Sunday, September 30, 2012

Day 345: Mezcal and Ruins

Today I went on a tour to explore the surroundings of Oaxaca for a bit. Our first stop was the village of Tule, which claims to have the world's biggest tree, an Ahuehuete (though how they propose to know this is beyond me; they surely didn't look at all the other trees in the world's remote forests?). Anyway, this is the tree in its entirety:

While it isn't very high, its stem is massive, and a sign says it is more than 2000 years old and weighs some 600.000 tons. Standing under its canopy, the view up at the leaves and branches is quite impressive:


The second stop was a small village, Teotitlán del Valle, that is famous for its weavings. They did a short demonstration of the production of wool, its coloring, and the weaving itself - all done manually - but the main purpose seemed to be to get people to buy stuff. The division of labor in this village seemed to be that women make and color the wool, and the men are in charge of weaving. These are some of the looms that have unfinished goods on them:


The next stop was another sales event - but this time I was actually interested in the explanations they were giving before the sales part because they concerned the production process of Mezcal. Like Tequila, Mezcal is made out of a certain type of agave, the maguey. Tequila is made out of the blue agave, and it received its name because it was first produced in a town called Tequila. Since the blue agave doesn't grow in the Oaxaca region, the liquor here is made out of the maguey agave and called Mezcal, but the production process is exactly the same.


Basically, you cut off the leaves of the maguey, cook the trunk, cut it in pieces, grind it a bit, let it ferment, and distill it. Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? ;-) This process being finished, you arrive at white Mezcal. Just like with other liquors, you can then decide to let it sit in a wooden barrel for a couple of years to improve its taste. And then there's something you can do that's kind of special to Mezcal: you can add the Maguey worm to have the Mezcal take on some of its taste. This is what the worm looks like:


Presented with the opportunity, I had to taste the worm, of course. It has an interesting taste, not bad at all, and apparently it is regarded as a delicacy in Mexico. It is not only used in the making of Mezcal, but also in a variety of dishes and sauces.

After the explanations were over, we were invited to taste as many varieties of Mezcal as we wanted. There were three varieties of pure Mezcal with about 40% alcohol: a white one, an 8 year old one, and one with the maguey worm. In addition, there were at least 15 varieties of Mezcal cream, containing something like 15-20% alcohol. The creams were Mezcal-based drinks with some kind of flavor added, for example mocha, pineapple, boiled milk, maracuya, cappucchino, Oaxacan herbs, etc.


All of the variants tasted quite nice; the aged ones were much smoother than the white one, and the creams were nice and sweet. Still, Mezcal wasn't my instant favorite. I felt it didn't taste very strongly at all, rather like wodka or rum - and most certainly nothing like whisky.

The last stop for the day were the ruins of Mitla. After the decline of Monte Albán, Mitla was one of the villages that profited and became more powerful. This also means that the ruins are somewhat newer, dating from some time after 1000 DC. The building on the following picture is the one that is preserved best:


What happened to the other buildings in the complex is that the Spanish, once again up to no good, dismantled the buildings and reused the stones to build the nearby church. Originally, the base of the decorations on the buildings, as well as the walls and floors, were painted red with a color made from iron oxide. At one of the interior passageways, the there was still some of the painting left:


Just imagine how grand the buildings and squares must have looked, all painted bright red, and the decorations standing out in white.


Based on the decoration at the bottom of this picture, the guide tried to sell us the idea that Mesoamerican civilizations had been the first to invent the decimal system (there are ten stripes in each of the batches in the decoration). That was the point at which I decided to stop listening to his rambles, explore on my own and read up the facts on the internet later. Sure, Mesoamericans may well have been one of the civilizations to use the decimal system, but they surely weren't the first ones to do so - that might have been the Egyptians, around 3000 BC.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Day 344: Oaxaca

When I woke up in the morning, still in the night bus from San Cristóbal to Oaxaca, I looked out the window and realized - this was the landscape I had had in my mind for all of Mexico! Not the beaches, not the jungle, but this: cactus-covered hills! So, after two weeks, it seems I have finally arrived in Mexico ;-)


In Oaxaca, I indulged in some of the excellent museums that the city has to offer, among them a museum for contemporary art and a museum for painters from Oaxaca, the Museo de los Pintores Oaxaqueños. The museums were all housed in beautiful old buildings, and some of the exhibitions actually made fantastic use of the architecture, like this one:


On my way to the next museum, I decided to take a quick look into the church of Santo Domingo de Guzmán. The interior decoration is quite stunning: very rich and very golden.


