Mikko and I arrived home Wednesday night after a mellow day of air travel, with our new six month visas in hand. Maria picked us up from the airport in Leon. She gave us big hugs and told us that we can’t go back to Portland, she will be too sad. It felt like a real homecoming.
Mikko and I were both ecstatic to be back amongst the dogs and roosters, in our own little house and sleeping in our own little beds.
We have mostly just been hanging out with our computers and toys and games.
I would just like to point out that Little Maggie kicked Mr. Burns’ arse!!
We were shocked yesterday afternoon to walk into town and it was packed. It is Semana Santa, the week before Easter and everyone is on vacation, so the town is full of tourists.
This is the first time I have seen papel picado in Guanajuato. I had been told that it creates too much litter and because this an UNESCO site, there are rules against it. I guess Jesus’ rebirth trumps the UNESCO regulations. Right on Jesus!
We were also shocked to find that our favorite little restaurant on the jardin, Pengüis, became a clothing store while we were gone. (Update, it has only moved and is now closer to our house!!) The good news is: a movie theater has just reopened in town, right next to the university, so it is an easy walk from home and back.
The new theater is right around the corner from here.
At around 6:00 we took this bus from los Mochis to the little town that the ferry leaves from. I loved this bus, it was so cozy.
I don’t know why the only ferry was at 11 pm, but it was. The ferry station was a ways away from town or anything else so we just waited out there for hours. There were a lot of others waiting as well, families, college students, and few tourists. It became quite a mob of people by the time the ferry arrived and we loaded.
Everyone immediately staked out places to sleep. There were people under staircases, on the floor in the hallways, on the couches in the bar, and lots of people stretched across the bucket seats. I wish I had gotten more pictures, but it felt invasive, like taking pictures of people in their bedrooms.
We all slept pretty well. I woke up in the wee hours and wandered around on deck. It was surprisingly warm. The air was my new favorite kind of air. It was fresh and wet, in a soft, non cloying way. The air all over Baja is like that. I was digging it.
This pelican greeted us as we disembarked just outside of La Paz. Mikko gives some very edumacational commentary:
The 16 hour bus ride to Chihuahua wasn’t that bad. Even with a flat tire in the middle of the night and despite the fact that a had a full blown fever by the time we arrived in Chihuahua. There were three decent movies, in English. We had good snacks and Mikko and I, anyway, slept pretty well.
We caught the bus to Chihuahua in Leon, the capital of shoes and leather. I so wish I was a cowboy boot wearer.
The driver needed someone in the drivers seat while he changed the tire at 3 in the morning. We all happened to be up, so Mikko took this picture.
Chihuahua is the Yakima valley of Mexico, there are acres and acres of apple trees. The nets are to protect from hail.
We arrived in Chihuahua around noon, I went strait to bed and stayed there in fitfull feverish sleep for the next 16 hours. We got up at about 4:30 the next morning to get to the train station for our next 16 hour adventure.
The train was lovely. The best part being open windows in the vestibules where you could stand and stick your head out and wave at people. Between the fever, which I was able to keep somewhat at bay with Tylonol and a bodacious headache from caffien withdrawal which I never quite got rid of, (even after realizing what was going on and drinking tea and coke,) I was really quite miserable most of the day. I did have moments of happiness though - at the windows. The landscape was stunning.
For those of you who enjoy the moving image and the sounds too, (you just can’t beat the sounds of a train, in my humble opinion):
The one drag of the train (besides my misery,) was the prices . They don’t allow you to bring food on and everything is SUPER expensive 22 pesos (over $2) for a cup of weak black tea, $5 for a deck of cards, ( thank god they had that though,) $2 for a bag of chips…
The bar is pretty classy looking though.
My advice is to either take subtle snacks - or try the second class train, which they say has more delays, but it could be worth it for the freedom of creating your own culinary experience.
The train is an actual commuter train as well with stops all a long the way. There is one main tourist stop, where you can get off the train and see the canyon.
The Tarahumara people live in the area and make amazing baskets from pine needles, and desert plants. It seems that much of their business depends on the daily train coming through, loaded with tour groups.
One more train video:
We arrived in Los Mochis, where we are right now, at 10:30 last night, thinking that we would take a morning ferry to La Paz, on Baja. We found out though that there is only one ferry a day and it is at 11 pm. Our checkout time was noon. Sadness.
Los Mochis is a very strange Mexican town. It was founded in the 20s as a sugar production site, so it doesn’t have any of the the old colonial architecture or layout. It is big boulevards lined with chain stores and palm trees.
It feels like California. We went to a ” sushi” restaurant for lunch. It seemed to just be an excuse to wrap rice and creamcheese together in different combinations. I actually had some excellent chicken soup.
We are spending the afternoon in a mall that Mikko and Matthew found this morning while I stayed in bed until the last possible minute. It is a little slice of youth heaven with a bowling ally, poolhall, arcade, snackbar AND internet. It works well for us. Matthew and Mikko have bowled and are now in the arcade. I have Kleenex in my ears, to protect from all the competing noises, Dance Dance Revolution on one side, poolhall music on the other and the crash of bowling balls and pins behind, and am doing this.
Soonish, I suppose we will get our stuff from the hotel and take a bus the 27 kilometers to the town where the ferry leaves from and hope to find a cozy spot on the beach to wait. Hopefully the Tylonol will continue to keep my fever away (and I remembered to drink some black tea this morning so I don’thave that headache, hallelualuah.)
