Mi Aventura

Suited up for the adventure

Perhaps they shouldn't have sold me the ticket ... perhaps I should have asked more questions when they said the words, "extreme sports," but they did and I didn't so the adventure was on.

I only wanted to swim in a cenote and the salesperson kept saying, “Yes, Yes … swim all you want.” I should have known. So Manuel picked me up at 10ish and it was just Silvia, a Mexican woman from Puebla, and I on our way to Tecoh, a Mayan village about an hour away that has a big cave with nine cenotes … and we would swim in the last one. 

This wasn’t sounding like what I had in mind. But Manuel is an interesting guide and slips back and forth between Spanish for Silvia and English for me pretty well. Silvia’s English is better than my Spanish but we’re both at the pidgin level so it is challenging. Tecoh is a charming village and the cave is on the edge of the village.  There we meet our actual cave guide who doesn’t speak English at all but proceeds to hand me a hard hat, knee pads and a light. 

Tiny stalagmite

I assume this equipment is just for drill forgetting that I am no longer in a litigious country and down here, if they give you something, you better know you’re going to jolly well use it. The mouth of the cave looks pretty harmless and as we drift down into the darkness, there is little to see. Soon, however, we are seeing some stalactites and stalagmites, mainly tiny ones.

Then we arrive at Cenote #1. It is beautiful and I’m ready to get into the water, it is already getting warm, but after a few pictures, we are off to the next one and then the next. It’s a hazard being the tallest person in the group and probably several inches taller than the average visitor. My hard hat is the first thing I feel grateful for (other than the light, of course) since it keeps banging no matter how much I stoop or bend.

Silvia and our guide

We continued in this way through Cenote #6 when it got truly interesting … hands and knees interesting … thank you knee pads! There is something about not knowing where you’re going, not being able to communicate with the person who has your life in his hands, and not knowing if it’s going to get worse and how much longer it’s going to last and how much hotter it’s going to get and if you can even do this and if there’s an alternate way out … and … and …

This part probably only lasted about a half a block … but it was a long half block!

All of this happened at the small Mayan
village of Tecoh ... this is their church.

Finally we reached Cenote #9 … the swimming cenote and as I slipped into the flashlight lit water, it was absolute heaven. Crystal clear water, complete silence, tranquilo y perfecto! For twenty or thirty minutes I forgot about the return trip back to the surface of the world. 

As it turns out, however, knowing how long the tough stuff would last made it not so bad and we were soon on the surface and off to another cenote with a very civilized set of stairs descending into the cenote.

Mayapan ... our own private world
for the afternoon.

The next stop was something I didn’t know we were going to do … and as sometimes happens, it may be the most memorable thing we did.

We stopped at the Mayapan ruins, a smaller site than Chichen Itza with a major difference … and advantage … no people. We had the ruins to ourselves … again the silence and the feeling that we were alone in a lost world.

Mayapan Observatory

Detail

Detail

Dinner at a typical Yucatec restaurant where Silvia knew what to order and here I am … safe, secure and officially an extreme sports enthusiast … a designation that I think I’ll retire on this day. 

A Sobrecama for My Someday Bed

Click here for a quick experience.

I think I read this on Facebook: every time your heart is broken, it has the opportunity to get bigger. This morning I am walking with a cracked heart and everything is getting in ... color, generosity, beauty, friendliness. I am walking on Paseo Montejo, leaking las lágrimas onto the sidewalk.

Huge, wonderful buildings
on both sides of the tree-lined
street.

This is a rich street in both history and money ... monuments, old money, old houses transformed into new hotels, restaurants, museums and some waiting for the inevitable changes to come. Half of the calle has been closed for family Sunday so it is filled with people ... riding bikes, walking their dogs, walking together for the sheer joy of being out on a glorious morning. Above is a 30-second experience of the morning.

I love my new book
which is actually two books in one ...
and their generosity to a stranger.

There are some vendors and artists set up along the street adding color and variety to the day. A school has set up a playground designed to give children a chance to move their bodies so they are hop-scotching, jumping through tires ... Playing. A table of used books attracted me so I asked the young people for what I was looking for ... A book in Spanish that I might be able to read.  They found one and then explained that this was a book exchange.  When I explained that I didn't have a book, they gave it to me. Normally, I'm not sure that such generosity would have brought tears to my eyes, but today it did.