In the former convent attached to Santo Domingo is the Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca, a huge museum explaining the history of all the cultures that at some point in time inhabited the state of Oaxaca, from the earliest settlements to the modern age. Unfortunately, I had no idea that the museum would be this big, so I had to rush through the modern history part to at least catch a glimpse of everything before the museum closed. Being located in the former convent, the rooms that made up the museum were in themselves worth seeing:




In the first part, somewhat unrelated to the rest, there was an exhibition of wooden chests used by Oaxaca's nobility. I love this kind of chest, and probably spent too much time admiring them ;-)


The people living in the region of Oaxaca were no Maya, but Zapotecs and Mixtecs. Many aspects of Monte Alban seemed somewhat similar to the Maya, however, for example the 260-day ritual calendar they used that was composed of 20 signs and 13 numerals.

The main Zapotec settlement was called Monte Albán, but it declined around 900 DC, at roughly the same time that many Mayan citites - Tikal, for example - declined. There is no consensus as to what exactly caused the decline, only a handful of theories: inter-city warfare, over-farming, deforestation, drought. Exactly the same theories that are used to explain the Mayan decline - strange, isn't it?

The museum displayed many of the items found in excavations in Monte Albán - there were tombs there that contained hundreds of burial objects such as this one:


In the 1520s, the city of Oaxaca was founded by the Spanish in the middle of a region with indigenous villages. At the beginning, the population of Oaxaca was ridiculously small compared to the number of indigenous inhabitants in the region. Unfortunately, however, the Spanish had superior arms and armor, and they also had strange big animals that they rode upon - a concept entirely unknown in this part of the world. And so history took its course, the Spanish exploited the indigenous population as best they could, and even today indigenous people are often looked down upon as second-class citizens. It is sad indeed what a few hundred years of European technological advantage bought the world, isn't it?

Day 343: Mayan Medicine

Today I went to visit the museum of Mayan medicine in San Cristóbal. After experiencing the chicken sacrifices in San Juan Chamula yesterday, I wanted to know what else there is to the peculiar Mayan-Christian belief mixture. In the first room, the museum showed a short movie about the work of the partera - the Mayan midwife. To me, the entire process seemed to be very much centered on chickens and eggs. Baby cries? That's because it's possessed by evil spirits! Cleanse the baby with an egg. If it doesn't stop, use a chicken...

There were also some other random bits of information in the video. For example, there are rules about what the new mother can and can't eat after giving birth. Were she to eat avocado, her kid's private parts would get inflamed; but there's no harm in her eating as much maize as she can. Also, after the birth, the placenta is buried in one of two ways - and thus the sex of the next child is determined.

In the next room, there was a re-enaction of a birthing scene; notice how the woman is kneeling in front of her husband, with the midwife working behind her.


Another weird aspect in the film was that they mentioned the use of coca cola in their traditional (!) rituals. What exactly is traditional about coca cola? But as they explained, soft drinks only replaced the sugar cane juice that had been used in earlier times. Still - coca cola? Seriously?

The museum also had an explanation of the different kinds of prayers that are used in various situations, and how many candles of specific colors have to be used for the prayer to succeed. One of them is directed to the maize god and done just before going to work in the maize field. In my opinion, the reason why this prayer helps - it is supposed to keep workers from getting injured while they are waving about with a machete - is that it focuses the workers attention. It gives them a minute or two to concentrate on the task at hand. Surely, if you were to work with a machete and your thoughts were all over the place, there would be a much greater risk of injuries.

