Semana Santa Vacations

With the combination of vacation days for Benito Juarez´s birthday and Holy Week for Easter, I got some time off work to travel. My mom and sister were here visiting so we headed down to Oaxaca, the capital of the state of Oaxaca. Oaxaca is a colonial city with a high level of indigenous influence and is known as the center of indigenous handicrafts in Mexico. Saturday we spent walking around the city doing the normal museums, botanic gardens, markets, and art galleries. Oaxaca is also known for their food which includes a couple different types of moles and a thing called a tlayuda which is basically a tortilla larger than a plate stuffed with any number of things from meats to cheese to veggies.

Sunday we headed for the towns of Tule, Zaachila, and Cuilpan. Tule has a very large tree (some claim it to be the largest tree in biomass in the world, but that has been proven to be false). Either way though, it is a really really big tree that is more than 14 meters in diameter and 636,107 tons.

After the big tree we caught a colectivo (or a communal taxi) to the town of Zaachila. Zaachila has a set of very small ruins, but you can actually go down into a tomb and see the sculptures of 2 vultures, a witch, and 2 kings on the walls of the tombs. Evidently there was a lot of gold and artifacts, but as with most ruins in Mexico, all the treasure ends up in Mexico City.

From Zaachila we headed to Cuilapan to see a monastery that was built in 1560, but never completed, leaving the impressive arches on the interior open to the sky since the roof was never built. Connected to this “building” was another large church which is also the site where Gurerro was executed.

Monday night we returned to Puebla and very early on Tuesday morning left for a day trip to Mexico City (more commonly referred to as DF or Distrito Federal). We visited the national palace (impressive murals inside, some done by Diego Rivera), the huge church on the zocalo, the old post office, the palace of the arts (also a site with some Diego murals including a replica of the one that was commissioned by Rockafeller in NYC, but destroyed for being to communistic), and a museum that houses one of Diego´s most famous murals: Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park (the museum was actually built just to house the mural after the original building was destroyed). We also managed to get slightly caught in the middle of a large demonstration in the zocalo over the privatization of petroleum that made the front page of the paper the next day.

Wedensday, we went to Cholula, a small town just east of Puebla that is known for its churches and is home to the world´s largest pyramid. However, by now the pyramid kinda just looks like a big grassy hill and the missionaries even mistakenly (?) built a church on top of it. However, there are a series of ruins that have been excavated and you can walk through some of the tunnels inside the pyramid.

Thursday was more ruins in Teotihuacan, about an hour north of Mexico City, and some of the largest in Mexico. The city covered more than 83 km2. The largest of the pyramids is called Pyramid of the Sun and is over 75 meters tall, making it the 3rd largest in the world (behind the one from the pervious day at Cholula and the Great Pyramid in Egypt). There is still debate as to who exactly built Teotihuacan, but it is believed to have been the Toltec or the Totonac. The name Teotihuacan was later given by the Aztecs.

That pretty much sums up the traveling over the break. The rest of it was spent in Puebla doing some important things like finally attaching my stove so that there is no gas leaking, watching the Good Friday procession, and trying to watch some Mexican wrestling.

My Mexican Apartment

I finally moved into an apartment on the 15th of Feb and it is slowly starting to look inhabited. I successfully hooked up my gas tank so there’s hot water, got a fridge, have a stove (still trying to figure out what is wrong with the gas line, so that isn’t quite functioning yet) and most of the time there is water and electricity. I’m in the process of attempting to construct all non-weight bearing furniture from fruit crates, so we’ll see how long before all that falls apart. So here’s some picts from the first night of the very empty apartment and then what it looks like now. It’s funny to move into a place with 2 bags of clothes and nothing else. My place is huge and different from what I originally wanted (was looking for something a little more historic), but it has great views from the room of the apartment building of 2 volcanoes and there is plenty of room for whoever wants to come visit!

Before…..

After….(but still a work in progress)

Monarch Butterflies

This weekend (and yes I do work during the week) I went to see the winter home for the monarch butterflies in the Monarch Reserve in the state of Michoacán (part is also in the state of Mexico). The theme of this weekend was different modes of transport. I started off Saturday morning on a city bus to Puebla’s bus station, followed by a long distance bus to one of Mexico City’s bus stations. We then used the metro to switch bus stations, hopped on another long distance bus (trip was a little longer than expected due to a flat tire) to arrive in the city of Zitacuaro in Michocán. From there we grabbed groceries for the cabin and hopped in a combi (basically a mini-bus) until we reached the state line with Mexico. From there we had to take a taxi to get to the cabins. However, we were a little late and were informed by the cab driver that he was probably the last taxi we were going to see for a while, which meant we had an interesting lesson on how to fit 9 people in 1 taxi (hence the following photo).

We finally got to the cabin, spent the night, and then headed out the next morning on horses to see the butterflies. The end of February is the best time to see them because they have recovered from their long migration and are ready to head back to the US and Canada. They mate right before they start the spring migration, the males die, and the females migrate and lay their eggs. After about 2 hours on the horses, crossing back into the state of Michocán (the butterflies tend to move a fair amount this time of year and some had already headed back), we arrived.

Literally everywhere you looked was orange with monarchs, the sky, the trees, and the ground (dead males). It sounded like it was a windy day, but the noise was actually the beating of the wings. There’s not too much that can be said about it, it’s pretty hard to describe or capture in pictures, but imagine a windy fall day where all the leaves have changed colors and are swirling in the air, but substitute butterflies for leaves.

So after the magical butterfly experience, we got to repeat the horse-taxi-combi-bus-metro-bus-bus route to return. When we got to the combi leg of the journey, the combi arrived pretty much full, but had to get back to Zitacuaro to catch the bus, so we piled in, there were people on laps with people on their laps and arms and legs everywhere.