Like father, like son...

Both Jeremiah and Joseph have decided to stop shaving during our time in Mexico. Oh, and don't feel like you HAVE to comment on this post... : )

Gastronomic Research: Mangoes

I have been conducting daily (often several times a day) experiments since arriving in Mexico.

So far, I have found no evidence that one can eat too many mangoes.

Tree-ripened mangoes are messy, juicy, and delicious - I have collected strong evidence to support this.

As for any evidence of harmful or deleterious effects on body or mind of eating too many mangoes - I have no evidence whatsoever to date.

But please rest assured -- my research continues...

My "ah-ha" moment re: this region's seasonally-dry tropical forest

Toward the end of our family's wild trip up and over the mountains from the Oaxaca Valley to Puerto Escondido several weeks ago, we descended into the foothills of the coastal mountains.


I was expecting tropical forest - lush, verdant, viney, with palms and coconuts, and impenetrable without a machete. But the forests in these foothills look almost dead - whole hillsides brown and leafless. The trees are spaced relatively densely, but with very little understory.

It is open and park-like, but dry, seemingly devoid of life. Not what this traveler from the "Evergreen State" expected. When I asked a local woman riding in the van with us if the forests always looked this way in the spring, she said "si, es normal". 


There are occasional pockets of green - along the arroyos and in the folds between mountains. Or individual trees, standing alone, deep green and healthy. And there are scattered palms - coconuts, for example, that stand alone or in bunches, or on plantations.


So this week (April 22), with the kids in school and Amy studying spanish, I jumped in one of the countless vans that run constantly back and forth along the coastal highway, connecting the scores of pueblos and families and businesses.

Amid stops for people to jump in and out, we passed close-cropped fields, dusty roads and yards, dry wetlands, quiet communities built with mortar and adobe. Scattered bony cattle wandered across dry fields. Pecking chickens and sleeping dogs just beyond reach of the tires. The orange sun peered through the smoky haze.

As we crossed one of many wide, dry arroyos and trickling streams, I suddenly realized we would only see one face of this area during our time here, at the end of the dry season.

The end of May and early June will bring the dependable afternoon rains that have transformed this arid, almost barren forest landscape for so many centuries into the lush, rich tropical forest of my imagination. These deciduous trees will awaken and erupt with new life.

The dry dusty streets and alleys will run muddy. The dry arroyos will be overwhelmed by run-off. It will all start over again, and this will be in many ways a totally different place.

Tepetes -My visit with Oaxaca's traditional rug weavers (Amy)

Back in March, before the rest of the family joined me, I took this incredible tour with En Via, a great organization specializing in micro-finance loans for Oaxacan women. The program requires three women working in partnership to apply for a loan. Each must have a business plan and make a commitment to one another to follow through with required payments.  These interest-free loans start small, but can grow to larger amounts after the first loan has been repaid.  One of the loan requirements: give three tours of their business to En Via travellers.  When one takes a tour, one's dollars go directly towards loans to women in their program.

 

On my tour, I visited two women that made “tepetes” (beautiful, traditional, colorful woven rugs) and another woman who spun and dyed the yarn that are used in tepetes. Their loan provided them the initial money to buy supplies so they could weave their own tepetes and keep all the profit, rather than weave for someone else and be underpaid for their labor.

The town we visited is named Teotitlan and is well-known for its tepetes. They were truly magnificent.  Here are a few photos.

This 6 year-old was born into a family of weavers. He proudly showed us the first rug he ever wove. It was clear he enjoyed being part of the process as he showed us how to grade a local grass for a yarn colorant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the boy's grandfather, showing me his loom.  He was very willing to pose for this picture.  He was a proud man and has been weaving all his life.

I love this photo. Unfortunately I did not get a photo of the woman who was the En Via participant but this is her son and her parents.

This woman lost her husband 3 years ago. The EnVia loan
helped her buy supplies to weave her own tepetes and sell
    them from her house.

She is demonstrating spinning the wool.  She was a truly beautiful woman.

This is a famous Diego Rivera painting.                                                                            Actually - It is a weaving done by the woman's husband in the photo above.  Spectacular!!

A common scene outside the town of Teotitlan: freshly spun and naturally-dyed wool drying in the sun. The dyes originate from minerals, insects, and plants, and have been used for many centuries.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our amazing trip on the Laguna Manialtepec (20 min. west of PE)

Last Sunday afternoon evening, we took a tour to this amazing natural area about 20 minutes west of Puerto Escondido - La Laguna de Manialtepec.This is a large lagoon, surrounded by a red mangrove forest (pretty rare ecosystem), and an extremely productive area for birds and fish. The lagoon is about 14 kilometers in length, and at least a kilometer or so in width. The water now is brackish - somewhere between ocean water and freshwater.