Outside, the museum had a great herb garden showing the plants and their useful parts, and explaining the purpose for which they can be used. In the middle of the garden, there was this small building:


The building is called temazcal, and it is something like a Mayan sauna. There is a mythology surrounding the temazcal, of course - you are thought to enter the womb of mother earth and be cleansed in the process - but the effects are pretty much the same as in a sauna, I'd say.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Day 342: San Juan Chamula & Zinacantán


Today I went on a tour to visit two indigenous villages close to San Cristóbal: Zinacantán and San Juan Chamula. The two villages - like other indigenous villages, too, I guess - enjoy a special status in Mexico: despite the constitutionally granted right to travel freely in the country, the villages are allowed to charge an entrance fee to their village. In addition, they have a regulation that allows them to imprison visitors who take pictures inside of their churches - apparently they believe that pictures would take away the soul of god.

Zinacantán is famous for the flowers they cultivate, and so the interior of their church was decorated with thousands of flowers, even though it was just an ordinary day. According to our guide, the decoration multiplies on holidays, when the altar all but disappears in a sea of flowers.

Another peculiarity of Zinacantán's church were many small clay animals standing beneath each of the saint's figures. The guide explained that Zinacantán has several religious authorities called martomos. Regular people can apply to be a martomo, and if they've lived a 'good' life so far, they may be appointed for one year. The martomos - the term means something like caretaker - then have to take care of the decoration of the church, organize holiday celebrations, and erect a small altar in their house. It is considered a great honor, but also means great financial expenses during the year. Now, the martomos are thought to have powerful animal spirits, and in order to make sure the spirits don't turn evil, their clay representation is deposited in the church so that god will watch over it. To give you an impression of the church decoration and the clay figurines, look at the following picture. It shows the altar in a former martomo's house who kept the altar for tourists to look at.


In the same house, we also had breakfast and visited a weaver's shop. The breakfast consisted of fresh tortillas made out of mashed corn instead of industrial corn flour. Just as with homemade vs. supermarket-bought bread, the difference in taste was huge. This is the lady of the house, making the tortillas and baking them over a wood fire:



We filled the hot tortillas with ground pumpkin seeds, cheese, guacamole, green sauce and black beans - very yummy!

After breakfast, we were shown how the local textiles are weaved. Weaving is only one part of the process, however. The weaved goods are then embroidered by hand with intricate and colorful patterns and images. After the demonstration, we tried on the local traditional dress. The couple in our group was given wedding clothes, while the rest of us wore the normal dress for daily use:




Our next stop was San Juan Chamula. There, we only visited the church. This is its beautiful outside - the only part we were allowed to photograph:


In this village, apparently, there was some kind of special celebration going on - notice the decoration saying 'Viva el Señor San Mateo' above the door:


Inside, the church was also beautiful, but at the same time very weird. There were no benches. The sides were lined with statues of saints, each with a table in front that had candles on them - a gesture to thank that particular saint for some miracle or other. On the floor of the church were more candles, hundreds of them. People sat on the floor in front of a group of candles, praying to a specific saint for the removal of a sickness - that's why our guide said the church was basically a big hospital. The amount and colors of the candles varied depending on the gravity of the sickness - and for really grave sicknesses, eggs or chickens were added to the ceremony as sacrifices. As the guide explained, eggs are used for minor stuff; they are waved about in front of the sick person, absorbing the sickness in the process, and then broken to remove the sickness. For major stuff, the same is done with chickens - and this was actually going on in the church while we were there! Quite a few people carried live chickens in a bag into the church, started the candle/prayer ritual, then waved the chicken in front of the sick person and broke the chicken's neck. After the chicken had thrashed around for a while, it died and was stuffed back into the bag.

The chicken or eggs used in this process cannot be eaten afterwards, of course: they are thought to contain the sickness, so consumption would result in the sickness entering the body again. One of the Mexican girls in the group explained to me that for them, the entire ritual is not all that strange. She said that her mum, after visiting the cemetery with her, used to wave an egg in front of her face and body, and then break the egg to remove the negative spirits gathered in the cemetery. According to her, the 'cursed' egg would then look different than a regular, 'clean' egg.


I wonder - does the pope know about chicken sacrifices taking place inside of catholic churches?

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Day 341: Exploring San Cristóbal de las Casas

Today I went  to explore San Cristóbal a little further. My first stop was the cultural center Na Bolom. The house is actually the former home of the archaeologist Frans Blom and his photographer wife which has been turned into a museum displaying all kinds of artifacts from their lives: pottery from an excavation done near San Cristóbal, photographs from the time he spent with the Lacandon people in the Mexican jungle, some religious art, and a collection of jewelry.

