XALAPA - DE DONDE VIENEN LAS XALAPENAS

Wednesday, Aurora and I arrived here in Xalapa (pronounced ha-la-pa -- like the ha-la-pain-ya pepper) which is the capital city of the state of Vera Cruz. Aurora invited me to come here with her to a conference of women from all over Mexico - and one from Costa Rica, her friend Fresia - who produce radio programs promoting freedom from violence toward women. I will be taking photos of each woman (there will be about 30, I believe) and photos of their activities, etc. Each woman will privately write a sentence or two about the moment she remembers having claimed her own power. Then Aurora and Fresia will compile a collection of photos matched with the corresponding quotes for each woman to take home.... along with the recordings they have made. Sounds like a really nice project and a great opportunity for me to have lots of practice with making good portraits.

Today, while Aurora and others worked to plan the conference, I went to the Museo de Antropologia which is the second largest in Mexico -- the largest being, of course, the one in Mexico City. This one is indeed smaller, but had really impressive exhibits -- the most impressive being the gigantic Olmec heads. Vera Cruz was the place where the Olmec civilization flourished way before the Mayans and Aztecs, but many things that we think of as having been Mayan or Aztec actually have their roots in the Olmec culture. It is truly amazing the see the things that have been recovered and preserved.

When I rejoined the women who had been working hard all morning, we drove to a village outside of the city called Xico. (All of these "x" words have their roots in the indigenous Nahuatl language.) Our destination was a restaurant called El Campanario. We ordered about 5 different platos and shared everything: Enchiladas en Pepian, Pollo en Mole con Tamales, Trucha con Huitlacoche, Langoustinos en Mojo de Ajo, and Arroz con Platinos. Each dish was very different and very delicious. We agreed that Mexican cuisine is truly one of the great cuisines of the world -- very complex flavors using many different kinds of ingredients combined in amazing ways. I think it was one of the best meals I've had in Mexico. For dessert I had crepas with cajeta y nuez.

Needless to say, I could hardly move after this meal and carried some huitlacoche back on my blouse...... but it was muy vale la pena!!

EXPOSICION EN EL CUADRO ROJO

Monday evening, the 19th, I had a lovely little "inauguracion" or opening at a little cafe in El Pueblito which one of Kikey's new favorites. Kikey had arranged for the owner, Veronica, to hang my black and white portrait series, and the inauguracion was my "despedirme" or "goodbye" to all my friends in Queretaro.

The back story is that back in November, I had taken some of these photos to the director of El Museo de la Ciudad, Gabriel Horner, and he had agreed to give me space to hang my work in March. He said he would email me with information about when, what he needed in advance, etc. But I never heard from him, and when I send him an email, he never answered. So I decided not to pursue that any more aggressively.

I actually much prefer the Cuadro Rojo setting as it is much more personal. The only people I really cared about seeing my work are my friends and their friends anyway. So I arranged for Veronica to provide some panninis and botanos and refrescos, and I think everyone had a lovely time. Herminia bought one of my photos (the one of the Somali refugee woman), and a reporter from La Prensa interviewed me (in spanish) and took pictures. It will be fun to see if something actually appears in the newspaper!

Thanks to all my friends - Sylvia,Herminia, Marco, Juan, Lucy, Santiago, Carla, Sophia, Francisco, Guadalupe, Laura and especially Kikey, Aurora and Javier for helping to make this evening such a nice event!!!

MI FUENTE HA REGRESADO -- MEJOR QUE ANTES

My fountain in front of Santa Rosa has returned, and it's better than ever!!! This is the fountain in the little plaza a block from my house where I went almost every afternoon at about 6:00 when I first got here to listen to the music and watch the fountain dance. This is the one where I took Marty and Bill when they visited in October, and we waited for the music but it never came. It started again before Christmas, but when I got back from the beach in February not only was the music not working, but also the fountain wasn't working.

The whole month of February when Kay was here studying it didn't work. And when Lynne and David came, it still wasn't working. When Carolina (aka Carolyn in the US) was here last week, still no fountain, no music. A couple of days ago, I happened to walk through the plaza on my way somewhere (having given up on the fountain ever working again), and noticed that the two end parts of the fountain were fountaining. Wow -- hope. Then today I went to the Queretaro Language School to hear Jaymie and Mike do a presentation at the end of their course here, and they told me that they had been to the plaza last night and there was music and fountains and everything!!

So tonight after a lovely 2 hour siesta (which is why I'm still awake at 10:15 writing) I took myself over to Santa Rosa just in time to hear my favorite piece: Con te Partiro (Time to Say Goodbye) by Andrea Bocelli. This was just the beginning of a program of different music with dancing fountains and a light show that lasted about 20 minutes. There were several more programs of music during the evening ranging from opera (Nessun Dorme) to classical guitar to mariache to modern pop.

So I stuck around for the evening, visited a couple of puestos and ate a tamal and a huarache. Usually there aren't these little puestos at the plaza, but this is Semana Santa and there are food puestos all over town -- little temporary stands selling all kinds of great street food. I assume everyone knows what a tamal is (singular for tamales). A huarache is actually a kind of Mexican shoe made of woven leather. But a edible huarache is like a thick tortilla shaped like a shoe and grilled on a comal with frijoles, cheese and chorizo and salsa verde on it. Mmmm.

