, a man with a head of corn (the maize god, possibly), and several spirals and crosses.  They also engaged in tribal warfare, not for the sake of land acquisition, but to obtain sacrificial prisoners whose heads would be offered to the gods as tribute.  Despite living in relative peace with the land for centuries, after the Spanish laid claim to the area surrounding Alta Vista, it took less than 75 years before the last Texcoquin took their last breath.  Years after their demise, the locals still speak of “white indians” who appear in the hills to honor the old gods.

Starting down the trail, there are petroglyphs to be found everywhere.  The site boasts over 2,000 engravings on 200 acres of land, with the largest concentration being along the creekbed.  Pila del Rey is one of the largest collections of petroglyphs in the known world, and each time I went I noticed more that I had not seen the first time.  The trail that crisscrosses the riverbed contains carvings all over the stones on either side of it, at head height, knee height, on top of and on the underside of rocks.  There are a plethora of spirals, crosses, crosses with spirals, stylized trees, some man and animal shaped figures, and other collections of lines and dots that I could not make any sense of.  

After about 20-30 minutes of walking, the trail opens up to a larger clearing.  Here (during the rainy season at least) there are several pools, surrounded by the smooth grey rocks, and gripped by the roots of tall trees that drape vines from overhead.  I felt like I was in a Tomb Raider game, as I entered the clearing, my eyes fastening on the crystal blue water of the pools and small falls.  There were two pools deep enough to swim in, and in the rocks around them, some of the largest and most intricate carvings that I had seen.  Without hesitation, I stripped off my shoes and outer garments and headed toward the pools (did I mention it was during the rainy season and incredibly hot and humid?) the water in the pools was cold, almost too cold, and shockingly refreshing.

Swimming in the pools, and looking around at the rocks that surrounded them, felt incredibly surreal.  It’s easy to see why a place like this would be considered magical.  Even now, over 400 years since the last Texcoquin performed a ritual at the site, the feeling of magic still hangs in the air.  The locals agree as well, on a high point near the pools there is a small shrine with offerings and candles that always show signs of being recently lit.  The place has a pull to it, and a peace, and a feeling like you’ve gone back in time.

The third time I went I decided to venture up the creek with a friend to see if perhaps there were any more petroglyphs to be found.  Further up the creek we jumped from exposed stone to exposed stone, at times wading, and sometimes all out swimming through the water.  All of the carvings seem to stop at the place where the water pooled, though I can’t say for certain since we only went about half an hour past where the pools were.  I also didn’t bother to explore more of the farmland around the creek since some of the vegetation around there apparently gave me a horrible rash on my legs.  My documentation of the site is limited because I broke the phone that I used to take many of the photos there, but honestly, the photos barely do it justice anyways.

When it came time for me to continue my adventures on from Sayulita, I decided that I wanted to get a tattoo to commemorate my two months there.  I was thinking about all the places I’d been, and the profound experiences I had, and one of the ones that stuck out the most was Alta Vista.  On one large rock, overlooking the pools, there was a large, two armed spiral, about nine inches in diameter.  I had traced that spiral with my finger, meditatively, every time I had visited the site, taken in by the simplicity but also the perfection of its carving.  The day before I left Sayulita I got a two armed spiral tattooed on my forearm, beneath the Spanish phrase already emblazoned there, “Somos las nietas de las brujas que no pudiste quemar.”

We are the granddaughters of the witches you could not burn.

Photos: 1. The walk down to the creek bed 2. The perils of hiking during the rain season 3. One of my only photos of a petroglyph 4,5. The pools 6. Me, after swimming in the pools 7. My tribute to Sayulita/La Pila del Rey and my family

#nayarit mexico lapiladelrey petroglyphs rockcarvings ancient texcoquin texcoquines aztecs magic shamanism traveler

[angrybrowngirlabroad-blog]

My Gender is Angry

I want to destroy the idea that feminine is weak. I want to tear down the illusion that the only strength is physical. I want us to acknowledge that vulnerability and openness is more powerful than stern silence. I want us to understand that we are stronger together than we are apart. When I was younger, I didn’t want to be a girl.  Not because I didn’t love the things we typically associate with femininity, I had just as many make-up kits and Barbie dolls as most young girls did.  No, I didn’t want to be a girl because, once I had enough awareness to look around the bubble I grew up in, I saw that girls, and women, got the short end of the stick.  I could see the path ahead of me, and I saw that it was full of being silenced, being spoken over, being abused, pushed aside, hurt and belittled, just because I had been born female.  I saw it all, and I wanted none of it. I fought against it, boys clothes, boys attitudes, I bought into toxic masculinity as if I had been born for it.  I had been called a boy in girls skin for years, so I began to embrace it by being NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS.  I resented other girls for being dumb, “How will they ever take me seriously if YOU act like THAT.”  I didn’t understand that traditional femininity was neither inherently smart or dumb, it just was. I didn’t understand that I should be raising the traditionally feminine to be considered as worthy as the traditional masculine.  All I could see was the system I was forced to participate in, and I was struggling for a way out by imitating the actions of my oppressors. But trying to be one of the boys wasn’t the solution, and it only left me more confused and angry. I didn’t want to be a woman, not in this structure, in this society, and the way they treat women.  I didn’t want to be a man, either, not that anyone would let me be.  In truth, I felt no peace in either place. I read about feminism, and the pendulum swung the other way.  I embraced my femininity fiercely for a bit, ruffles and bows, always ready to go to blows, an act of defiance.  Femininity is not weakness, but beating someone up while wearing a dress isn’t an act of strength either.  Still, I felt I had something to prove.  I wanted to be the woman who made men think twice before bothering a woman again.  I needed woman to be taken seriously, but I was still using the same tactics of toxic masculinity. As I got older, and became more comfortable in myself and with bucking traditional gender roles all together, I began to let go of the ideas that I had internalized in an attempt to get ahead, though some of them are still with me to this day.  I stopped tearing down other women, I started to see them as sisters-in-arms, all of us in the same battle against our oppressors.  I stopped feeling in competition with women, and I started dropping my own guards and fronts. The more comfortable I’ve become with myself, the less I’ve felt the need to perform femininity as proof of self.  To be defiantly woman in a world that hates women feels like an act of rebellion.  To step back from claiming the title of “woman” felt, for awhile, like I was running from a fight.  Now, I realize, to be myself, hovering somewhere less defined between both traditional masculinity and traditional femininity, feels like an even greater rebellion and a personal victory.  I’m still going to fight the good fight, for women to be treated as equals in this world, from my own strange and often fluid place that I occupy in womanhood.  The war is ongoing, it’s my uniform and tactics that have changed. They fit a lot better now.

#woman womensrights feminism toxicmasculinity performativefemininity assimilation

[angrybrowngirlabroad-blog]

Going Down: From the Mountains to the (Bioluminescent) Oceans of Oaxaca

This is going to be a photo heavy post, so prepare your butts! The mountains of Oaxaca are an incredibly beautiful and peaceful place.  Our party spent a few days there, disconnected from the rest of the world. We took hikes through the forest, full of tall pines and oversized aloe plants and practiced our Spanish as we wandered.  In the evenings we ate at different restaurants, talked to locals, and tried a dozen different types of flavored mezcal at a bar ran by a very tall Frenchman who looked like an upgraded version of Ted Nugent.  We moved from our jewel box room, to a bigger room in a hotel ran by a friendly woman who we were fairly certain was a witch.  At night the winds howled, and clouds swallowed up, then surrendered the mountain.  Some days it rained, and one day we saw a rainbow stretch across the afternoon sky.  The place seemed to be made of magic, and as much as we wished to dawdle there, we had a lot of ground to cover still.

I had been told by one of the guests at Lush hostel, a man whose family owned a motorcycle company, and as such, had rode his motorcycle all over Mexico, that the drive from the mountains in Oaxaca to the shore was a thing of beauty not to be missed.  He had described entering cloud banks, seeing towns clinging to steep hillsides, and views that went for miles and miles.  I had marveled at his description, but I marveled even more when I got a chance to see it myself.  The few pictures I took did the trek no justice, but there are some things that you just have to be there for.

All in all the descent took about five hours, five hours of switchbacks, steep downgrades, occasional fog, and rain.  The terrain changed from tall pines, to verdant jungle, and the cold, powerful winds, gave way to stagnant air, rain drops and heavy humidity.  The temperatures began to rise, and I was reminded of Sayulita in the rainy season.  The van was suffering a bit, from both the heat and having to ride its brakes so hard.  At one point we pulled over to pee and let the brakes cool down.  As C and I stood next to our cars chatting about the descent, we watched the plastic hubcap melt off of the driver’s side tire on the van and fall to the ground.  Second later it started raining.

Still, hot brakes, humid air, poor weather and melting hubcaps aside, we still had a fairly easy ride down the mountains.  As sunset drew near, we found the ground leveling out as we headed toward the city of Puerto Escondido.  We found ourselves at a hostel where we would end up staying for a bit, a multi-story affair with a kind owner, comfortable lounging space and proximity to the beach.  We lost a week there, too in love with the area and the place to move on quickly.  It was also at this location that we picked up another travelling companion, and erstwhile Frenchman named M who would end up accompanying us all the way down to Chiapas as we explored every beach town on the way down the coast. 

Puerto Escondido, Mazunte, Zipolite, Huatulco and Chipehua were our destinations over the next two weeks.  Puerto Escondido was a tourist town, that had a more backpacker-y area to its south side.  Here we snorkeled every day (I SAW A SEA TURTLE), explored rock and driftwood covered beaches and sea caves, ate fresh seafood almost every night, and did whatever we could to stay cool.  And while it’s beaches were beguiling, the true gem of Puerto Escondido was it’s bio-luminescent lagoon.  

Located about 45 minutes from the heart of Puerto Escondido, the drive to the lagoon was like a stroll down the beach, as the whole way was a softly winding road that never went far from the water's edge.  Our group of four left a little before sunset, so we could catch the disappearing rays over the lagoon as we ate our dinner.  When we arrived at the bio-luminescent lagoon there was a sign posted, advertising various foods and “bioluminiscensia” (which easily takes the cake as the most difficult word I have had to pronounce in Spanish so far).  During dinner we asked our waiter about the bioluminescence and were told that we would have to pay for our spots on a boat that would take us out onto the water, as the bio-luminescence only occurred in certain parts of the lagoon.

