We are back in Mexico City after half a week away. On Wednesday we fly back to the States. Meanwhile, here are a few Mexico tidbits on a borrowed computer (thanks Linda!):
Smallish white poodles are 10 to a block around here (the Escandon neighborhood of Mexico City), falling on a scale of cleanliness anywhere from Brightly Fluffy to Crusty Mud Dreads. This morning we came across one with small pink bow hair clips fastened to its ears, and Val noticed that by god its toenails were painted a matching pearlescent pink. We got a good look because it was crouched in one spot, busily eating dog poop off the sidewalk. No humans observed in attendance.
My favorite candy bar so far is one called Deditos de Carlos V, which more or less translates as: "Cute little fingers of Charles the Fifth." It consists of narrow chocolate-dipped cookie bars.
In the evenings a haunting flutey whistle arises from the dark street seven storeys below. It's the call of the knife-sharpener, letting us know he's in the neighborhood. If I had any knives of my own here I would run down to see what he does. In the Merced market for lunch I had a quesadillota (like a big quesadilla, kind of) filled with squash blossoms and a kind of sweet black fungus that grows on corn. Dad and I saw a gleaming vermillion flycatcher perched on a bush in a backyard field in Cholula.
We spent most of Easter Week in Cholula. Cholula is a town we camped in when I was a kid, built in a wide, fertile valley around the foot of an enormous anomalous hill that turns out to be the biggest pyramid (by volume) in, I believe, the world. The conquistadors, in a successful effort of one-upsmanship, built a pretty gilded church on its top, supplanting the Cholultecans' religious buildings. The pyramid is too large to reasonably excavate -- not to mention much of the town is built on its earth-covered flanks -- but some of its stepped sides, plazas and altars have been exposed and can be toured. Also, in efforts to explore the pyramid's inner, concentric layers, archaeologists have bored more than SEVEN KILOMETERS of tunnels into the "hill"side, and some of these can be visited as well. Then you can climb paths to the church on top for a tremendous view of the surrounding countryside, all the way to the volcanoes (including the legendary Popocatepetl and Ixtacciwatl) bordering the valley.
We visited the museum, we examined the exavations, we climbed a bazillion stairs and admired the gilded church and extravagent view, and then on our way down down down the stairs we passed a vendor, an oldish woman with long braids tied together and an assortment of snacks spread out around her on the cobbled landing. Pistachios; peanuts coated in chili powder; corn nuts; that sort of thing. Val liked the tone of her pitch and detoured over to look. The vendor lifted up each plastic bag with its rolled top, throwing out the names enticingly: Sugared pecans... pistachios... chili nuts... camarones... Camarones caught my ear: it means shrimp. Shrimp? I looked in the bag. Land shrimp, maybe: they were grasshoppers. Beady eyed. Toasted. Red with chili powder. We bought a buck-fifty's worth and brought them back to the hotel where Val offered them to Dad. Without flinching he ate one. (Pronouncing it "not as salty or crunchy as the ones in Oaxaca, which I like better.") We've been carrying them around for days as I try to get myself to eat one, just to know. And to be able to say I did. So far the hand is willing but the mouth stays shut.
10 points and a camaron to those of you who read this far.
Monday, April 9, 2007
Monday, April 2, 2007
Mexico City: The once-floating gardens of Xochimilco
A few more tidbits from Mexico City on Palm Sunday:
At lunch in a tarp-covered cafe Sunday we were approached by a stream of vendors selling the following items draped over their arms or carried in baskets: candy, flowers, pirated CD's, fruit, palm fronds woven into Catholic symbols, necklaces, bracelets, fake mustaches and metallic false eyelashes. I was only tempted by the false eyelashes, and this not because I foresaw a use for the product but because the vendor, a slight man perhaps in his 50's, made his pitch by the simple expedient of wearing three false mustaches at once and blinking at us to display a startling set of enormous, beetle-green eyelashes appended to his eyelids.