Translation of the fine print below

Further down the way, I found this sign and was preparing to ask the holders why this was the best six months of their lives when I noticed the communication going on between them and a young couple in the street.        

It soon became obvious that the sign was meant for the couple. The young woman was crying.  Soon I was crying again.  I hope my heart is getting bigger ... It certainly is cracked.

The happy couple ... may your joy be eternal.

Fine print on the sign reads: 

       Place me like a seal over your heart, 
       like a seal on your arm;
       for love is as strong as death
          — Song of Songs 8:6

Monument at the end of
Paseo Montejo and a reminder
of the deep history ... and
the deep wound of this land.

This is a land of a thousand pains (as are most lands once you scratch the surface) but Mexico's pain and its strategy for dealing with it  both seem closer to the surface. 

I'm sure it wasn't a logical, well-planned decision but the Mexican way of dealing with pain seems to be celebrating. Celebrating family and life with color, music, togetherness and humor. Even celebrating death with all the same ingredients as they celebrate life.

Color on a restaurant wall -
exterior

Inside a "mall"

Staircase in a hotel

Hotel entrance

Always flowers and color.

And humor ... Sign reads:
I, too, am part of the "new era."
Conserve me!

My new "someday bed" cover

Julio Cham, salesperson
estraordinaire.

A couple of hours later ... There's something to be said about retail therapy … I now have new bedspread to go with a bed I might have sometime in the future … or might not. For now, it will go on my bed in San Cristóbal where I will enjoy it for the next four months. 

In the process of buying it, I met Julio Cham, as charming a sales person as I’ve met. He told me my Spanish was bueno; I knew it was a blatant sales technique but it was fun to hear anyway … and someday it might just be true, just like my someday bed.

Día de los Vivos

Yesterday a friend left the planet, suddenly and unexpectedly, leaving a new, loving relationship, a large, loving family and a lot of bewildered friends and acquaintances who cared about her. What do you do when someone just ups and leaves without saying goodbye or giving any notice of their departure? No illness, no accident to account for their abrupt departure, no note of intention. Just gone.

My friend, who would actually fall into the category of fond acquaintances, was found yesterday morning sitting in her chair, gone. Perhaps a heart attack. She was a lovely, caring and kind woman. If she had known she was going, she would have left a note or reached out to tell someone what was happening. She must have “died peacefully,” but we don’t know. Her loving partner was sleeping and the rest of us were in our own worlds, unaware of what there was no way to be aware of.

What do you do when someone goes away and you know they won’t be back, that you won’t have a chance to say anything that was left unsaid. What do you do with the hole that their going leaves? How do you avoid feeling like swiss cheese in this time of life when more and more people are leaving? 

Somehow, because I’m in a foreign country connected to the rest of my life by only a thin, electronic string, I am feeling lost and alone. I am too far away to huddle with the people who also cared for this woman. While I am staying in a lovely home with kind, caring people, I don’t really know them and they don’t know me. We can’t gather in this hour of loss.

Here in Mexico, preparations are beginning for one of the biggest events of the year: the Day of the Dead which begins this year on Saturday, November 1 and ends on Sunday, November 2. Traditions connected with this holiday (holy day) include building private altars called ofrendas, honoring the deceased using sugar skulls, marigolds, and the favorite foods and beverages of the departed, and visiting graves with these as gifts. 

I believe it is important to remember and honor the dead and every year, the number of people to be honored grows larger. However, I wonder if the additional purpose of this celebration is to honor the living, to reflect on our own lives to make sure that we are living it to the fullest, to make sure we have said what we wanted to say to everyone who is important in our lives?

Perhaps we need to remember and honor the dead but call it the day of the living, a day for righting old wrongs, telling those we love or those who are important to us how we feel. Perhaps it is a day to honor our own lives and the endless connections to others that make up the web of our lives. Perhaps that would be the best way to honor those we’ve lost.

Today, I remember my friend and all her goodness. I grieve the loss for her family and the large circle of friends that held her dear and for myself and the acquaintanceship that never had the opportunity to flourish into friendship. I also give thanks for all the love and friendships that makes my life rich and provides the foundation of my being.

Blogería

When I first began this adventure in San Miguel, I started noticing a lot of words that ended in "-ería.” They were on signs on little stores … tortilleria (tortillas) … lavandería (laundry) … panadería (bakery) and so on. Because I was seeing them everywhere, I started taking pictures of them as I saw more. I now have a collection of 51 and thought I’d share a few of the signs ... some I've figured out ... some I haven't ... and I think some are just made up.