Finishing up our meal, we found ourselves a captain and a boat and paid our fees.  As we stood by the docks, more families showed up, ready to partake in the adventure.  About an hour after sunset we were loaded into a boat that seated about fifteen people and launched into the lagoon.  There were no lights on the lake other than the few at the dock, and no light pollution from a nearby city.  Boats signaled to each other with bright lights on the front of their ships in order to avoid collisions, once the lights were out, though, you could no longer tell where inky black water met the dark night sky.  Looking up at the unpolluted air above me felt like looking through a telescope, more stars than I had ever seen except for deep in the desert.  There were planets, too, and the Milky Way, seeming closer than I had ever seen it.  I felt like I could touch space, and that it was all around me with the stars reflecting on the water.  The boat ride alone was worth the price of admission and we had not even reached the bio-luminescent section of the lagoon yet.

Around 45 minutes after our ride had started, the captain killed the engine and instructed us to run our hands through the water.  I did so right away, and it felt warm, like bath water.  Unlike bathwater, my hand left a trail of green light as I splashed the lagoon’s surface.  Around me the other passengers cried out in surprise and delight.  Then the captain told us that we could go in and swim around if we liked.  I do not know if I was the first one in, but I was definitely one of the first, stripping off my clothes as soon as I comprehended what the captain was saying.

Swimming in the bioluminescent water was like nothing I have ever experienced before.  I felt like I was on another planet, or in a dream.  The water around me was warm, and lit up everywhere as I moved.  Treading water illuminated the area surrounding me.  Snapping my fingers underwater produced little flashes of light, and I imagined I was Zeus, summoning lightning from my hands.  While I splashed about I overheard C, who was also swimming, asking the guide “Are there crocodiles in this water?”

“No,” the guide replied after a second, “but don’t swim so far from the boat.”

We obliged, mildly concerned by his answer.  I had been trying to get away from the boat, as tourists taking photos with the flash on was ruining my view of the glowing water around me.  But it’s better to be safe (and blinded by flash) than sorry (great view as a crocodile pulls you under).  Closer to the boat I turned onto my back, floating, and looked up at the millions of stars above me and wondered, not for the first or last time, at how I got here.  It felt like our planet, in all it’s beautiful mystery, was putting on a show just for us, with lights above and lights below, and it all I can do was take it all in. It was not long before we were called back into the boat.  I went reluctantly, feeling as if I had not had nearly enough time.  The magical glowing waters wanted to keep me, I felt, but all good things must end.  Climbing back into the boat I dried myself off as best I could and spent the ride back staring at the stars, feeling, for the moment, at peace with the world.  The drive back was quiet and I slept well that night, calmer than I had been in awhile. At the end of our stay in Puerto Escondido the hostel owner, Eric, took a photo of each of us and our items that we considered necessary to our travels as part of his project documenting his visitors.  I had trouble choosing, but I finally picked the lucky rubber chicken that hung from my windshield, dancing on my dashboard as I drove, over my trusted folding knife.  When our portraits were done, we got in, two to a vehicle, and headed to Mazunte. 

Mazunte was much more of a hippy town, in the likes of Sayulita or San Marcos on Lake Atitlan.  Everywhere there were yoga studios and vegetarian restaurants mixed in with local food joints and shops.  The snorkeling here was amazing, corals and fish abounded (I SAW ANOTHER SEA TURTLE), we chased them with the GoPro, and struggled to avoid getting dashed against the rocks by the strong waves.  Mazunte had some of the clearest water I had ever seen, and some of the most beautiful ocean views.  One lookout spot called Playa Cometa, which was about an hour hike from the beach, was said to be the only place on the Oaxaca coastline where you could watch the sun both rise and set from the same location.  The four of us watched the sunset and I took more pictures that did little to capture the magnificence of the fading light. After a few days in Mazunte we moved on to Zipolite, but not before stopping at a turtle sanctuary, where we got to see all sorts of species of sea turtle and I spent an inordinate amount of time watching baby sea turtles swim around.

Zipolite was a smaller town, and it’s main claim to fame is that it is the only nude beach in Mexico.  Well, when in Rome, do as the Romans do, and so E and I took to the waves naked, but not before getting my car stuck in some sand in an attempt to find parking.  Beyond the casual nudity, though, Zipolite had little else to offer.  The waves on the beach were strong, and the tides pull so dangerous, we did not dare go out past waist deep.  All in all we only spent two nights in that town, and would have left even earlier than we did except my keys got locked in my car, and then the car would not start.  

It took calling in a locksmith from Puerto Escondido after an hour of fruitless scraping at my purse trapped inside with a bent piece of metal to fix the situation.  Once we got the car open, it became clear that it would not start, and it took all of our team, plus the help of the family that owned our cabana spot, to push my vehicle up the steep driveway and onto the street where we could get it started again.  Finally ready to roll, we moved on to the city of Huatulco. Photos: 1. Clouds eating the town of San Jose del Pacifico 2. Me looking at a rainbow over San Jose del Pacifico 3. Sunset over the main beach in Mazunte 4. The bio-luminescence sign outside of Puerto Escondido 5. Walking to the point of Playa Cometa to watch the sun 6. The beach of Playa Cometa

#oaxaca sanjosedelpacifico puertoescondido mazunte zipolite mexico roadtrip traveler

[angrybrowngirlabroad-blog]

Oaxacan Roadblocks and Where to Find Them

(Pictured: My car’s guardian, a little Diablito lady I bought during the Dia de los Muertos celebrations in Patzcuaro)

A five hour layover can be a terrible thing for the easily bored, but it’s turned into a golden opportunity to pull another blog post from my tired fingers.  I’m currently in Mexico City, awaiting my connecting flight to Guatemala, where my car is parked at Lake Atitlan.  While most of the travel I’ve done in Central America has been by car thus far, due to the cheapness of flights inside Mexico, flying home to work every 3-6 months has proven affordable, if not exactly easy.  The flying back and forth takes a toll on me, physically and emotionally, but is also allows me the chance to make money so I can continue my travelling indefinitely, so I consider it worth it in the end.  Though, having flown back and forth across Mexico to the Tijuana/San Diego border several times now, I must say I prefer driving to flying any day of the week.

When I decided to explore Mexico, I never considered doing it by any other way than driving.  I like to take random stops in my travels, to check out any weird and wonderful thing that captures my eye, which you just can’t do aboard a bus or plane.  That sort of freedom of experience is important to me on my adventures, and well-worth the added hassle of the hard work, and paperwork, required to bring a vehicle into a foreign country.  Beyond the legalities of getting your vehicle across borders, there’s the concerns of vehicle maintenance, breaking down in unfamiliar environments, getting parts for you vehicle, getting lost, getting in an accident, theft, vandalism, the list goes on.  Then there’s just the crazy adventures (usually the direct effect of one’s own poor decisions) that you can only have if you’re captaining your own ship.

One of these aforementioned crazy adventures happened to me and my travel companions on our way out of Oaxaca.  Following the election, the three of us decided to drive into the famously beautiful mountains of Oaxaca, far from American news stations, cell phone signals and all of the shoddiest wifi.  Our hearts and minds needed a break, and where better to find it in the beautiful, misty mountains of the Oaxacan highlands.  Selecting the town of San Jose del Pacifico as our next stop, we departed the city of Oaxaca took a speed bump laden drive through the small valleys and hills towards our destination.

As the day wore on, we began the climb into the high, cloud covered mountains.  Having departed later that we intended, I kept an eye on the retreating sun, drawing ever closer to the horizon and we drove west toward it.  One of the things that is commonly told to road-trippers in various areas of Mexico is not to drive at night if it can be avoided.  This is commonly thought to be to avoid any criminal activity, and while that’s a possibility, this caution is more to protect you from the far more common unmarked speed bumps, poorly lit roads, and lack of identifying signs on many roadways.  Driving at night just makes driving safely just harder in general.  Certain places, though, have more specific concerns related to their particular brand of things that go bump in the night.

On my way up the curvy mountain roads, I paused to check my gps against the dash clock and the waning light.  Having a gps that works in foreign countries has been a godsend, especially to my directionally challenged brain, but it’s still no substitute for a good, old-fashioned map.  Google’s tendency to name anything that has been passed by some sort of vehicle a “road” has made for some interesting (and scary) driving situations.  I’ve since learned to compare and contrast suggested routes with maps, online information, and suggestions from locals in order to avoid things like driving around  volcano with a police escort (but that’s a story for another blog post).  My gps told me we were 20 minutes from the town we were going to call home for the next few days.  

Seconds later we found ourselves at a dead stop.  

Coming around a corner I found myself tapping my brakes as my eyes searched the near darkness ahead of me and realized that the vehicle a hundred yards ahead was at a dead stop.  The van, following my lead, slowed down as well.  As we rolled up to it, I tried to look around the truck parked in front of me to see if perhaps some sort of accident had occurred.  But all I could see was another car stopped in front of it before the road curved around another bend.

Perplexed, I did the only thing I could do, sit in my vehicle for 15 minutes until it became apparent that we were not going to be moving soon.  Leaving my emergency lights on, I got out of the car and looked back at the line of vehicles behind it, now numbering about 10.  At this point the sunlight had vanished around the mountains and true dark was setting in.  I walked over to the van to see what C and E thought about our current situation.  After a few seconds of discussion, we looked around at the other cars, slowly vacated as other drivers got out in confusion.  Seeing that no one was going anywhere for awhile, we decided to lock the cars and ask the people in the vehicles ahead of us if they had any idea of what was going on.

C’s Spanish is miles ahead of either E’s or mine, so he did the talking while she and I strained our ears to try and understand as much of the rapid-fire Spanish as we could, while C tossed out translations for us as often as he could without breaking the flow of conversation too much.  Our fellow drivers didn’t have much of an idea what was going on either. Grabbing some flashlights we decided to take a wander to the front and find out for ourselves.