This happened in Xochimilco, a neighborhood of small houses set in tangled gardens built upon Aztec-constructed islands divided by lovely, narrow, polluted canals. We hired a flat-bottomed boat with a man to pole it, a canpoy to shade it, and small rush-bottomed chairs to sit upon around a narrow table three boards wide. It was just incredibly pleasant to glide along peering through thickets of undergrowth and crumbling masonry and back gardens and melon vines at the people playing badminton in their yards, and the lazy matted dogs curled up in dirt nests, and one giant birthday party featuring canopy tents and a small inflatable bouncy castle. We also saw one half-grown green heron sidling along the edge of an empty, half-submerged flat boat, and a lot of big shiny grackles.
Once we left the backwater canals of tranquility and entered the main drag we also encountered boat after boat after boat, each painted in gaudy carnival day-glo colors and named after a woman (Lupita, Valeri, Elizabeta). Some were rented, as ours was, by a single group or family for an afternoon's outing (one carried a blue banner saying "Felicitaciones Abuelita Maria" - Congratulations, Grandma Maria); others were collective conveyances with benches along both sides filled with anyone who cared to slide slowly from one end of Xochi to another. (We took a collective boat back from lunch.) Being poled, the boats moved at approximately one-third walking speed. Quite often four or five would knock past each other simultaneously, filling the canal and actually sliding their sides together -- it was advisable to keep elbows in.
The passenger boats were courted by smaller vendors' boats hawking beer and soft drinks (kept cold in small buckets of ice), baskets of roses, woven palm fronds (it being Palm Sunday), wind-up toys, corn on the cob and elote cooked over a brazier of coals in the bottom of the boat, and more. There were also marimba and mariachi boats, and if you decided to hire them their boat would grapple alongside yours and ride along beside you while the band in full regalia stood and played you dancing tunes.
It was all just marvelous, and absolutely worth the hour and a half commute by subway and bus. (The Mexico City subway is clean and pleasant and easy to navigate, and is often the subject of rhapsody by my sister Abby.)
After boating all day, a group of us visited the church back in the part of town that's on solid ground, arriving in time for the Palm Sunday mass. We watched the bells being rung by a man in a suit pulling a very long bell cord, admired the fanciful woven palm leaf offerings one could purchase along the sidewalk out front (in the shape of crucifixes, plaited flowers, tall feathery spires, intricate globes, and more, all giving off a sweet spicy grassy smell), and paid 30 pesos apiece to use the WC outside the church where the two functional toilets were flushed by dunking a bucket in a barrel of water and pouring it down the loo. (We learned long ago to carry hand sanitizer in the backpack.) We then emerged into the street to find ourselves walking into a whirling mass of masked dancers accompanied by a band, dancing down the street in a sort of twirling, weaving procession and led by two women with baskets scattering rose petals in their path. The dancers wore bright costumes, tall fringed hats with insignia ranging from the Virgin of Guadalupe to Micky Mouse, and mesh masks made to look like dark men with pointy beards. There was also a huddled group under an enormous green umbrella in between the dancers and the musicians. A woman in this group held a small wooden casket under her arm, and while she didn't appear to be the nexus of this group I wondered if she might be carrying some sacred icon or relic to the church - I know that's often the reason for a procession on a holy day.
My cousin, who had arrived at 2:30 a.m. the night before from New York, was tired, so we squashed ourselves (and I do mean squashed) into a taxi for the return trip to our apartment, driving by the UNAM (University) on the way which afforded us a glimpse of the buildings covered in murals. (We also saw some Diego Rivera murals downtown at the National Palace and in an old market -- bulging, opinionated, communisit, vivid, amazing scenes.)
Lastly, I think I should mention that on my first day in the apartment I was attacked by a cheese. It was a sharp cheese. Upon being removed from the refrigerator cheese drawer it made a desperate leap from its plastic wrapper and plunged through the air to embed its pointy end in my foot. I was laughed at until (well, to be honest, also after) it was revealed that my toe was actually bleeding from a small indentation.
Happy Passover!
At lunch in a tarp-covered cafe Sunday we were approached by a stream of vendors selling the following items draped over their arms or carried in baskets: candy, flowers, pirated CD's, fruit, palm fronds woven into Catholic symbols, necklaces, bracelets, fake mustaches and metallic false eyelashes. I was only tempted by the false eyelashes, and this not because I foresaw a use for the product but because the vendor, a slight man perhaps in his 50's, made his pitch by the simple expedient of wearing three false mustaches at once and blinking at us to display a startling set of enormous, beetle-green eyelashes appended to his eyelids.