Right now, during the dry season, the lagoon is isolated from the ocean by a narrow sand bar. But during the rainy season starting in June, the rising river breaches the sand barrier, and the ocean and fresh water mixes. Lots of adult fish, including red snapper for example, wait for this breach and swim into the lagoon to reproduce (it is probably a safer place to be a tiny fish than the ocean).

The dry season returns, the lagoon retreats from the ocean, the fish grow big in the lagoon, and then, with the return of the rainy season, millions of fish flood to the sea, while a new population of adults floods into the lagoon to reproduce all over again. Pretty cool, eh?

this is red mangrove seed. it will drop like a
spear into the mud in the lake, and begin to grow.

The lagoon is prized by local commercial fishermen, who have been fishing these waters for centuries. The area is also extremely productive bird habitat. Lots of food (fish). The mangrove forests are virtually impenetrable (and thus safe). On our three hour trip we saw nearly 40 different species of birds. it is home to more than 300 over the course of an average year.

Two interesting highlights.

First, our guide, Evi, grew up on the lagoon, and loves it deeply. He has been working with fishermen, tourism businesses, and local elected leaders to protect the lagoon from development in the immediate area that will begin to unravel this amazing system and its productivity, including facing death threats from angry businessmen who are used to getting their way. He explained how he has been campaigning to protect this area, leading with economic arguments about tourism and fisheries. He was very knowledgeable and a pleasure to talk to.

www.lalo-ecotours.com


Second, after watching the sunset on the beach, we jumped back in the boats to return home. We stopped, however, in the middle of the lagoon, in the pitch-black, to swim among its bioluminescence.

During certain periods of the spring, a type of phytoplankton population explodes that illuminates when agitated. Like stars, it is only visible at night, but it shines extremely brightly, before fading away.

As we skidded across the water in the dark, we could see the illuminated paths of literally thousands and thousands of fish swimming rapidly away from the approaching boat, underscoring once again how productive this area is.

The light in the water was a sort of neon-blue. We stopped the boat and jumped in to swim among it. With every splash, stroke and movement, the water immediately around our bodies - hands, legs faces - glowed like the northern lights. (sorry - cameras could not capture this phenomenon). It was magical. None of us wanted to leave.

But alas, we did. Both kids were asleep in the car ride home within minutes.

For you birders, below is a quick sampling of just a few of the 38 birds that we saw (which included 9 types of herons (!), 2 ibis, parakeets and parrots, the ringed kingfisher...:

great blue heron

tri-colored heron

magnificent frigate birds, roosting for the evening

black hawk

roseate spoonbill

woodstorks - pretty ugly birds really; featherless heads like vultures

tiger heron

cinnamon hummingbird

Photos from Oaxaca & Zaachila (adjacent neighborhood)

So here are a few photos from one of our day trips during our first week in the Oaxaca area. We were invited to join Rocio and her teenage kids Andrea and Israel to visit a town called Zaachila, a little pueblo just outside Oaxaca. Each day, a nearby community holds a really big market where just about everything you can think of gets brought to market by small, individual vendors, and people flock to it for food, textiles, etc. This particular market in Zaachila was known especially for livestock - chickens, pigs, horses, sheep, turkeys - as well lots of the usual staples - fruits, vegetables, meats, breads, tortillas, and so on. It is clearly a big sale day, and a big social event. Thousands of vendors and many more people milling the market and buying things, chatting, bartering, eating....


Immediately below are a few shots of the meat market: one huge building used once a week for selling every kind of meat product that you can imagine, and some that you can't. Our kids were intrigued but more than a little grossed out.

 


After the market, and the sampling various kinds of sweets - baked goods, ice cream, slices of sugar cane, we visited an archeological site right in the middle of town and next to the market. It was not marked in special way, and looked pretty dilapidated from the outside, but inside we met this amazing guide (photo below) - super proud of his heritage, very knowledgeable of this site and many others in the area.


Just in the Oaxaca valley, there are literally hundreds of tombs and ancient sites that have never been excavated, due, I think, to lack of resources and challenging politics. This one was relatively recently explored - in the last 40 years. It was not discovered and plundered by the spaniards when they invaded over 500 years ago. This particular pyramid was built on a high spot, with a commanding view of the valley in 270 degrees. When archeologists excavated it several decades ago, they discovered two tombs with several bodies - three were royalty, and the additional dozen were presumed to be servants that were sacrificed and buried at the same time.