As we rounded the bend we saw a line of cars, at least 20 long, stretched out on the road ahead of our vehicles.  People were standing around outside of their cars, making small talk, and tossing around the possibilities of when we might be able to move again.  Down the road, which dipped down towards the beginning of the line of cars, we could see people standing around a fire that had been built in a fire pit alongside the road.  A little further ahead was what appeared to be a tree fallen across the road.

A few thoughts ran through my head in rapid succession as we approached the fire pit and the fallen foliage.  My first thought was that the people around the pit seemed utterly unconcerned about the road blockage.  My second thought was that the tree appeared to be in several pieces, and nothing that couldn’t be removed in a few minutes by a handful of people, so why was it still there?  Then my eyes caught on a sign hanging from the tree, gently waving in the light breeze, with some sort of message written on it in harsh, black letters.  Lastly I saw the man standing near the pile of large branches, casually as if he just had nothing better to do, but also idly scraping the tip of a machete across the ground.  Putting all the pieces together, I remembered the words of caution a friend had said to me back in Sayulita “Be careful driving through Oaxaca, and watch out for roadblocks.”  At the time I thought she was referring to road blocks in the city of Oaxaca, as parts of it were inhabited by protesters, but looking at the scene ahead of me I realized we were had been stopped by a real life political protest.

(NOTE: There is a lot to be said about the volatile political situation in Oaxaca.  When I first went to write this blog post I did a bunch of research so I could be better informed on the history of the politics of Oaxaca, which have turned bloody several times.  What ended up happening is I fell down a whole of interesting articles that explained so much of the graffiti and protesters I saw in the city without context previously.  It also meant that my blog post read like a report (albeit lacking proper MLA citations) on political strife in Oaxaca.  And while that sort of information is addictive to me, my intent with this blog was more to write about situations as I encountered them, and less with the hindsight granted by research in the days and months after an adventure.  However, I may still post my informative blog post, as I think it’s interesting information, albeit not the sort of thing I’d usually include here.  But enough metaphorical cliff-hangering (cliff-hanging?) and onto some real cliff-hang(er)ing. “It’s a political protest,” I whispered to my companions, who seemed to be drawing the same conclusions as I did about the scene in front of us.  “I was warned to avoid these.”  We looked for a few seconds more, then turned around casually and started back up the hill.  I had specifically been warned to watch out, as protests sometimes led to clashes between police and locals that could and had turned violent before.  We walked back up the hill and considered our options, we couldn’t get involved, this wasn’t any of our business, but just being there could be considered a risk.  While we trudged towards our cars we stopped so C could chat idly with other drivers.  Not for the first or last time, I envied his affable, easy way he spoke to strangers in the language I was just barely starting to grasp.  His bouts of smiling small talk garnered little information.  The farmers were protesting some sort of law, no one knew how long it would last, but it was not an uncommon occurrence in this area.  The general consensus was that it was going to last as long as it was going to last.  “This is why you’re not supposed to drive at night,” one man told us, “They only do this after dark.”

It was only barely dark the whiny voice in my head complained.  If we had left just a little bit earlier, we’d be in San Jose del Pacifico by now.  After asking around a little more we made a plan.  A large black SUV parked near us was driven by a father, a kind man with a family that had three little kids clambering about in the back seat.  New to the situation we decided to follow this man’s lead, since he likely wouldn’t make any decisions that would put his family in danger.  With nothing else to do, we retired our cars to keep an eye on the situation and wait it out.

I had been in the back of my car for about 15 minutes trying to focus on reading my book while my brain ran through a million and a half possibilities for how the night might go.  Then I heard the family man calling out to us.  I opened my car door to see him motioning to me and yelling in Spanish.  Confused, I went over the van and tapped on the window, “Something is going on, “ I told my friends, “but I don’t know what.”   C got out right away and shouted across to the family man, who was gathering his family into his vehicle.  “He said to follow him,” C said to me, “They’ve found another way around the roadblock.”  Everyone around us who had heard was moving quickly, jumping into their vehicles as if that window of opportunity would soon disappear.

“Let’s go,” C said to me, “Follow the family man, we’ll be right behind you!”  Not wanting to miss the moment, I jogged back to my car, slammed the door and started it up.  My heart began to thump in my chest as I executed a rapid 3-point turn to follow the black SUV.  I had no idea what was going on, but it seemed that there was no time for hesitation.  Glancing into my rearview I saw my friends were right behind me, which seemed like a poor choice minutes later when I found other drivers yelling information to me in Spanish to rapid for me to understand.  It was the non-fluent leading the fluent, and I could only hope that I wasn’t missing any really important information.  

After this happened a few times on the drive back up the road the way we had come, we came to a stop.  Several cars ahead of the black SUV were waiting to make a left turn onto a dirt road.  Men with machetes stood on either side of the roads entrance, looking like stalwart guards.  Some more things were yelled at us from the family man in the black SUV and I stuck my head out the window to yell at C behind me.  “What did he say?!”

“To follow him, and if anyone asks you for money, just give them whatever they ask!” C yelled back.  Before I could say anything else, the column of cars in front of me was moving.  I rolled up my window to keep the dirt from getting in and contemplated what I had just been told.  Since my card had been cancelled while I was in Mexico, I had various amounts of cash hidden in pesos all over my vehicle.  When the cars ahead of me came to a stop at the entrance of the dirt road, I put 500 pesos in my wallet (about $30 at the time) and, after a second’s consideration, took out the large metal hoop earrings I had hanging from my stretched lobes.  I had no idea what might go down, but I wanted to be prepared for any possibility.

Ahead of me I watched a beat up white sedan start to make it up the dirt road and then stall.  It took several men getting out and pushing the vehicle to get it moving again.  The men with machetes stood nearby, watching dispassionately, and I wondered what their motivations were for letting us through.  Finally the little, white clunker got moving, and our stream of cars began to follow.  The road was soft dirt and rock, and it wound up, down, and around the mountain in ways I could make no sense of.  I trusted we were heading towards San Jose Del Pacifico, but there was not way too tell as my gps was going in and out.  I was too worried about the millions of possible things that could go wrong to pay much attention to my maps, though.  A few times the dirt road rounded corners, and I found myself looking down at a steep drop off down the mountainside as the road narrowed.  It was on a stretch such as this, up a hill and clinging to a cliff wall, that our cavalcade came to a sudden stop.

Looking up I could see no reason for us to be stopped.  While we were paused for a few minutes, I took the time to glance down over the ledge, to where the mountainside disappeared into darkness.  A bad idea, as it made my pulse pound a bit harder at the thought of sliding off the side.  After a few minutes of these dark considerations word came down the hill, there was a truck coming from the other direction, a big one, and the road wasn’t wide enough to let it around.  We would have to move, the vehicle going downhill has the right of way.  I took a deep breath as I realized moving out of the way for the truck would involve backing up several hundred yards, down the unlit, guardrail free, dirt road.  “Just take it slowly” C advised, seeing the alarm on my face, “No need to rush.”

I got back into my car and gripped the wheel, taking a few deep breaths, and started my slow creep backwards down the mountain.  On my right side I had a wall of dirt, threatening to sheer off my side mirror if I got to close.  On my left side I had a sheer drop off down a mountain.  I crept backwards, watching the van behind me doing the same.  It felt like eons, but in all actuality, it probably only took about ten or fifteen minutes until we reached the bottom of the hill and were able to drive our cars backwards into a little space on the side of the road.  As we watched in silence a very large truck came lumbering down the hill, followed by a few smaller cars.  Sticking my head out the window I yelled to C, “If I never have to do that again, it will be too soon!”

With the big truck and it’s followers out of our way, I started up the hill again, with a little more confidence this time.  On the second go I got only a quarter of the way up when I had to stop again.  A few minutes wait, and the news came back, there were cars coming and we had to back down the hill again.  Swallowing a yell of frustration, I took a deep breath and repeated the same procedure as before.  Famous last words…

This time, after the cars passed us, I realized we had lost the cars that we were following.  The black SUV was nowhere to be seen, having vanished somewhere over the hill ahead of us before the second cavalcade of cars had come down the hill, forcing us to back up the second time.  Now I was in the lead, and the only thing on my mind was the thought that I would not be forced to back down the hill a third time.  Hitting the gas I tore up the hill, determined to get to the top before I saw headlights peering over.  My friends, and about five other cars, followed my lead.  We made it over the top and I continued on, following the bends and curves of the road and hoping for the best.

We rounded another bend, and started down down the road.  I still couldn’t see anyone ahead of us, and hoped I was going the correct way, it seemed like there was no other way. I led the row of cars down the twisting road through the darkness, occasionally passing machete-armed men standing in silence on the sides of the road.  They watched us pass, but said nothing and did nothing to impede our passage.  Things seemed to be going smoothly, and then I saw headlights up ahead.

The road had widened a bit since we had made it up over the hill we’d been forced to back down, and we were no longer on the edge of a cliff, but the road still wasn’t wide enough for the coming cars to pass us.  I spotted what appeared to be a turn out on the right side of the road, and guided my car into it, pulling up as far as the space would allow and hoping that all of our group would fit.  Somehow we did, and the five or so cars coming our way passed with ease.  I ended up having to repeat this manuever a few more times, each time both surprised and pleased with myself for finding a safe spot that all of us would fit in.

We’d been driving for about half an hour when we came to a stop again.  Heading down and around a bend we happened upon three parked cars.  Putting on the emergency break, we climbed out of our cars only to see the dilapidated little white car from before had driven off of the road into the small ditch that bordered the right side of the street.  There were three men trying to push it out, but they were having no luck.  Without thinking twice, my team of three ran over to the car and got into position next to the other three men in front of the hood.  Taking our spots, we dug our heals into the soft dirt and pushed with everything we had while the driver reversed.  After a few tense seconds and what felt like herculean effort, the tires caught and the little white car lurched backwards.  The six of us quickly got out of the way, and began jogging back to our vehicles.  Several of the cars that had stopped behind the white car moved to get ahead of it, so they wouldn’t be slowed down by its lack of power.  I was tempted to pull around the car myself, but seeing how much trouble it had had already, I wanted to stick with it to make sure that it, and the driver, made it back to the road okay.

