Shrines

I decided to take pictures of shrines this trip. Not hard to find. They are in every bus station, most neighborhoods and many houses. This is just a small sample:

Xilitla

So my friend, Tom, and I decided to go on a trip. We both have been wanting to go to Veracruz, so that was our destination. I have been very curious about Las Pozas, a surrealist sculpture garden in the jungle outside of Xilitla (hee leet la), and it was kind of on the way, so we went there first.

It turns out out it required a somewhat circuitous bus route from Guanajauto to Leon to San Luis Potosi to Ciudad Valles to Xilitla. This is the landscape we were driving through in the morning:

And after arriving around 10 at night, this is what we woke up in the next day:

Xilitla is a beautiful little town nestled in jungle hillsides. It was hot and humid, but the green was so welcome to me I didn’t complain too much. We woke up in the wee hours to the Sunday Market being set up right under out window. Tom had dreamt all morning about someone dragging a huge blanket around. You know how much noise those blankets make.

These birds also made their fair share of riotous racket, right outside our windows for much of the night and morning. It was remarkable.

After wandering around town a bit we headed to Las Pozas. It was a couple mile walk out of town.

It was a pretty amazing place, with all of these poured concrete structures inserted into the jungle.

I just kept imagining being there for a fancy cocktail party.

The best part, by far, was a stream and waterfall and pools where you could swim. I ended up swimming in my clothes because I could not have lived with myself had a walked away from such luscious pools.

We trekked back to town, (me all refreshed, and poor Tom, sweating like a horse in all that hot humidity) where it is equally interesting and beautiful.

I have approximately a jillion more pictures, most of which I have put into flikr so I will figure out how to make that public, sometime soon.