One of the most interesting exhibits was a model of a Lacandon god house - the place where all the important Lacandon religious ceremonies are held. The model has been created by Lacandon kids who in the process got to know more about their own culture. Now, it is on display in the museum, allowing a glimpse at a space that is usually very much not open to visitors.



Wandering through the streets of San Cristóbal, I noticed that the city - like so many others founded by the Spanish - is needlessly littered with churches. There was at least one at each and every square, and of course one on each of the hills. I'll admit that the churches in San Cristóbal are very well-maintained and quite beautiful, but still - the sheer amount of churches seems excessive, especially when keeping in mind that they were built as a means to oppress the indigenous population. To give you an impression of the size and magnificence of some of them, here are a few pictures. This, for example, is the cathedral...



... the church of Santa Lucia...


... and, finally, the church of Santo Domingo:

Day 340: To San Cristóbal de las Casas

Last night, I boarded a night bus to San Cristóbal de las Casas. This trip turned out to be the first time in more than eleven months of travel that I experienced a bus having mechanical problems. It being a night bus, I was asleep at the time it happened, of course. It's amazing how you get used to the bus making a certain sound during the journey. I'm almost certain that I woke up because the bus was suddenly going much slower, and thus making a different sound. So that's basically all that happened: the bus couldn't go very fast anymore - if it did, something started to smell. So we had to wait for a while for other buses going the same route to turn up and then change to one of them.

The nightly waiting time pushed my arrival in San Cristóbal de las Casas back by about two hours, so it was already afternoon when we pulled into the bus terminal. My first impression was that the air was finally refreshingly crisp and almost cool. I had really looked forward to that during the past two weeks of stifling heat!

Later, I wandered around town for a bit and ended up walking up one of the hills in San Cristóbal. The view from the top was quite nice, but since half of the sky was clouded and there were telephone and power lines hanging around, the pictures didn't turn out very well.

The church at the top - of course there was a church at the top, Mexico is a catholic country after all - was called Templo de Guadalupe.



On one of the walls inside, there was a black crucified Christ, and the person lying in the sarcophagus below seemed to have dreadlocks. 'Interesting,' was just about all I could think ;-)


Monday, September 24, 2012

Day 339: Uxmal & Kabah


Today I visited two Mayan ruins close to Mérida: Uxmal and Kabah. They were the first Mayan ruins I visited with a guide - and as it turns out, I was right to visit the others unguided. Almost all of the information the guide gave was also available on the explanatory signs scattered throughout the ruins. The rest of the information consisted of stories that, while sounding nice, didn't always represent the current level of knowledge scientists have concluded about the ruins.

In addition, there never seems to be enough time in a tour. Instead of allowing a few minutes here and there to sit and quietly appreciate the view and the new information, the guide hurried on and on - only to include a lunch break that seemed to me about three times as long as would have been necessary. Ah well, I guess such tours are simply tailored to the extroverted half of the population.

The first site we visited was Uxmal, a world heritage site. This is the main building, called the Magician's Pyramid:


It seems that the buildings in Uxmal were rather well-built, with stones cut rectangularly that didn't need mortar to hold together. The guide explained that the builders used some kind of plant fiber as a saw. But since stone, even limestone, is stronger than plant fiber, it must have taken several strands of plant material to cut a single stone - causing a fair bit of deforestation in the process.

There was only one building in Uxmal that was open for climbing. It had just 65 stairs, so the total height must have been something around 20 meters - a lot lower than the 70-meter giant in Tikal. From the top I had a nice overview of the entire site:


Uxmal also had a 'nunnery' - but just like in Chichén Itzá, the buildings were actually used for government and administration. All of the buildings were richly adorned; just look at this detail on one of the buildings:


In addition to the government palace, there was also a huge palace for the governor. According to the guide, the governor didn't walk around the city, he was always carried - doesn't this sound familiar from other societies? What is it about rulers that they become too lazy (or feel too superior) to walk? Anyway, of course the governor's palace had rich decorations, too:


After a too short amount of free time in Uxmal, we went on to the ruins of Kabah, a small site close to Uxmal. A sacbe, or white road, bridged the 18km between Kabah and Uxmal. These roads enabled the Maya to walk between their cities even at night. In Kabah, there was an arch forming the entrance gate to the city:


In the region of Uxmal and Kabah, there are no rivers or lakes, thus making the population entirely dependent on rain water. That's why the Maya built cisterns, exploiting underground caves to serve as rainwater reservoirs. The interesting bit about the cisterns was how the Maya made sure that the water stayed clean and drinkable over the course of several months. They made a paste out of maize, moistened it, and let it stand for a while. What happens when you let wet mashed corn - or corn tortillas, nowadays - stand for a while? Well, it gets covered by a certain kind of fungus. Incidentally, by exactly that kind of fungus that can be used to extract penicillin from. So in essence, the Maya put penicillin into their cisterns to keep the water from getting bad. Fascinating, isn't it? This is the restored above-ground part of one cistern in Kabah:


The facade of the building you can see in the back of the cistern (the building is called Codz Poop, but most certainly not pronounced the English way) is covered with 260 masks of the rain god Chaac, one for each day in the Mayan calendar. As you can see in the picture below, Chaac's noses vary in length, and some even curl upwards again.


On the back side of Codz Poop, there were two statues whose arms protrude from the wall. They might be the reason why Kabah - which means powerful hand - was named like this.


At the parking lot, the guide pointed a huge ceiba tree out to us. To the Maya, the ceiba was quite an important tree: it is thought to stand in the center of the rectangular world, representing the underworld (roots), earth (stem), and heaven (branches). It also has more practical uses: its stem is hollow, so that it can easily be used to make canoes.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Day 338: Still in Mérida

Mérida is a pretty city with many colonial buildings, and so just wandering around in the city is a pleasure. However, the heat and humidity in the city somehow suck up all energy and leave little to spend on exploring. The little exploring that I did - I wanted to visit the museum of anthropology and history - was done in vain, because the museum was undergoing renovation.

Anyway, I got to see some beautiful colonial facades like this one:


In the afternoon, I took a swim in the hostel's pool. The pool turned out to be big enough to get some serious swimming in, and so I converted the leisurely dip into a spontaneous workout. Although I'm in a pretty pitiful shape right now, I loved the workout start to finish. Finally feeling my muscles ache and grow tired again was the sweetest thing I'd felt in a while, and I was totally psyched and jittery the entire evening.

Maybe it's time to adjust my plans according to this experience: if I come back 'home' (wherever that may turn out to be) in the spring next year, I'll have time enough to train and get a few sprint triathlons in next summer...

Day 337: Mérida

After visiting Chichén Itzá yesterday, I took a bus onward to Mérida, and so that's where I woke up this morning. After wandering around for a bit, I ended up visiting the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Ateneo Yucatán (Macay). The museum is free and has many temporary exhibitions, all featuring contemporary, mostly Mexican, artists. The work in this picture was created by a Cuban artist. I loved how it plays with light and shadow.


This was another great piece, playing with different types of marble, and different styles of structuring the surface of the marble. I would have loved to touch it to feel the different textures - but of course that's not something you should do in a museum ;-)


In the afternoon, I met a Mexican in the street who turned out to be part of a research group looking into tourism, or more specifically, the behavior of tourists in Mexico, Guatemala and Cuba. They not only analyze how the tourists behave, but also how tourists perceive their behavior. In a joint group of universities in Mexico, Guatemala and Cuba, they have already conducted about 80.000 interviews with tourists in the past eight years.

The results seem to be sobering: many tourists behave without any kind of respect towards the country they are visiting and the people living there. In addition, many tourists are not even aware of this and express that they are certainly 'better' or more educated than the 'stupid tourists from the US'. According to the researcher, this stereotype of the American tourist seems to be inaccurate: tourists from quite a few other countries behave in exactly the same way, but somehow feel superior and use the stereotype to justify their own behavior.

They also looked at how tourists spend their time while traveling. Apparently, in between partying, reading travel guides, and hanging out in the hostel, many don't really spend much time experiencing the country they are in. Ah well - I had already observed all of this during my trip, but hearing it confirmed by research is quite another thing.

Next to a big report, the researchers also aim to create the first Latin American travel guide - created exclusively by Latin Americans. I'd definitely be curious to see this travel guide!