Now the white car led us, chugging along at a slow, concerning pace.  Every time we went up a hill I kept my distance, preying it wouldn’t stall.  Every time we went down one, I kept my foot on the brake and my eyes glued to the white car, waiting for it to stop suddenly or drive off of the road again.  The car kept chugging along, though, and our two vehicles kept pace behind it.  It started to feel like we had been driving forever, like this dirt road was a trick, leading us back the way we came, or in a completely different direction.  We passed a few more men with machetes, and part of me wanted to ask them how long we had left, but I kept my mouth shut and my tires crunching over rocks and kicking up dirt clouds.

Then there was pavement, I could see it ahead.  Whispering and exclamation of glee under my breath, I passed another man with a machete and maneuvered my car back onto smooth pavement.  The white car ahead of us did not drive noticeably faster on the paved road, but I took comfort in the fact that it was less likely to slide into a ditch now.  Breathing a bit easier we pulled off the road at the first little shop we saw.  I turned off the car, my heart-rate finally slowing down as we entered the little roadside shop.  The family that owned it looked pretty surprised to see us, but gladly sold us cold beer while we talked a bit about our recent adventure.  They seemed un-surprised by anything we said, and I would later find that these sort of protests were fairly common in these mountains.

The brief rest and beer break were a nice respite, but we still had a few miles to go before we reached our destination.  By the time we got to San Jose del Pacifico, it was nearing 11pm.  We drove through the length of it at first, to get an idea where everything was.  There was a few hostels, some hotels, small stores and restaurants, many of them painted with symbols of the mushrooms that the mountain town was famous for.  After getting turned away at the first two hostels we tried to stay at (one seemed to have no one there, the other either did not have any rooms, or did not want to give any rooms to us) we got a small, two bed room, one of a row of cabins a little away from the road.  The room felt like like the inside of a jewelry box to me, all lacquered wood shining in the uncomfortably bright light overhead.  It was also drafty, and much colder than any of us expected.  Each of us slept in layers of clothes that night, even pulling extra blankets from the car to stay warm.  It was hardly the most comfortable place I had slept on my travels, but I was happy to have it, considering what it took to get there.  We had made it unharmed and unmolested, and as the wind howled through the trees outside, and reached for us with chilled fingers inside, I chalked one in the win column and fell into a deep, hard-earned, sleep.

#roadtrip oaxaca politicalprotest roadblock cartrouble travel mexico

[angrybrowngirlabroad-blog]

The Long Road Home: Emotional Abuse and Creativity

I cannot say when it started exactly, and I suppose that’s the point, if you know a bullet is coming, maybe you can dodge it.  Or maybe you can’t, it is a bullet, and for the sake of this metaphor, I had never held a gun.  It wasn’t until almost a year after that I began to realize what had happened to me.  When the relationship started, I did not know there was such a thing as emotional abuse.  A sheltered 21 year old, I had started dating a man seven years my senior, eventually moving in with him as we tethered our lives together.  In the early days it was bliss, everything seemed right, but as the years wore on things started to change.  We started fighting more and more, fights that would come out of nowhere, and back me into a corner, until I lashed out in a fury trying to defend myself against some accusation with no basis in reality.  I had no idea the damage that was being done to me, after all, it’s not like he ever raised a hand to me.

In the months following our break-up, which I put into motion following a particularly public and terrible fight, I felt like I was returning from some kind of war.  I struggled to sort my life out, dealing with a sharp decrease in finances, trying to make it work with a roommate I barely knew in a tiny apartment I overlooking the 15/8 freeway intersection.  I drank heavily, but cheaply, two dollar wines, or straight gin from a giant bottle someone had given me, always with no mixer, because I always forgot to buy mixers when I was purchasing my meager groceries at the local Mexican market.  I was so afraid of going broke, but I needed to alcohol to sleep at night, so I bought only the cheapest food and booze.

When I wasn’t drunk I was anxious, always worried that I was going to mess something up, that I was going to fail.  I was not yet conscious of the blow my confidence had taken.  I always projected myself as someone who knew what was going on, someone in control, which was perhaps why many of my friends didn’t notice, or didn’t comment on the fact that I was drinking myself to death.  I was scared, though, scared I couldn’t do it, and scared that if I failed, I would prove him right when he said I couldn’t manage without him.

Eventually I found a sort of balance.  I moved out the apartment with the indifferent roommate into a more supportive household with people who actually cared about me.  I learned how to budget in a way that I wasn’t starving myself, and how to sleep without the bottle.  I was now managing, but I wasn’t going anywhere, I had found a comfortable stasis with partners who didn’t yell at me, and that was good enough.

Except, in the back of my mind, I knew it wasn’t.

When I was in my emotionally abusive relationship I gave up a lot of myself to devote myself to my partner and our life.  I stopped going to school, stopped reading as much to spend time on the couch watching tv with him, I stopped writing and drawing.  I carried a sketchbook and notebook around with me all through middle school, high school and college, only to suddenly put them away, out of sight and out of mind.  I gave these things up, willingly, for love.  I continued performing, but even then he would give me grief for taking the time, two nights a week, for dance practice with my troupe.  “I just miss you so much when you’re at practice” he would say (we lived together).  Sometimes I think dancing and performing is what kept my head above water during those times.

As I stumbled through the months following the dissolution of my relationship I reassembled myself, piece by piece.  But even a year later, there were still pieces missing.  I couldn’t draw, and I couldn’t write, at least not the way I used to.  I tried to finish old drawings, but my heart wasn’t in it.  I opened up old stories on my laptop and re-read the beginnings to try and add to them, but I could not come up with anything.  The girl who had wrote those stories was gone, and I was still trying desperately to bring her back, not understanding that I would never be that girl again.

Faced with the inability to write fiction, to draw, or compose any kind of poetry (though poetry was always my weakest of the three) I started to write non-fiction.  In my quest to discover who I was, I began writing openly and honestly about my feelings and experiences on a variety of subjects.  I entered and left relationships, good and bad, and documented my growth along the way.  I put fingers to keys and poured my heart out, posting it on social media for all to see, wondering if my words would ever reach someone.  I could not make up stuff any more, so instead I pulling fantasy from my head, I pulled rawness from my heart, hoping that, eventually, to former would come back to me.

During that time I also continued to perform, saying things onstage with my body that I wasn’t ready to put words to yet.  I wrote my tales in the gestures of my hands, the movements of my hips, the expressions on my face.  The reactions to my shows, the applause and comments after, sustained me.  I got pieces of the validation I was constantly seeking outside myself, but a part of me was still missing.  It was good, but it wasn’t the same as putting pen to paper.  The effect of being onstage was a quick shot, that would sustain me for a few days, different, to me at least, from the experience of writing something that satisfied me, and existed for me to visit and revisit as necessary.

Then, after two years of meandering, and half-hearted self-searching, I hit emotional rock bottom.  

I had spent the two years following the dissolution of my bad relationship trying to prove to myself that I was someone capable, and someone worthy of love and respect.  I projected an image of strength and confidence, because “fake it till you make it” was a strategy that had worked for me in the past.  But when another bad relationship fell apart, I had to recognize that while I was faking it, I was indeed not making it.  I was not as confident as I projected, in fact, I really didn’t like myself all that much.  I’d been seeking validation in my partners, using them as mirrors, gazing into them and hoping they would reflect back to me that I was someone worthwhile.  But if I didn’t believe it myself, how could I hope to convince anyone else of it?

Admitting to myself that I didn’t like myself was the beginning of my real life, post confidence crushing relationship of my early twenties.  I swore that I would make myself into someone that I was proud of, someone that no longer needed to seek the approval of a partner in order to feel whole.  I began to challenge myself in new ways, and with each step forward (and a few steps back here and there) I began to truly heal.  It was as if I had spent two years building the outside of my chrysalis, and now I could crawl within it and become the creature I was meant to be.

When I left the states last year, it was on a mission to challenge myself, to seek new horizons, to trust in my skills and my instincts, and to prove to myself that I was the capable, fearless woman I once was, before everything that stole that from me.  I made a path, where I had never imagined one before, and I discovered the difference between surviving and living.

My friends gave me sketchbooks before I left, pens and colored pencils, they told me to write, and draw, and document my travels and my thoughts.  I did, but it felt halting at first, I hated everything I produced, viewing it with the same, overly-critical eye that I apply to most areas of my life.  As time went on, though, things began to flow more.  I started challenging myself to draw things I had never drawn before, to try and imagine characters again, to even make attempts at poetry.  In finding myself again, I had also found my creativity that had spent so many years stifled by self-doubt.  It was different now, the things I wrote, the themes I explored, than before, but I was different now.  I realized that I was never going to be the girl I was before, and that was fine, because I actually really liked the woman I am now, wiser, stronger and kinder than her predecessor.

I lost my sketchbook in Guatemala, a minor blow.  I bought another one a week into my visit to the states.  

I wrote a poem a few weeks ago.  Then two this week, and while they are chunky, amateurish attempts that may be deleted, never to see the light of day, what they symbolize is so much more.  They are evidence of my healing, of wounds since scarred over, fading with every year.  They are proof of a heart willing to explore and to entertain the risk of failure again.  They are an example of how far I have come in the last four years.

It’s good to be home.  

#creativity artist writer poetry emotionalabuse art confidence

[angrybrowngirlabroad-blog]

New Friends, Old Cities: The Oaxaca Valley and Monte Alban

Prior to deciding to leave the US, I was not the sort of person to ever “go with the flow.”  My life was busy, and often carefully scheduled, to manage all of the hours I had to work to maintain a life in San Diego, and all the time I would spend seeing friends, working out, and decompressing, to maintain my sanity while working all those hours.  Every moment was filled (except Friday morning, which were sacred) and I was constantly late to everything as I managed my time poorly in an attempt to do it all.  When I decided to leave the states to explore Mexico, and, eventually, the rest of Central America, I decided to do so without a set plan.  I knew I was going to land in Sayulita, and spend two months there, but that was the extent of things.  I decided that I would define my path after I arrived, by researching, gathering information from other travellers, and simply seeing how I felt once I’d been in Mexico for a bit.  While that seems incredibly freeing, to someone who schedules everything, that thought was terrifying.  But part of the many (many, many, many) reasons for this journey was to build my own confidence, and part of that confidence was based on my ability to live outside my comfort zone, to trust in myself, listen to my feelings and instincts, and make the decisions that were right for me.  So I “went with the flow” for the first time in a long time, possibly even ever.