 
 
These are photos from inside one of the tombs. The walls were decorated with magical images. At left is a flying shaman with a turtle shell. There were also, for example, owls (messengers from the next world). The walls of the 1000-year old tomb were totally intact, which is interesting given the amount of seismic activity in this area.

Well, these tombs were full of preserved bodies, pottery, and lots of jewelry made with gold, silver, and precious stones. We only saw photos of these things, because the federal government intervened, took possession of it all, shipped it back to Mexico City, where apparently it is now stored away where nobody can see it.

This is where the politics comes in. The residents of Zaachila took up arms, literally. They viewed these treasures as their own local resources. Authorities brought in the national guard in order to calm everybody down. Apparently the archeologists barely escaped with their lives, and no additional excavations have been attempted. The local community won't allow it, unless they are granted considerable more control over whatever might be discovered.

The reason why this particular tomb doesn't have a full 360 degree view is due to another tomb, immediately adjacent and considerably higher, built later, and probably commanded many more resources to accomplish. This pyramid/tomb could contain similar treasures, and clues to the lives of people before the arrival of the europeans. And, of course, this is just one site, in one community in the very expansive Oaxaca Valley.

Pretty cool. Lots left to learn.

Acc. to Liesl & Jeremiah: My first day at school

Jeremiah: This last week I started school in PE. The first day I wasn't so excited to get up so early since the last week I had been getting up about 9 am.

School had started and I was totally clueless. I knew that there were three kids in my class that that english. When I finally found out who the three were, I felt way more comfortable.

On my second day of school, I had gym class. I was really excited that I got to wear my sporty shorts (instead of the uniform). We played dodgeball with only one ball which was kind of weird to me.

Lunch is one of the weirdest things about the school because one the meals that you can buy is hot dogs. Why it appears weird to me is because we are in Mexico and you are eating hot dogs??? Another thing that is weird to me is that we have to write our own homework (assignments). So we are doing a lot of writing in school and I HATE IT!
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Liesl: On my first day of school, the work was all just a jumble of letters that I had to copy down and bring home to google-translate. But in the following days, I made connections with the words and finally I'm starting to understand la tarea (homework) without using google to translate. The math is also very clear and we use mostly numbers and very few words.

There is an American girl (from NY) who has lived here for 6 years. She is fluent in spanish and translates the work for me, but for the first 2 days, she wasn't there. Some of the other girls helped by saying "copy" or "eat" and on the second day when they were all more comfortable around me, we practiced english (in their case) and spanish (in mine), forming sentences while I showed them cursive.

There is one girl named Brisa who sat next to me at our seats and explained all the work to me. She is really generous and I'm glad that this is the school I am part of because everyone has welcomed me very openly.

WOTD: La tarea: homework.

Our neighborhood in Puerto Escondido

Here are a few shots of our neighborhood, on our way to the kids' school. They are going to school five days a week, arriving at 7:50, and getting picked up at 1:50, en punto!

There is a little bit of everything in our neighborhood: very very simple homes, empty lots, unfinished homes, very nice small finished homes with yards, and a few large, multi-story homes and hotels.

We live outside of the 'center of the action' in Puerto Escondido (which is just fine with us!). PE is, among other things, a Mexican surf town. The center of all that activity, however, is due east of us 10 minutes in a cab. This area has a considerable number of gringos, nightlife, and I am sure that things are more expensive.

We live above some much quieter beaches, and not far from the more traditional center of town that includes a very few restaurants, but lots of tiny shops selling clothes, balls, paper, shoes, whatever. We don't really see many gringos in our part of town.

In the center of all this is a "mercado", a building the size of a city block, housing scores of small stands - fruit, vegetables, meats, breads, etc. We shop here and we ate in this neighborhood last night. Restaurants are very rare. This one had a 6 ft x 10 ft. kitchen. The eating area was open-air and dirt floor. The stove was a 2 ft in diameter heated surface outside of the kitchen. We all ate and drank our fill for about $15. Eating out is kind of a special occasion. Mostly we cook for ourselves in our rental.

The photos that follow are part of the neighborhood adjacent to this local business district. Mostly (but not all) simple homes, lots of flowers, fruiting trees, like mangoes and coconuts, empty lots, iguanas, noisy and colorful birds, and vw bugs - the people's car…

 

 

  

The volkswagons are everywhere, carrying families, tools, surfboards, whatever.

Overgrown empty lots bump up against homes and yards everywhere.

The following shots: a coconut tree - they are everywhere, and a just a few of the

bougainvilleas. They are also everywhere, and come in many colors: white, yellow, pink, red, purple.

 

This is the view out of our backyard - a sprawling dirt lot.