On my way back to the hostel in the evening, I passed by the Cathedral of Yucatan, the oldest cathedral in continental Latin America (only the one in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic is older). Its nighttime illumination was beautiful:

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Day 336: Chichén Itzá

Today I fulfilled myself another computer-game-induced dream: visiting the Maya ruins of Chichén Itzá. This view is the image I remembered from playing Civilization - and it looks just like that in reality, too :-)


The pyramid is called El Castillo, or temple of Kukulcán, with Kukulcán being the Maya's feathered serpent god. Interestingly enough, the temple you can see today has been built over another temple that is now hidden inside the pyramid - but unfortunately visitors are not allowed to access it anymore.


The picture above shows the restored side of the temple; on the other two sides and the structure on top, restoration work is in progress. This is what it looked like when I visited - quite a difference to the restored sides, isn't it?


Chichén Itzá is the Maya site that receives the most visitors - there are estimates of 1.2 million visitors per day, which breaks down to more than 3.000 per day. Luckily, September being the low season, there certainly were fewer visitors there today. However, the amount of visitors makes it a profitable site for souvenir vendors, and so all the paths in Chichén Itzá are lined with souvenir vendors. While I understand that they are just trying to make a living, I felt that they were a particularly obnoxious bunch: always walking up to people and offering stuff for 'one dollar' or 'only ten pesos', regardless of the real price for their stuff. When people fall for them, they quickly adjust the price to press as much money as possible from the tourists. I got really tired of saying 'no gracias' about a thousand times that day.


The temple of Kukulcán isn't the only building worth seeing in Chichén Itzá, though: the site is rather large and has many other ruins. This, for example, is a richly adorned building in the nunnery complex. Don't let the name fool you - the buildings almost certainly did not serve as a nunnery. They were given the name by the Spanish because the layout of the buildings resembled European nunneries.


Notice that El Castillo and the nunnery buildings have totally different architectural styles. The nunnery was built in the Puuc style, and El Castillo is said to have been influenced by Toltec architecture. Wikipedia doesn't seem to be so sure how the Toltec influences came to be there; the theories range from military conquest in either direction to loose relationships of some kind.

The courtyard of 1000 columns is another part of Chichén Itzá. Back in the day, these probably sustained a big roof. They sure needed lots of columns to create a big room like that! At another building, the Mayan advancement in construction technology was clearly evident: the columns there were much higher, and there were significantly fewer of them.



This next temple is called the ossuary, or temple of the high priest. The serpents decorating the staircase are presumably another reference to Kukulcán.



Chichén Itzá also had a building that is thought to have been an observatory:


And, finally, here's another look at the temple of Kukulcán - it's just too beautiful and perfect to close this post with any other picture ;-)

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Day 335: Diving in Cozumel

The reason I came to Playa del Carmen in the first place was the great diving to be had near the island of Cozumel, half an hour by ferry from Playa del Carmen. Initially I had thought that there would be dive boats leaving from Playa del Carmen to dive at Cozumel, but I was wrong: the one dive shop I checked out yesterday recommended that I just take an early ferry to Cozumel and arrange the dive over there. So that's what brought me to the Playa del Carmen pier between 7 and 8 this morning. At this hour, the beach was still nice and peaceful - the party crowd doesn't wake up that early ;-)


In Cozumel, I headed to one of the dive shops recommended in my guide book, and as it turned out they had a boat leaving within the next thirty minutes. Perfect timing! The first dive took us to Palancar Gardens, reportedly one of the best sites around Cozumel. The dive was spectacular, with plenty of colorful tropical fish. The main attraction, however, was the coral reef itself, full of strangely shaped coral and plants, with small caverns to swim through and lobsters lurking under coral shelves. To top it off, we saw five blacktip reef sharks toward the end of the dive.

The second dive at the Tormentos reef was a little less spectacular, but still beautiful. Since it was a drift dive, it was also a perfect dive for lazy people: nothing more to do than drifting along with the current and enjoying the underwater movie playing right in front of your eyes.

On our way back to the shore, I noticed the gorgeous blue color of the sea. I was suddenly not sure if I'd ever seen an ocean take on exactly this lovely shade of blue. I know I say this every time I see an ocean look pretty, but isn't this just the perfect color?