My time in Sayulita was wonderful, challenging, and strengthening.  I made some true friendships there, with some wonderful people, that I look forward to seeing again.  Sayulita will always have a place in my heart, and Lush Hostel in particular, I consider my home away from home, that I know I will return to at some point (probably several points) in my travels.  But for everything there is a season, and when I hit the road then, I hit it hard.  I drove by myself from Sayulita to Guadalajara, then from Guadalajara to Patzcuaro, experienced Dia de los Muertos all on my lonesome, then made my way to Morelia all in the course of a week.  When I reached Morelia I actually had no idea where I wanted to go next.  Guanajuato looked promising, and beautiful, though I had originally had my heart set on Mexico City for November.  However, I was deterred by the largest metropolis in the world, and my lack of any basic connection there.  I had a few friends who knew a few people, and I kept trying to contact anyone who lived there, but hit nothing but dead ends.  While my confidence was definitely greater than before I set off on my adventure, I wasn’t ready to take on such a huge city with just me, my limited Spanish, and my little hatchback.  With that in mind, I decided to spend four days in Morelia, and use that time to make my decision about where I wanted to go next.  The fact that the path was not yet clear to me as I drove into the city was a little unnerving, but I knew I’d figure it out.

When I first entered the hostel in Morelia I was having trouble talking to the young man who was working the front desk.  He had almost no English, and I was having trouble making myself understood with my limited and poorly accented Spanish.  It actually got to the point that a man, sitting on a couch nearby on his phone, overheard our conversation, and stood up to help translate.  When he walked over I was asking about whether or not it would be safe to leave my car parked on the street in front of the hostel, as the friend I had stayed with in Guadalajara advised against parking on the street there because of frequent break-ins.  The man who was helping translate cleared that up for me real quick, “We have our van parked right outside, it’s perfectly safe!”  Satisfied with my parking choice, we fell into conversation, upon which he commented that he was pretty sure we had met in Sayulita.

As luck, or fortune, or random chance would have it, Chris and his girlfriend, Elena, had stayed in Sayulita at Lush the week of my return.  I had met them, though only in passing, as I was too busy cramming my days with adventures before I departed the town.  Once the three of us spent more time together I found out that they had also driven their vehicle down from the states, had gone to Patzcuaro after Sayulita for Dia de los Muertos, and had chosen Morelia as their recovery city while they decided which route to take next.  Over the next few days we became fast friends, and by the end of our stays we had formulated a plan to caravan together through Oaxaca, and Chiapas, and cross the border into Guatemala as a group.  They were planning to find an apartment in Antigua, and I had been trying to decide if I was going to return to the United States for xmas, but I was on the fence about driving up.  Getting to Guatemala, and having a safe place to leave my car with my new friends who lived there, solved all my problems in one fell swoop.  And just like that, I had a caravan.

We decided that we, and the fourth member of our party, a woman from Scotland who had been travelling Central America almost a year, would make our next stop in the city of Oaxaca.  It was a grueling 9 hour drive when all was said and done, fraught with toll roads, especially on the freeways that cut around Mexico City, that quickly drained our wallets of all paper money.  We only stopped in Puebla to get a snack or use a restroom, hell bent on arriving in the city by nightfall.  Passing into Oaxaca was some of the most beautiful scenery I had seen yet, and I’d soon find that the entire state was rife with gorgeous mountains and beaches.  And, while we did achieve our goal of entering the city by nightfall, we also managed to hit it right at rush hour.  Traffic, one way streets, no parking, and an inability to contact each other once our cars got separated, all contributed to making the search for the hostel extra exhausting.  Finally we found where we would be staying, and a secure place to park the car, and we celebrated accordingly with the cheap beer I’ve come to know and (kind of, out of necessity) love.

The city of Oaxaca was interesting.  Smaller than I expected, full of old buildings in all styles, tons of interesting street art and amazing artisanal markets.  There was also examples of political unrest everywhere.  Graffiti was painted on almost every building, and in the main square there were tents set up, and parts of streets leading up to it, consistently occupied by protesters.  I had been warned by a friend who had travelled through the state a few months before that this would be the case, and to be careful.  “Avoid roadblocks at all cost” she had warned me, a warning that would come back to haunt me later. So I made note of the protestors, and skirted around them as much as possible, though internally I wished that I had a better command of the language, because I wanted to ask them about their movement.  Instead I satisfied myself by Googling some of the facts.

I was soon distracted from the politics of Mexico by the politics of the United States.  Two days after we arrived in town, the presidential election came and went.  The three of us from the states had spoken about the political scene in the states before, you couldn’t not while travelling through Mexico. I actually watched the first debate in my hostel in Sayulita, and the others while in the states before Halloween.  And while we all agreed that the fact that Trump was even a candidate was a grim tiding, there was a great deal of hope for Hillary’s victory, given all the post-debate polls.  That hope, obvious now in hindsight, we were quickly absolved of.

I had not been truly drunk since I left Sayulita, but I definitely was election night.  What started as beer as we began to watch the results pour in on our phones, became a second, and a third, and then a trip to the store for more.  Even Elena, who almost never drank, was several beers deep when we all decided to retire a little after midnight.  By that time the results were pretty clear, the country we had left behind had shown its true colors.  Tomorrow we’d have a reality-star, narcissist as our president elect and some wicked hangovers to contend with.

As we nursed our hangovers the next day we also decided what our next course of action would be.  The results of the election were still sinking in, and with that cloud hanging over our heads, we decided we would go where the clouds literally hung over our heads, high into the mountains of Oaxaca.  A town called San Jose del Pacifico to be more specific (I crack myself up) in the mountain range known a Sierra Madre del Sur.  The valley of Oaxaca, where the capital city is located, is a large area surrounded by 3 different mountain ranges, the other two being the Sierra Mazateca to the northeast and Sierra Juarez to the northwest.  Sierra Madre del Sur borders the valley to the south, and must be crossed to get to the beach towns of southern Oaxaca.  Spending a few days high in the mountains, out of range of cell phone towers and with little to no access to the world below the clouds sounded too perfect, but before we began to the ascent we had to check out the ruins of one of the first cities of mesoamerica, Monte Alban, located just a few miles outside of the city of Oaxaca.

Monte Alban sits high on a steep hill overlooking the modern city of Oaxaca.  The road up the hill is winding, and full of switchbacks and your arrive in a parking lot below the site. The site itself is built on an artificially leveled plateau, clear of most trees, set against a brilliantly blue sky with 360 degree views of the surrounding area.  The structures on the site, mostly stone pyramids, are impressive both in their size and detail.  Many of them feature beautiful carvings, though a lot have been removed to the safety of the museum on site and replaced with copies in order to protect the originals.  One of the greatest examples of this is a room within one of the pyramids called the “Hall of Dancers” which features stones carved with figures that, by their strange contortions, appear to be dancing, but are actually thought to represent sacrifices (some of them appear to have mutilated genitalia).  Other carvings around the site are described as “conquest slabs” listing places that the rulers of Monte Alban controlled.  During it’s heyday it was quite a long list, as Monte Alban was one of the biggest cities in Mesoamerica and colonized several regions outside the Oaxaca Valley.

During its most prominent era, the city of Monte Alban numbered an estimated 25,000 citizens.  Monte Alban was founded around 500 BCE by the Zapotec, aka “Cloud Peoples” moving from the site of San Jose Magote to the strategic location high in the hills.  By 200 BCE the artificially flat plane had been leveled, the hillsides terraced for occupation, and the population was estimated around 10-15,000.  Most of the intricate temples and pyramids seem to date to a period of construction between 200 BCE and 100 CE.  There was also a ball court erected during this period, but without the stone rings common to most ball courts in Mesoamerica, because the Zapotecs played a different type of ball game altogether.  Between this period and the Early Classic period of 200 CE to 500 CE Monte Alban accrued wealth and influence from connections with other nearby cultures, including trading with the city of Teotihuacan.  For unknown reasons the city began to decline around 500CE and the site was abandoned around the year 900.

Today the site is still impressive, the buildings are huge and beautifully built, the stone carved with remarkable detail.  The structures show great planning in both construction and layout on a grand scale.  Objects found on site point to a culture that emphasized art, science and human sacrifice.  The museum located on site features several examples of beautiful Zapotec stone masonry, pottery, and jewelry, as well as the remains of sacrifices.  One particular exhibit holds the skulls of 15 children sacrificed and buried onsite.  The gods of Monte Alban were blood thirsty, it seems.

After spending a few hours crawling up and down pyramids, temples and wandering through the museum, we were ready to hit the road.  The drive through the valley of Oaxaca towards the mountains was beautiful, if full of speed bumps.  It can be nice to be forced to slow down and smell the roses, but not when you’re racing the sun to get to your next destination.  I have a policy of not driving at night through Central America (mostly because you never know what the conditions of the road may be), but sometimes you cannot help it.  The sunset drive towards our mountain town destination was a peaceful one, until it wasn’t, but I’ll get to that in the next installment of THE BLOG I SOMETIMES UPDATE!

Tune in next (week? month? season?) for our adventures tangling with civil unrest on mountain roads! Photos: 1. Looking like a BAMF having just entered the state of Oaxaca 2. Theater in Oaxaca built in the early 1900s 3. Random photo of me taken when a child took my phone from my friend’s hand 4. Standing on a wall at Monte Alban looking down at the city of Oaxaca 5. Monte Alban and Oaxaca 6, 7. The pyramids of Monte Alban 8. Children’s skulls, the victims of sacrifice 9. Sacrificed adult skulls 10. Impressive stone work from Monte Alban

#roadtrip traveler mexico oaxaca oaxacavalley oaxacacity montealban

[angrybrowngirlabroad-blog]

Of Privilege and Punching Nazis

The title of this blog is “Angry Brown Girl Abroad” and it exists for two reasons.  One is to record my adventures of my travels through Central America and my trials and tribulations as I struggle to learn Spanish and connect to my roots.  The other reason is the “angry brown girl” side, a place to vent my opinions on my place in the world as an ambiguously brown, female in gender (most of the time) person from the United States.  I’ve mostly used this blog for the former, and I tend to take to Facebook more often to voice my opinions on the latter, because, quite frankly, I think they are more likely to be seen and shared there.  However, I feel like it’s time to explore my angry brown side a bit more in this space.