After that I needed a couple of cold ones, so I found a table at a little cafe on the plaza and enjoyed the show while sipping Negro Modelo. My waiter was a 13 year old boy named Benjamin who preferred to speak English with me probably because my espanol is so awful. Turns out he lived with his family in Indiana for 9 years from the time he was about 4. He said his father worked for a company that made systems for painting new cars, or something like that. Then I realized that it was his mother and father who were also working in the cafe. My guess is they worked in the US for a while, saved some money and started this very nice little business in Queretaro. It's also my guess that they were in the US legally because I can't imagine a family risking an illegal border crossing with a 4 year old. But these are just wild guesses and assumptions. Maybe I will visit their cafe more often and ask them their story.

For me this was a quintessential Queretaro evening: beautiful music playing, fountains dancing, a Spanish colonial church in the background, families strolling around the plaza, children running and laughing and playing with balloons, and venders selling great Mexican antojitos. Before I left to wander home, I treated myself to some cotton candy (no one here to roll their eyes at me).

I made a little video of the fountains with my Canon Elf which I will try to download to iMovie and post tomorrow. I say tomorrow because tonight I don't want to deal with the frustration I know will accompany my trying to do something on the computer I have never done before.

PISA LIGERO Y DEJA NO HUELLA A TRAS DE TI

"Step lightly and leave no trace."

The Mexican government is trying to promote ecotourism so there are various groups which are helping small communities learn to preserve and develop their natural resources. This past weekend I went with a small group from the Queretaro Language School to explore some of these natural treasures in the Biosphere north of Queretaro in the Sierra Gorda. And treasures they are!

Fourteen of us and a pile of camping gear left from the school in a van driven by Andres very early Saturday morning. Don't worry -- I was among the half of the group which had opted to stay in a hotel nearby rather than camp (I missed the full moon and the babbling river, but enjoyed a hot shower and a very warm bed). The road through the Sierra Gorda was an adventure in itself. One hairpin curve after another and few guard rails. We traveled from the semi-desert plateau around Queretaro to, through, and around the mountains to different climate zones and very different vegetation...... from cactus and maguey to conifers and deciduous trees. As we climbed the mountains, we could look out the window and straight down over the edge to very tiny rivers and pueblitos below us. We speculated that many of these little remote settlements had been there since pre-hispanic times. In those days, each little group of families could be self sufficient growing food, hunting for small animals, and carrying water from springs.

Our first stop was Cuatro Palos (4 sticks), the highest village in the state of Queretaro. We walked from there to an even higher point for a great panoramic view.

I was dismayed to discover that even this short walk -- granted it was very steep at first -- was really hard for me. Four weeks of being sick had really taken its toll. But, vale la pena ( it was worth it). Spectacular views and lots of pictures -- I've chosen only my very favorites here.After Cuatro Palos, we went on the Campomento de Pena de Gloria (the campgroup at Pena de Gloria). We were supposed to stop at a roadside taco stand that our guide, Robin, a young guy from Australia, knew about but we missed it, and rather than backtrack decided to make do with lots of snacks. We needed to leave the main road and descend to the valley floor by way of a very rough and even curvier dirt road.... I think we went all of about 5 miles per hour all the way. And it was real thrills when we met a car -- or truck -- coming towards us from the other direction. But we made it and again, vale la pena!

We walked for about an hour along a river which had once been an ancient underground cave. The cave was pushed to the surface eons ago by the earth's movement, but you can still see evidence of old stalagmites and stalagtites on the cliffs rising above the river. It was a stunning walk! We didn't have to do any climbing but we walked over river stones, crossed back and forth on little wooden ladder bridges, and at a particularly narrow and deep part walked on a narrow walkway that had been built into the cliffside. The walk ended at the last remnant of the cave stretching across the river with cascades of water falling through the rocks above.

After returning from the walk, we left half of our hearty camping fellow travelers with their tents and sleeping bags and traveled back up the dirt road (more traffic this time, by the way). Andres took us to a lovely little hotel in the town of Pinal de Amoles where we enjoyed dinner with beer. I tried the local speciaty, cecina -- a sort of beef jerky but better. The "we" was a couple from Amherst, MA, Jaymie and Mike, a couple from LA, Karen and Ray and 2 young women, Jerry and Megan, all studying at the Queretaro Language School.

The next day after Andres picked up the intrepid campers, he picked us up. But we had time to have a leisurely breakfast and visit a little museum of the area that a local doctor had set up temporarily in borrowed space. Very interesting to see lots of photos of the area and people from all the way back to the turn of the century. Our next destination was the Cascades de Chuveje. This was a very easy walk along a beautiful river to the waterfall. We could have been walking through the woods in Vermont -- very green and lush and clear, cold water.

Our last stop before returning to Queretaro was the town of Jalpan which is the site of one of the 5 famous Franciscan monasteries in the Sierra Gorda. It is said the Brother Juniper walked to each of these five places to establish the monasteries.

It was a grand trip and exhausting so I hung out at my house the entire next day without going anywhere or seeing anyone! And now I'm back on board with the blog -- I'll write more next about what's been going on with me for the last 6 weeks.