On Monday we went to Tenacatita. It is a very sleepy little town on a different stretch of beach that is only beachfront palapa restaurants. We had to take a bus that was headed to Puerta Vallarta and get off on the highway. D and L used to come here 14 years ago and they remembered it being a dirt road that we would need to walk on for a few miles to the town. We got off the bus at a big paved intersection with a highway sign pointing to Tenacatita. As we started walking up the big paved expanse, a beautiful sparkly green pickup truck had pulled over to pick up a woman who had also gotten off the bus. The driver whistled and they both waved for us to come and climb into the back. As we rode and rode and rode down the road, we realized how lucky we were, it was a really long way.
Once in town, we walked down to the end of the strip of restaurants to the restaurant of Mosca, a friend of D and L’s. He was there and they had a happy reunion. They went off to find other friends and Matthew, Mikko and I set up for the day under his big covered eating area that was empty because it was Monday. There were hammocks!! (Some of you may know about my love of hammocks.)
It was another beautiful day of lounging, reading and playing in the waves. When D and L got back we went to a little cove at the other end of the beach, called the aquarium and did a little snorkeling. It was pretty cool, but there were a lot of stingrays around and despite my dad’s reassurances that “they won’t bother you if you don’t bother them” it was a little hard to relax and get into the whole experience.
We went back to Mosca’s and had a delicious meal of shrimp and big whole delectable fish - (I could only have quesadillas but had a few bites of the shrimp and fish without breaking into hives, hurrah!) Mosca gave us a ride out to the highway (we saw the shorter dirt road that we had been shooting for,) and we flagged down a bus headed for Barra.
Matthew took this picture and the one of Mikko in the hammock.
Mosca with his fancy van.
Waiting for the bus.
Guided by soccer and Jesus - we made it home to Barra.
We’re nearing the end of our trip - in our favorite hostel in Morelia - and it has wireless !! As it turns out I found it nearly impossible blog in internet cafes.
So Barra:
The first morning it was overcast and misty - we were in heaven.
Mikko’s first sight of the ocean during the day.
The actual beach in Barra is too steep and rough for comfortable frolicking so we found other places to go to swim. Our first day we took a bus to Melaque, the neighboring town.
It is a little bigger than Barra and more of a Mexican working people’s town (though much of that work is tourism.) The beach is lined with palapa restaurants, hotels and beach umbrellas and chairs that you can rent. We got an umbrella and set up camp and then played played played in the waves. The only other time I have played in warm(er) Pacific Coast waves was in San Fransisco after a summer of swimming in Wisconsin lakes. I remember getting very annoyed at the waves persistentness and ended up feeling quite bullied by the whole experience. This was very different. The waves would come in patterns of low ebbs for a while then nice sized body surfing vehicles.
It was a Sunday and the beach was full of Mexican families eating, swimming, basking. playing soccer, building sandcastles - all those things that are done at the beach.
There was a constant stream of vendors selling hammocks, tchotchkies, snacks, shrimp cocktails, jewelry, wooden bowls and spoons, wheelbarrels with big trays piled high with candy. Our favorite was the fruit - mangoes on a stick with chili, salt and lime, or pineapples with the tops cut off and the centers mashed to a pulp to be drunk and spooned out.
Mikko spent 100% of the day in the water or at the water’s edge if no adults were willing to go in with him for a bit. He was in heaven.
His hands at the end of the day.
After hours of play and lying around reading or dozing, we decided to walk back the four miles along the beach to Barra. We walked along the slanted beach watching pelicans dive for their dinner, beautiful bronzed youth boogie boarding and playing soccer. On the left the hotels changed to an RV park full of gringo retirees, to a large swamp for a stretch that had crocodile warning signs, and eventually back to the hotels of Barra. It was hard to walk on the steep sloped beach and the last 20 minutes became a little grueling. I realized that lately the walks I have been taking don’t really feel like a walk until there is a slightly grueling stretch.
That’s Barra way in the distance, to the right.
We got back just in time to watch the sunset with margaritas and big plate of guacamole and another of baked cheese. Oh my god - the heaven we were in.
Is this crazy or what? I actually took this picture - it isn’t a stock photo of “dream vacation spot”. ( And in my other hand is a margarita and in my mouth is guacamole.)
When Shane and Denise were here, we finally did some of the touristy things one is supposed to do while in Guanajuato - not the least of which is THE MUMMY MUSEUM.
I went fully expecting to be entranced and fascinated on some level. I thought maybe I would find some insight into the Mexican perspective on death, see some mystical beauty with deep indigenous roots, that would inspire me to delve deeper and possibly connect to my enchantment with Lucha Libre. But no - it was just a strangely sterile crypt with a bunch of dried up dead bodies lining the walls in glass cases, some with clothes, some without.
Many of them had little stories, on plaques written in first person, of how or when they were exhumed.
It definitely built a good case for cremation.
And is a perfect place to set up tourist stands.
There was also the Salon de Muerto. It was a long, narrow, stone room with glassed in cases built into the walls, containing death stuff - bones, shackles, torture devices… The best part was that they played a version of REM’s “Losing My Religion” sung by Monks. And there was a cool hologram.
A few days later we went to Valenciana, which is a little town just next to Guanajuato, with a lovely church and an ex Hacienda with a basement full of torture devices that you can take a tour of.
Our guide was a girl of about 13, with braces, tennis shoes and a monks robe. She took the group through stopping at each torture device and reciting how it was used.
It was surprisingly similar to the mummy museum, but they had a far superior hologram collection.
We walked up the road to the church after that and looked around. Crazy ornate gold stuff, everywhere. There was also a little room dedicated to Jesus.
Poor Jesus.
Right before Shane and Denise left we went to the Diego Rivera Museum (he was born here.) There were some beautiful paintings and interesting information about his life. No holograms though - we considered asking for our money back.