I actually haven’t posted anything on this blog in a few months.  Part of this was because I was in a rush, and went back to the states for the holidays, which ended up being a very emotionally tumultuous time for me.  When my feelings are in overdrive, I still turn to writing for comfort, but I rarely publish those deep feelings for anyone else to read.  The holidays were hard for a variety of reasons, but the even harder part was coming back to the country I am currently staying in (Guatemala) and watching both the inauguration and coverage of the Women’s March on Washington from thousands of miles away, and the ensuing aftermath of both events.  Watching your country implode from a distance is a strange feeling, you care, you want to be there, you can’t look away, you feel glad that you got out, you feel guilty that you got out, you struggle to enjoy your time here while you wonder if you can do more for the people still there.  I’m working on finding the balance, but I’m spending a great deal of time on the internet these days, reading about each new horrible thing our incompetent commander in chief has cooked up that threatens the lives of POCs, LGBTQ people and disabled citizens.  I am both constantly surprised by the lengths this administration is willing to go to, and also the response from people to it, especially within my own community.  I am frustrated with them more specifically, as I find out where each person falls on certain lines in the sand.  One of the ones that keeps coming up, weeks after I feel it should have been settled, is punching a Nazi (and, more recently, the violent opposition of Milo Y-I’mnotevengonnatryhesanasshole speaking at UC Berkley). I AM REALLY TIRED OF PEOPLE WHO ARE THE LAST IN LINE TO BE HURT BY BOTH NAZIS AND MILO YGAYNAZI TELLING PEOPLE IN THE LINE OF FIRE HOW THEY SHOULD REACT TO SUCH ABUSE.

Yep, I said it, I mean it.  It is not at all a surprise to me that every person I have argued with personally about whether violence is justifiable against people who PROMOTE VIOLENCE has been a cis-hetero-white dude.  I’m just mad that there are so many, and so many that I know personally, and that they have the audacity to call me, and the people like me to who disagree with me, names because we won’t agree with them that “violence is never the answer.”   Violence should not be our first answer.  Violence should not be applied willy-nilly to anyone who disagrees with us.  Violence is, 99% of the time, the last choice from a marginalized group.  You know why?  Because it’s dangerous, because people don’t want to do it, and because the people most likely to suffer the worst legal ramnifications for using violence against their oppressors are minorities.  Black men get shot by cops for doing literally nothing, you think they are going to actively choose to fight the police as their first move?  Nah. Which brings me to another point: so many of these dudes who I’ve seen argue really hard against punching actual, confirmed Nazis, have been oddly silent on cases where POCs are killed, without justification, by police.  They’ll go on and on about how minorities should not use violence to defend themselves, but say nothing for the victims of state-sponsored police violence.  They get into a frothy fervor about hypothetical punching, but when was the last time they even acknowledged the tragic ends of Tamir Rice or Trayvon Martin?  (Both are children and the last was killed by another citizen).  Where is there outrage for the actual deaths of people, who espoused no genocidal beliefs, and were killed for the simple sake of being not-white?  Is it because the punching of white dudes might actually affect them whereas police shooting them is pretty much a non-issue?  I take note of who goes hard for what issues, I see you, and trust me, I’ve made note. But lets just say that said dude is not in this just for himself and his own preservation.  Still, defending Nazis and the pasty scum that is Milo Yareyousoawful does not paint you in a good light.  Its not like these are white dudes who said something questionable on the internet.  Richard Spencer, the aforementioned Nazi who was punched mid-interview at Trump’s inauguration, is a confirmed Alt-Right (CALL THEM FUCKING NAZIS) leader who just launched a new website dedicated to the Alt-Right movement.  His previous website featured the essay “Is Black Genocide Right?” and features the line: “we should instead be asking questions like, ‘Does human civilization actually need the Black race?’ ‘Is Black genocide right?’”* So, pretty clearly a Nazi.  As for Milo Ywontyoujustgoaway, he is a Breitbart senior editor known for slinging hate who was supposed to speak at UC Berkeley but his engagement was cancelled after violent protests on campus.  Milo Yifeelsorryforyourmom has built his empire on hate, he gained notoriety last year by leading the charge on Twitter that led to Leslie Jones (one of the stars of the new Ghostbusters) being harassed with a slew of racist, sexist, violent messages and tweets.  This earned him a ban from Twitter, but didn’t stop his book deal.* In his speech at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee he outed a trans student named Adelaide Kramer, projecting a photo of her earlier in her transition for all of her classmates to see and calling on the audience to laugh at her as he degraded an misgendered her.* There are reports that, in his UC Berkeley address, that Milo Yohgawdshutup was planning to target students who did not have documentation to live in the United States.  Milo Yuccccckkkkkkkkkk claimed that it wasn’t true, but that instead he intended to talk about cultural appropriation while wearing a Native American headdress, so either way the man is filth.*  It’s not like these men are people who posted a questionable Facebook status, they have a documented history of advocating hate and abuse against people not like them. And we get told we cannot fight these men with fists because it would be “sinking to their level.”  We can’t, though, not with a single punch.  Hitting someone who advocates for the murder of an entire group based on the color of their skin is not comparable to, I don’t know, advocating the murder of an entire group based on the color of their skin.  Unless you immediately start putting together armed groups and planning the next white genocide after you throw that punch, there is no sinking.  Making someone reconsider their choice to espouse violent rhetoric in a public arena is a good thing, a thing that one wishes we could accomplish with protests, but clearly those protests are doing little to slow down the new Nazis in this country.  Also, claiming that we’ll lose support of fence sitters and drive them to the genocidal far right because we’re advocating for Nazi punching is ridiculous.  Anyone who is on the fence about support genocide or genocidal rhetoric is not someone whose going to change their mind if we are lenient on those who would see them hang.  If you’re on the fence about genocide, well your fence is already pretty far past the line of decency anyways. Which brings me to my last point, the invocation that I have heard over and over again that we should try and talk things out with Nazis.  That our words will be more effective than our fists.  And to this I say, “Maybe yours, Mr. Hetero White Dude who keeps espousing this belief” because believe me, they are not going to listen to an ambiguously brown woman, with an ambiguous sexuality, talk to them about hating less.  Those of us who are targets of Nazi hate should not be required to speak calmly to our oppressors about it, especially since some of the oppressors feel like we should be shot on sight.  And telling us we should is ignoring and invalidating the very real and justifiable fears that we feel.  Stop doing that, it’s a form of gaslighting.

The fact is, if Nazis are going to listen to ANYONE at all, it’s going to be another white dude.  Which means these dudes defending the not-punching of Nazis, should put their money where their mouth is and go talk to Nazis.  I want each and every one of you, before you come onto a status of a POC, LGBTQ or disabled person and tell them how violence is not the answer, to go to an alt-right forum, a Facebook page, hell, even in person, and engage in a peaceful discussion.  I want receipts proving that you are willing to do the very thing you are preaching that the rest of us to do.  I want to know your success rate for converting Nazis before you open your mouth about our methods.  Since you care so much, go and do the work you wish to be done in the world.  Maybe the two-pronged approach, discussion and violent opposition will be even more effective.

I’ll be over here, practicing my elbow strikes. PS: The First Amendment only protects your freedom of speech from the government shutting you down, it does not protect you from the people who you are calling for the murder of en masse from beating your ass down, so I’m gonna need all you crying out about that to get off that tired horse.  Words have consequences.

* http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/01/17/richard_spencer_launches_the_alt_right_s_newest_website.html * http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2016/12/milo-yiannopoulos-leslie-jones-book-deal * https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/trans-student-harassed-by-milo-yiannopoulos-speaks-out

* http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/uc-berkely-protests-milo-yiannopoulos-publicly-name-undocumented-students-cancelled-talk-illegals-a7561321.html 

#nazis punchingnazis richardspencer miloy violence antifa

[angrybrowngirlabroad-blog]

Contemplating Morelia’s Famous Architecture and Colonialism in California

“What?” you say, “What does Morelia’s architecture have to do with California?”  Nothing, if you’re not me, I guess, but we’ll assume you’re hear because you are marginally interested in my opinion.  We’ll get to that opinion in a bit, but first I must pick up where the last post left off....

My adventures in Patzcuaro ended with my boat ride to Janitzio and back.  As the last bits of sunset began to fade I hopped in my car and headed north toward Morelia.  The city, the hometown of the friend whose house I had just stayed in on the shore of Lake Patzcuaro, was a little over an hour away, and as the light faded I looked forward to my next venture.  Morelia is a city in Michoacan founded by the Spanish in 1541.  Originally called Valladolid, the city competed with Patzcuaro for regional dominance, and in 1580 was named the capital of Michoacan.  After the Mexican War of Independence the city was named Morelia after Jose Maria Morelos, hero of the revolution, who was born in Valladolid.

I always find cities a bit overwhelming.  The rush of people, cars, the wall of sounds, there almost too much for me sometimes.  Morelia had all of these, but it also had the benefit of being full of something I love, old buildings in the architectural styles of the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th century.  In 1991 Morelia was actually declared a UNESCO World Heritage site for it’s amount of well-preserved colonial buildings.  From the rooftop of the hostel I was staying in, I could see the bell towers of 4 different churches, all just a few blocks away. I would get photos of each of these over the next 4 days in the city, but my complete lack of organization would mean that I ended up with a lot of photos of beautiful structures whose names I do not know.