After chasing these signs, I'm thinking about changing the name of this blog to the "Blogería" but I have to come up with a new sign first ... what do you think?

Office Supplies

Jewelry

Ice Cream

I never did figure this one out ...
they "rent" bread?
(Maureen thinks this might mean whole grain.)

Not sure what the difference between a
Farmacia and a Droguería is. Maureen
thinks it might focus on makeup and skin care.
Seems to make sense with Dermatologica behind it.

Seafood Restaurant

Furniture

Peluquería is hairdresser. El gallito is cock.
You figure it out.

Perfume

Millinery

One of my favorites ... this is a
tailor shop ... deep in the background
is a tiny, old Singer.

Chop restaurant I presume.

Dairy

Chickens again ... poultry shop.

Butcher.

Ham + gear? I'm going to have to go into
this place and see what it is.

Herbs ... there were big, open bags of
dried plants in this store ... very few I recognized but
it looked like it would be fun for someone
who knew what they were looking at.

Being Heard

Click here for a few seconds of the demonstration.

I didn’t understand the words nor the history but I could feel the sorrow and anger. Walking through the crowd of maybe a couple of thousand people, my eyes began to leak and my heart felt heavy. 

It was a demonstration complete with hand-marked signs and professional banners, megaphones and chants … a gathering of the hard-core, the wounded, the determined and the merely curious and happenstance, such as myself, a wanderer who happened to converge with reality in the Cathedral square of this small town in the southernmost state of Mexico. 

This is a land of textiles, beautiful and brightly colored hand-woven or hand-stitched clothing and household goods. It is also the land of the Zapatistas, once a fuzzy, political word from a far off place, now a part of the life, the soul, of my vecinos … my neighbors. The name comes from Emiliano Zapata, an agrarian reformer, and most Zapatistas are indigenous Mayans. And, while I thought the “Zapatista uprising” was something that happened years ago, yesterday’s demonstration and my subsequent research reminded me that all is not well in the world, even in this small bit of paradise. 

This is the 20th year of this declared war of the people, a war that has cooled to civil resistance and, perhaps, should not be called a war at all, but rather simply a movement toward a greater good. The roots of this movement go back decades, centuries even, but became public on January 1, 1994, the day the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect. Announcing their intentions from the Lacandon Jungle (the largest area of rainforest in North America, one still large enough to support jaguars), their declaration amounted to a declaration of war on the Mexican government, which they considered so out of touch with the will of the people as to make it illegitimate.

Ayotzinapa is the village where
many students were "disappeared."

It doesn’t take long here in Mexico to see the vast differences in economic well-being among the people. Begging children, the maimed and elderly, as well as peasant women carrying huge burdens of textiles or food stuffs to be sold, routinely wander through the streets, often intruding on a casual visitor’s stroll through the colorful and exotic ways of a new land. One day I literally bumped into a woman from the US who proceeded to complain to me about one of her “pet peeves” of not being able to eat in peace. 

The vendors of textiles and trinkets wander through restaurants and the streets, wherever they might find a customer. It’s how they live and feed their families. And, it is irritating. It is a constant reminder that there is poverty, disease and need among us, a poverty so deep that we can’t possibly fix it and the easiest thing to do is to not see it. It is a constant reminder that a huge part of our own “success,” economically at least, comes not just from our own efforts but also from simply our great good fortune of being born into a country and an economic system that values education and offers a great deal of freedom and stability. 

The difference between me and that woman carrying a mass of shawls that she has woven isn’t that great. Had I been born into that woman’s village, I could be her. Her life is hard, but as I talk to people here and wander through the fiestas that celebrate the lives of the saints and watch the families, it turns me back to the question of what is success?

Honoring the 43 missing students and teachers

And that turns me back to yesterday’s demonstration; people seeking a better life … more access to resources, more control over their own destinies, and in this case their own physical safety. 

One of the most powerful images from yesterday showed school photos of 43 young men arranged on the ground like quilts of “the disappeared.” The claim is that the Mexican government and the drug cartels are in an unholy alliance and that dissident students and teachers are being targeted for their efforts to combat drugs and crime.