This happened in Xochimilco, a neighborhood of small houses set in tangled gardens built upon Aztec-constructed islands divided by lovely, narrow, polluted canals. We hired a flat-bottomed boat with a man to pole it, a canpoy to shade it, and small rush-bottomed chairs to sit upon around a narrow table three boards wide. It was just incredibly pleasant to glide along peering through thickets of undergrowth and crumbling masonry and back gardens and melon vines at the people playing badminton in their yards, and the lazy matted dogs curled up in dirt nests, and one giant birthday party featuring canopy tents and a small inflatable bouncy castle. We also saw one half-grown green heron sidling along the edge of an empty, half-submerged flat boat, and a lot of big shiny grackles.
Once we left the backwater canals of tranquility and entered the main drag we also encountered boat after boat after boat, each painted in gaudy carnival day-glo colors and named after a woman (Lupita, Valeri, Elizabeta). Some were rented, as ours was, by a single group or family for an afternoon's outing (one carried a blue banner saying "Felicitaciones Abuelita Maria" - Congratulations, Grandma Maria); others were collective conveyances with benches along both sides filled with anyone who cared to slide slowly from one end of Xochi to another. (We took a collective boat back from lunch.) Being poled, the boats moved at approximately one-third walking speed. Quite often four or five would knock past each other simultaneously, filling the canal and actually sliding their sides together -- it was advisable to keep elbows in.
The passenger boats were courted by smaller vendors' boats hawking beer and soft drinks (kept cold in small buckets of ice), baskets of roses, woven palm fronds (it being Palm Sunday), wind-up toys, corn on the cob and elote cooked over a brazier of coals in the bottom of the boat, and more. There were also marimba and mariachi boats, and if you decided to hire them their boat would grapple alongside yours and ride along beside you while the band in full regalia stood and played you dancing tunes.
It was all just marvelous, and absolutely worth the hour and a half commute by subway and bus. (The Mexico City subway is clean and pleasant and easy to navigate, and is often the subject of rhapsody by my sister Abby.)
After boating all day, a group of us visited the church back in the part of town that's on solid ground, arriving in time for the Palm Sunday mass. We watched the bells being rung by a man in a suit pulling a very long bell cord, admired the fanciful woven palm leaf offerings one could purchase along the sidewalk out front (in the shape of crucifixes, plaited flowers, tall feathery spires, intricate globes, and more, all giving off a sweet spicy grassy smell), and paid 30 pesos apiece to use the WC outside the church where the two functional toilets were flushed by dunking a bucket in a barrel of water and pouring it down the loo. (We learned long ago to carry hand sanitizer in the backpack.) We then emerged into the street to find ourselves walking into a whirling mass of masked dancers accompanied by a band, dancing down the street in a sort of twirling, weaving procession and led by two women with baskets scattering rose petals in their path. The dancers wore bright costumes, tall fringed hats with insignia ranging from the Virgin of Guadalupe to Micky Mouse, and mesh masks made to look like dark men with pointy beards. There was also a huddled group under an enormous green umbrella in between the dancers and the musicians. A woman in this group held a small wooden casket under her arm, and while she didn't appear to be the nexus of this group I wondered if she might be carrying some sacred icon or relic to the church - I know that's often the reason for a procession on a holy day.
My cousin, who had arrived at 2:30 a.m. the night before from New York, was tired, so we squashed ourselves (and I do mean squashed) into a taxi for the return trip to our apartment, driving by the UNAM (University) on the way which afforded us a glimpse of the buildings covered in murals. (We also saw some Diego Rivera murals downtown at the National Palace and in an old market -- bulging, opinionated, communisit, vivid, amazing scenes.)
Lastly, I think I should mention that on my first day in the apartment I was attacked by a cheese. It was a sharp cheese. Upon being removed from the refrigerator cheese drawer it made a desperate leap from its plastic wrapper and plunged through the air to embed its pointy end in my foot. I was laughed at until (well, to be honest, also after) it was revealed that my toe was actually bleeding from a small indentation.