The hostel I was staying in was located just a block from Morelia’s Church of Saint Francis, city’s oldest sacral building.  The original building was an adobe chapel erected in 1531, but the current church’s construction began in 1536 and ended in 1610, with the bell tower being a later addition.  A convent was also built on site, where indigenous peoples were taught to speak and write Spanish.  The plaza outside the cathedral boasts a large fountain, and it was this plaza that hosted a live show by Nor Tec Collective on Friday night, while images were projected onto the church.  I would find myself in the plaza again on Sunday night, as the Festival Internacional de Mapping wrapped up.  While on Friday night the projections were just providing visual effects to accompany the show, on Sunday night whole stories were told with projections.  Brilliant depictions of space set to the music of David Bowie, were followed by images from indigenous people’s folk tales, and visuals of different cultures and traditions of Mexico, all played out on a 400-year-old church.  I had not gone to Morelia with any knowledge of the festival, but the imprint it left on my mind is unforgettable.

In addition to its various churches, Morelia also boasted an aqueduct.  Built out of unique pink stone from a nearby quarry, construction began in 1785 after a 2 year drought to provide drinking water.  And also because a local bishop at the time wanted to provide employment for the local indigenous people.  It hasn’t been in use since 1910, and the city has now grown up around it.  Traffic weaves between the 253 arches, stores use parts of it as their fronts, and, in one place, the aqueduct bleeds into a sidewalk.  This particular area I took interest in, because it allowed me to walk into the top of the aqueduct itself and stand waist deep in a structure that had stood over 235 years.

Another piece of architecture that captured my interest was the Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe.  While the outside isn’t that fancy compared to some of the other cathedrals in Morelia other than its distinct red painted dome, the inside is extremely elaborate.  This was one of the only churches I entered in the city, since I have something of an aversion to religious places built off the labor of forcibly conquered and oppressed indigenous peoples.  The inside of the church is astonishingly ostentatious.  Every surface is covered in carvings and brilliant paint, including the stunning dome.  Even more stunning (or perhaps appalling) are the huge series of murals covering the walls that depict the indigenous populations being converted to Christianity.  The church itself was built by some of those converted peoples (though as those of us who read history know, “conversion” is a polite word for what happened to the original peoples of the America’s during colonial expansion), including parts of grand interior.  My amazement at the construction of the place was immediately tainted by the history of the process that created it and most of the large, impressive buildings in Mexico.

As I found in the Patzcuaro region, and every region I would encounter afterwards, there is no separating Mexico from its colonial history.  While this may not be a great revelation to those who have lived here, or traveled here, I must first present my perspective.  Growing up in California I had some contact with the effects of colonialism on the “New World,” California having originally been a part of New Spain, which became Mexico, before California was ceded to the United States following the Mexican-American War that ran from 1846 to 1848.  Given it’s history as, there are still some distinctly Spanish structures in parts of California, most notably the missions located up and down the California coastline.  Learning about the missions and even visiting a few is part of elementary school curriculum in California, as a brief overview of the history of Mexico up until California was acquired by the United States.  Elementary school being what it is, though, a great deal is sanitized for a child’s consumption.  While we knew that the indigenous populations were forcibly converted to Catholicism in many instances, we were not given the full, dark story of what that all entailed.  As children we were shuffled through a mission or two (I got to see San Luis Rey) we observed, and, at least it seems to me, a lot of us forgot.  In California, those descendents of those indigenous populations live on reservations, often located far from the centers of the cities and towns me and my classmates grew up in.  So while we had learned of the plight of the original victims of colonialism, we were not educated in the long-standing effects of it.  

In California, colonialism and the state as it exists now are two separate beasts, so much so, that even I, history loving nerd that I am, sometimes forget.  In Mexico, you can’t forget so easily.  The evidence is everywhere, Spanish colonialism and the existence of the indigenous peoples are inextricably intertwined.  While Spanish may be the most common language in Mexico, Mexico is home to at least 65 different indigenous languages.  In California, you may never hear a native language spoken outside a reservation, but in Mexico you may hear one walking through a market.  The art of indigenous peoples is everywhere, and you can often watch someone making art right in front of you in the style of their ancestors.  To experience this in California, you usually have to go several miles from your usual haunts.  Travelling through Mexico has been a culture shock in ways I never anticipated, and this is one of them.  In Mexico, you cannot separate a city or an area or a structure from its colonial history, and while I think this is a good thing, it does tarnished the rose-colored glasses I was using to admire those elaborate bell-towers.  It’s not only on Dia de los Muertos that Mexico’s dead walk, and it takes the smallest of efforts to see them everywhere. Photos: I don’t even know, I tried to keep track, but I failed.  There were too many beautiful churches for me to handle.

#morelia michoacan mexico spanishcolonialism spain californiahistory colonialism traveler angrybrowngirlabroad

[angrybrowngirlabroad-blog]

Dia de los Muertos Part III: The Day After the Dead

November 3rd started with me having not been murdered in the house on the lake by a serial killer, much to my satisfaction.  The two days of celebrating the dead were over, and it was time for me to move onto my next destination, but I wasn't quite done with Lake Patzcuaro yet.  There were still two more important sites I had to check out, the Yacatas and the island of Janitzio.

The Yacatas are five pyramids that sit on a hill overlooking the town of Tzintzuntzan (which means "land of the hummingbirds," a fact I forgot to mention before).  I found the Yacatas are actually visible from the cemetery when I was wandering around it the day before (while googling "Tzintzuntzan pyramids" coincidentally).  These five pyramids were built by the Purepecha culture, several hundred years before the Spanish colonization of the region.  The Purepecha were a civilization that little was known about until recently.  The remains of the Yacata (partially dismantled to build the nearby convent), sat on the hill for years, but a real exploration of them didn't begin until the late 1900s.  It was only after this examination and restoration of the pyramids began did archaeologists begin to see that the Purepecha's reign was much larger and more advanced than previously thought.  The Purepecha ruled over most of the lands around Lake Patzxcuaro and now their territory and scope of influence is considered second only to the Aztecs, who lived during the same time.  It was actually the Aztecs who sent the Spanish to the Purepecha lands, claiming that was where their gold came from.  The Purepecha's leader, upon seeing the damage that the Spanish could do, decided to surrender peacefully instead of fighting the outsiders.  However, it did little good as their culture was destroyed just the same.  

The actual location of the Yacatas is amazing all by itself.  The hill that the pyramids sit on overlooks Lake Patzcauro and gives a vantage point for much of the valley that the lake lies in as well.  The hill, which has been shored up by stone walls around it, and artificially leveled, contains not just pyramids, but other quarters as well.  The pyramids themselves are unusual in their shape, not the tradition step pyramid with 4 sides of equal length as we're used to seeing.  Instead, the Yacatas have a rounded base, that extends out from the front, facing the lake (and now town of Tzintzuntzan).  The pyramids, now partially restored, rise up from the back of these rounded bases.  Though little of it is left now (most likely because it was stolen to build the monastery) you can see that they pyramids, not unlike the ones in Egypt, were once covered with an outer casing of a different rock than the base stones were made of.  This rock, reddish in color, often had designs inscribed in it, spirals, circles, some human-like figures, all centuries old.  I found myself comparing the spirals to the ones I had seen at a historical site near Sayulita, one of which became the basis of one of my tattoos, and wondered how common this imagery was amongst the indigenous tribes of the Americas.

After wandering the grounds for a bit, and seeking respite from the brutal sun under the trees that grew all over the hilltop, I found my way into the museum on site.  In the museum I was treated to a display of aerial photos of the site, as well as artifacts collected during the excavation and examination of the pyramids.  Jewelry, pottery, weapons, sculptures small and large were all on display, providing a more complete look at the life of a Purapechan.  Unfortunately, all of the descriptions were in Spanish, so while I was able to get the gist of a lot of the displays, a fuller understanding escaped me.  Still, it was interesting enough viewing objects made by people who lived hundred of years before I was even a thought in my parents head.

Having devoured some of the knowledge of the Yacatas, I went in search of a boat to ferry me to the island of Janitzio.  Janitzio (the name means "where it rains") is the largest island in Lake Patzcuaro.  The island is famous in Mexico for it's fishermen, who fish for the "pescado blanco" with butterfly shaped nets they lower into the water.  They are also a well-known part of the Dia de los Muertos celebrations.  When the sun sets on November 1st, the fishermen take to the water with boats adorned for the occasion, and candles that light up the lake like fireflies in a field. To my dismay, I missed this particular spectacle, but I intend to return to the lake to see it next year.

Janitzio's other claim to fame is the 40 meter of Jose Maria Morales, a hero of the Mexican revolution, that stands on the very top of the island.  I was told that you can climb up inside the statue, and that the view of the surrounding lake and mountains was well worth it, so I parked my car at the harbor, and paid for a ferry to the island.  The ferry ride took a little over half and hour, and I spent most of that time staring at the other islands in the lake and watching egrets fly over the water.  Upon being deposited on the island I began to tiring task of climbing the several hundred stairs that led to the top of the island.  Everywhere I walked there were buildings, crammed together and seemingly stacked on top of each other on the steep sides of the island.  I took my time getting to the top, and when I did I found, in addition to the statue of Morales, gardens, fountains and several restaurants.  After a brief breather, I went into the statue, ready to take on more stairs.

The staircase that takes you to the top of the statue of Morales is a long spiral.  Along the walls of the spiral are murals, each depicting different scenes that tell the story of the revolution.  Unfamiliar with Mexican history, I noted that there were also descriptions under each painting, however, I was unwilling to hold up other tourists in an attempt to read each one of the several dozen captions in Spanish, so I didn't leave with that much more knowledge than I entered with.  

The very top of the staircase leads you into Morale's upstretched hand.  From there there is an almost 360 degree view of the lake and valley that is nothing short of breathtaking.  The wind that whips around the top of the statue is nearly clothing taking, and it tried to snatch the scarf off of my head as I crossed from the oustretched arm to Morale's head.  Inside there were artifacts from the building of the statue (begun in the 1930s), which included what appeared to be a brass door with a woman sculpted into it.  Curiosity sated, I made my way back down the statue to reward myself for my climb with a meal at one of the restaurants, all of which had equally amazing views.  I tried the local dish, the white fish caught by the fishermen in their butterfly nets, and found it to be delicious, which isn't saying too much since I've found most things I've eaten in Mexico to be delicious.  Atfer I finished I had to hightail it back to the bottom of the island, as the ferries only ran until 6.  My time limit didn't stop me from dallying the small cemetery for a moment, marigolds still adorned most of the graves and the gates.