It’s hard to know what to do with all of this. I know there is no perfect country, no blameless government, but there is so much charm and beauty and goodwill here, that I’m distressed to see this vein of sorrow, anger and the signs of dysfunction of the government systems. Like that woman I bumped into, I’d rather not see the underbelly of life; however, that doesn’t stop it from being there.

The spokesman for the Zapatistas, Subcomandante Marcos, is quoted in a Wikipedia article as saying:

We don’t want to impose our solutions by force, we want to create a democratic space. We don’t see armed struggle in the classic sense of previous guerrilla wars, that is as the only way and the only all-powerful truth around which everything is organized. In a war, the decisive thing is not the military confrontation but the politics at stake in the confrontation. We didn't go to war to kill or be killed. We went to war in order to be heard.

We went to war in order to be heard. How much of what we do in life is simply an effort to be heard … acknowledged, valued? Much to think about.

Learning to Be an "Accidental"

One of my flash cards ... now
if I just had a printer!

Today I went out to find a “papeleria” … like a doll house version of Staples … I needed more index cards, a yellow highlighter and a ruler. It amuses me that I am making flashcards … and actually studying. Never in the way-too-many years I spent in school did I study like this … and I don’t remember ever really caring whether or not I remembered the material after regurgitating it for the test. 

Learning a foreign language is a whole different learning field for me. No one’s giving me a grade and passing me along to the next classroom. I’m being tested every day … by my actual Spanish teacher, by the signs in the street, the menus on the tables and the kid in the papeleria who couldn’t quite grasp what I wanted when I asked for a gobernante, the word Google Translate told me meant ruler. When that word didn’t work, I tried to pantomime “ruler” … you try … it’s not that easy. Finally, I saw one in a student’s kit on the wall and pointed toward it … “Ahh,” he says, “regla” and brings me one. When you can’t trust Google, who can you trust?

I keep seeing bouquets
of the most unusual combinations.

For years I’ve wanted to learn Spanish and even took the first 2-3 classes of beginning Spanish at least half a dozen times. For some reason I never made it past that first stage. Now, I’m pouring myself into this world where the price of admission is understanding and speaking the language. There are a few English speakers here but almost everyone I deal with doesn’t. It has never been that way in other places I’ve been in Mexico. There I could always muddle through and pay in dollars if needed. Not here. People are friendly and helpful and will put up with a lot of ungraceful hand gestures, but basically most people I meet just don’t speak English.

Last week, I sat in a living room with 5 other women … 2 Americans who speak Spanish, 2 Mayan women for whom Spanish is their second language and a Mexican woman … and one very happy Mexican guy. I want to be able to talk to these people but, right now, I’m only getting about 10% of the conversations and contributing a gibberish that is flying around the room landing almost nowhere. 

I hate to admit it but this state of affairs is after 4 weeks of pretty intense study. I know a lot

Would I learn to play the piano
if I had one painted like this?

of words and can conjugate a bunch of verbs but when I’m with someone, some sort of blockade goes up in my head and disconnects everything, leaving me wordless … in Spanish and English.

My original schedule had me going to Merida next week and then flying home. It has been slowly dawning on me
that the chances of my becoming fluent in Spanish if I leave next week are minimal at best. It could be done. I could continue to study and find people and resources to help me continue to develop proficiency. But, if I stayed here longer, I would be immersed in the language, have fewer distractions and my chances of advancing would be much better.

I don't know if this is my angel,
but she does make me smile.

There is a synchronistic angel who’s been riding on my shoulder since I arrived in this charming town and she was with me today when a new friend started telling me about a woman who wants to rent half a hacienda in the center of town … for 6 - 12 months. My new friend really likes it but doesn’t want to make the time commitment needed to rent it. It’s a beautiful place, owned by a woman poet who does not speak English and it’s within my budget. It looks and sounds perfect and I’m going to meet the woman on Tuesday.

Maybe being an "accidental"
is a good strategy.

I’m reminding myself that I’m not in charge of this … but I do find myself a bit breathless at the thought of spending six months or a year in Mexico. Yesterday I found the tiny flower at the right growing in a gravel walkway. It's not in the "right" place, but it's doing fine. Maybe I should learn from it.

I’ll let you know what happens.

More pics ... 

Ready for the next fiesta.

The mountains around here
remind me of Santa Barbara

But, I don't remember these
colors in Santa Barbara

How can you not love a place
that routinely makes you smile?