Happy Passover!
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Mexico City
It's Day Three in Mexico City.
I'm sitting in my shorts and tank top in Dad and Linda's rented penthouse apartment, listening to the birds chatter among the cactuses on the patio and the traffic surge 7 storeys below. We have just eaten pancakes with cajeta (goat-milk caramel) and fresh mango, and we are awaiting the advent of Uncle John, Aunt Pat, and cousin Victoria so we can embark on a family trip to Xochimilco, the remains of the Aztec floating gardens. Apparently this will mean renting a boat and gliding amongst the other Palm Sunday merrymakers, purchasing ice cream from floating vendors and listening to the strains of passing mariachi bands.
And to think five days ago I was in a staff meeting.
Snapshots so far:
The apartment comes with a housekeeper/maid, Margarita, who takes public transit two hours each way twice a week to tidy the apartment, do the tentants' (our!!) laundry, and arrange things aesthetically as she sees fit, including hiding shoes one may have carelessly left in plain sight. She also brought us a plate of homemade potato patties, something like Mexican knishes, just out of the goodness of her heart (and possibly out of a conviction that we will starve to death from eating weird non-Mexican rabbit food).
Being approached under the purple flowering trees in front of the glorious museum of anthropology by a small flock of English students: "Do you speak English? Is okay talk to us five minutes? To practice English - it is our exam." (Furtive glancing around.) "Over there is the teacher, she keeps big eye on us!" We of course complied and spent a pleasant five minutes answering such probing questions as "What is your favorite color? What is your favorite sport? What is your favorite food in the City? What is your religion?" After each of the five students had earnestly presented a few questions and noted our answers in their notebooks, they presented us with "a small gift for thank you" of tiny wooden tourist spoons and eensy ceramic pots filled with 17 lentils apiece and anointed with an orange sticker proclaiming "Mexico City." The second group of students, who approached us three minutes later, awarded us with large strawberry lollipops. Val and I amused ourselves at intervals in the museum concocting more interesting practice questions: "What is your favorite abstraction? Who was your favorite Marxist? What was your best experience with orthodontia?"
Aha, the family is at the door!
More to come.
I'm sitting in my shorts and tank top in Dad and Linda's rented penthouse apartment, listening to the birds chatter among the cactuses on the patio and the traffic surge 7 storeys below. We have just eaten pancakes with cajeta (goat-milk caramel) and fresh mango, and we are awaiting the advent of Uncle John, Aunt Pat, and cousin Victoria so we can embark on a family trip to Xochimilco, the remains of the Aztec floating gardens. Apparently this will mean renting a boat and gliding amongst the other Palm Sunday merrymakers, purchasing ice cream from floating vendors and listening to the strains of passing mariachi bands.
And to think five days ago I was in a staff meeting.
Snapshots so far:
The apartment comes with a housekeeper/maid, Margarita, who takes public transit two hours each way twice a week to tidy the apartment, do the tentants' (our!!) laundry, and arrange things aesthetically as she sees fit, including hiding shoes one may have carelessly left in plain sight. She also brought us a plate of homemade potato patties, something like Mexican knishes, just out of the goodness of her heart (and possibly out of a conviction that we will starve to death from eating weird non-Mexican rabbit food).
Being approached under the purple flowering trees in front of the glorious museum of anthropology by a small flock of English students: "Do you speak English? Is okay talk to us five minutes? To practice English - it is our exam." (Furtive glancing around.) "Over there is the teacher, she keeps big eye on us!" We of course complied and spent a pleasant five minutes answering such probing questions as "What is your favorite color? What is your favorite sport? What is your favorite food in the City? What is your religion?" After each of the five students had earnestly presented a few questions and noted our answers in their notebooks, they presented us with "a small gift for thank you" of tiny wooden tourist spoons and eensy ceramic pots filled with 17 lentils apiece and anointed with an orange sticker proclaiming "Mexico City." The second group of students, who approached us three minutes later, awarded us with large strawberry lollipops. Val and I amused ourselves at intervals in the museum concocting more interesting practice questions: "What is your favorite abstraction? Who was your favorite Marxist? What was your best experience with orthodontia?"
Aha, the family is at the door!
More to come.
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