The ride back on the ferry was one of those moments that didn't seem real.  As the ship cut through the water, the sun set over the mountains in the distance, turning the sky various shades of red, orange, pink, and gold.  I found myself staring at the clouds, the multi-colored sky, listening to the sound of the low seated ferry cutting through the water, amazed that the world could be so simply beautiful.  Sure, the statue of Morales had been impressive, but it was the sunset over the lake, a nature-made spectacle, that stole my heart and had me marveling at the world.  It was no wonder that ancient people's settled here, and their generations of successors continued to occupy and care for this land.  It's loveliness was undeniable, and I was somewhat resentful I had to leave so soon, but I had to get on the road again.  As the ferry pulled up to the dock, which looked just as magical as the sunset, little gold lights everywhere as the last of daylight faded away, I said a quiet thanks to those who had steered me toward Michoacan in general and Patzcuaro specifically, for each day had filled me with wonder and had me eagerly looking forward to visiting again, but with better Spanish next time.

Photos: 1. The cemetery at Tzintzuntzan with the pyramids on the hill behind it 2, 3, 4 5. Purepecha pyramids 6. Outer casing on the pyramids, pieces of this were taken to make the monastery  7. Aerial view of the pyramids 8. The island of Janitzio 9. Stairs to the top 10. The bell tower of Janitzio 11. Statue of Morales and my grumpy sun face 12, 13. Staircase and murals inside Morales statue 14. The view from between Morale’s head and fist 15. Cemetery on Janitzio 16. The view from the restaurant where I ate lunch near the Morales statue 17. Boats at dock as I returned to the mainland

#tzintzuntzan purepecha pyramids patzcuaro lakepatzcuaro janitzio mexico

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Dia de los Muertos Part II: Day of the Dead

I woke up on November 2nd at the vacation home of my friend’s family in Tzintzuntzan where I was treated to a full breakfast on the outside porch.  As I ate and attempted to speak in my limited Spanish, the fog slowly burned off the lake, revealing a beautiful view of the water and mountains surrounding Lake Patzcuaro.  Fed and caffeinated, I set out for the cemetery in Tzintzuntzan to get a better look at the ofrendas in the daylight and experience some of the day's celebrations.  The streets of Tzintzuntzan were packed with revelers and vendors still, though the mood was not as high spirited as the night before (perhaps because the burning Mexican sun sapped one's energy faster than the chill breeze off the lake could revive one).  The walk to the cemetery was a warm one, and took awhile as I stopped to consider vendors wares and contemplate a midday Michelada.  It was while I was debating the value of some early drinking that I noticed a door that escaped my attention the night before.  I ducked into it to find myself in a vast courtyard, with a straight stone path that led to a large church.

I had stumbled into the monastery complex of the monastery of San Francisco.  Founded in 1530, the monastery contains two churches, the Church of San Francisco and the Church of La Soledad.  Assembly of the church began in the 1500s, and many parts were built from stones taken from the nearby Purepecha-built pyramids (called Yucatan).  I did not know this until after I did some research on the site later in the evening, but I did notice that there appeared to be stones in some of the walls that had very unusual carvings for a Catholic site, so I wasn't surprised when I learned they came from the Yucatan.  Construction continued into the 1600s, and this is when several frescoes were painted on the walls of the church, many of which have been restored recently.  In the courtyard of the church are olive trees that are over 400 years old, having been planted around the time of the church's founding.  Overall, I found the site to be beautiful, but a bit saddening, as I know that most structures were created at the expense of the tribes that once occupied the lands the churches are built on (in some places in Mexico, cathedrals were built right on top of pyramids and other Native's holy sites).  

After my meander around the monastery, I continued on to the cemetery. When I finally reached it I found it still bustling with activity, but the tone was different. The night before a live mariachi band was being amplified over a sound system set in the center of the cemetery section closest to the church (the cemetery extends on either side of the main road through Tzintzuntzan).  This morning there were singers instead, and their voices rang out, in chorus or as solos, in all corners of the cemetery.  I can only surmise the meanings of the songs, as my Spanish is basic at best, but they seemed much more solemn than the raucous music playing the night before.  As I made my way between offrendas, rows of marigolds and candles, dodging excited children and exhausted adults, who stood watch the entire night, I reflected on those who were no longer with us.  Seeing the cemetery in the daytime was a different experience, in the sunlight I could clearly see the photos of loved ones, clearly make out the offerings and read the names on the graves.  This was a celebration, but it was also a remembrance, and it would serve me well to remember that.

I spent perhaps an hour making my way around the cemetery before I decided to move onto Patzcuaro again.  On the way there I saw a sign signifying there were pyramids nearby, so I took a detour to the town of Ihautzio.  On a hill above the town there were two pyramids, also built by the Purepecha.  Ihautztio was actually one of the three Purepecha strongholds surrounding Lake Patzcuaro.  The site at Ihautzio has yet to be fully excavated, though, so very little is open to the public.  I glanced over the two pyramids I did have access to and then was on my way again.

The street festival was still going on at the same speed as the day before, and live performances were still happening on the main stage of the square.  The market, stretching around the square and full of all sorts of art and crafts pertaining to Dia de los Muertos and the arts of Michoacan was as busy as ever.  I had only wandered through the day before, glancing at the different offerings, but today I was determined to spend some money on the beautiful and strange (to me) works of art I had surveyed the day before.  I was quite taken with all the La Catrina figurines, as well as the beautiful embroidered clothing, woven bags, dresses and carpets, the finely painted and gold lacquered items (combs, mirrors, picture frames, tiny crucifixes...the list goes on), beautiful pottery, and especially the Diablitos.  Diablitos are curious little sculptures of painted clay, depicting devils, disasters, crude, crass, strange, and scary beings and scenes.  They were invented in the town of Ocumichu, Michoacan by Marcelino Vincente in the 1960s.  He taught other friends and townspeople the art of creating Diablitos and they continued the tradition after his death.  Their popularity spread far and wide in Michoacan, and now you can find them everywhere, each one unique and a product of the imagination of their sculptor. I picked up a tiny, purple dress wearing, skeleton with wings to carry with me on my travels.

I decided that I wanted to take a break from the festival and set out to find a place that I'd just found mention of in one blog about Patzcuaro's Dia de los Muertos celebrations.  According to one blog, there was temple to Santa Muerte located 4-5 miles outside of Patzcuaro.  When I typed in the name of Santa Muerte into my maps, nothing showed up, and a brief internet search found little information on the place.  With a rough idea of where I was going, I got in my car and headed to Santa Ana Chapitiro, the town that supposedly housed the temple.  Now, it's not surprising that the temple would be difficult to find information on.  Santa Muerte is not looked kindly upon by the Catholic church.  She is not an official saint, and, in fact, the church forbids her worship.  Santa Muerte is depicted as a female skeleton, in robes, carrying a scythe in one hand and a globe in the other.  Worship of her is considered to be a continuation of the worship of the Aztec goddess of death, combined with the saint worship of the Catholic church.  Worship of Santa Muerte has been going on in Mexico for centuries, though it was mostly underground until very recently.  In the 1900s here followers started to come forward more, and after a shrine to her was erected in Mexico City in 2001, her popularity skyrocketed.  It's easy to see why she would be venerated, as she is said to be the protector of "A wide variety of powers, including love, prosperity, good health, fortune, healing, safe passage, protection against witchcraft, against assaults, against gun violence, against violent death. Protection of jobs such as police officers, taxi drivers, bar owners, bicycle messengers; criminal professions including smugglers and drug dealers; homosexuals and transgender people, prostitutes, people in poverty, and other categories of outcasts."

I found the temple dedicated to Santa Muerte about half a block from the main cathedral in Santa Ana Chapitiro.  The building was brightly painted, in rich orange, blue and gold, and a statue of Santa Muerte stood on top of the building.  I entered to find the actual temple space rather small, and several effigies of Santa Muerte behind metal bars. On the walls hung various depictions of Santa Muerte, and prayers of protection and salvation.  I dropped an offering of a few pesos into a box intended for collection, and took some time to sit on the small bench and take in the altar.  Armfuls of marigolds filled two buckets positioned in front of the caged altar.  Behind the metal bars stood a human sized Santa Muerte in a pink, glittery dress, one in more somber robes, a small effigy, about a foot tall, dressed in white, and several pieces of art dedicated to Santa Muerte, as well as many lit candles.  The overall effect of the temple was peaceful, I could hear the caretakers milling about in the rooms behind the main temple room, but no one came in or out while I was there.  After taking a few photos, and attempting to read some of the prayers on the wall, I took my leave of the Temple of Santa Muerte.

I went back to Patzcuaro to catch the end of the festivities, which included some traditional music and dances from descendents of the tribes that inhabited the Patzcuaro Lake region before the arrival of the Spanish.  After one last wander through the marketplace to look over the beautiful artistry I began to give in to the exhaustion that was causing my shoulders to slump and my eyelids to droop.  I found my car and steered back toward Tzintzuntzan where a bed was waiting for me.  I had the house to myself, my friend's family had departed that morning, and the building seemed way too big with only my presence to fill it.  "What a lovely place to get murdered by a serial killer" my brain whispered as I let myself in.  "Shut up" I replied to myself, turning on some likes and forcing myself to look out the windows at the vast, empty backyard.  There was nothing there, of course, but after two days spent closer to the afterlife than usual, you couldn't blame me for being a little bit jumpy. Photos: 1. The view of Lake Patzcuaro from my friend’s family’s house 2 and 3. The monastery of San Francisco 4. An arch of the monastery decorated with marigolds 5. Tzintzuntzan cemetery during the day 6. No grave goes unnoticed, this one barely had a marker 7. La Caterina figurines 8. Diablitos on a bus going to hell 9. The temple of Santa Muerte 10 and 11. Inside the temple of Santa Muerte

#diadelosmuertos patzcuaro tzintzuntzan michoacan mexico dayofthedead lakepatzcuaro santamuerte