Weekend in Mexico City

I spent the past weekend in Mexico City. I had yet another camera incident, but luckily the only Pentax service center in Mexico is in Mexico City, it was a good excuse for a weekend trip. The even better news was that the store had the part and could repair my camera on the spot. Since moving to mexico I have broken the screen on my sony (dead), then the screen on my silver pentax (dead), my pink pentax went flying off a carnival ride 2 months after getting it (now currently being repaired), and my new waterproof pentax got a crack in the door, making it not so water proof anymore (now currently fixed). Let’s see how long I can go before the next “incident”

So after the camera errands, I headed to Chapultepec park, it’s kinda like Central Park for Mexico City and also houses a bunch of museums, as well as a castle, and Los Pinos, the Mexican equivalent to the White House.

Kinda looks like Central Park, a little....

I first went to Castillo (Castle) de Chapultepec which is where Maximilian once lived. It has all the normal castle stuff and also houses a history museum.

Murals inside the castle

After the castle, I went to the Modern Art Museum, home to one of Frida's better known paintings (see below).



I spent the night in Coyoacan (which I had visited a while ago), but it was nice to get back there and see that the construction was finally finished and the fountain turned back on.

In the morning, I visited another small area called San Angel. San Angel is bascially a suburb and still has cobble stoned streets and a very quiet atmosphere. Diego and Frida had studios there for a while and you can visit their old house. It was actually two different houses, but was connected by a bridge. Unfortunatly you can't take pictures inside, but here's the two houses and the bridge.

Cobble stone streets of San Angel

This was just a random series of houses in a row, all sharing the #33, probably not that interesting to anyone else, but I like the colors.

Then I went to another museum, but more for the fountain in the courtyard than for the muesum itself. The fountain is made out of shells, talavera from Puebla, and porcelin from China.

After that I visited the Convento El Carmen, which may be one of the coolest convents I've been to so far. It is very well restored, has some great religious art, cute courtyard and fountain, cells, a golden chapel, a nice orchard, its own aqueducts, and a talavera tiled basement filled with natural mummies, some of which are still dressed in fully intact suits. Unfortunately, again, no picts allowed.

And finally some pictures of the market in San Angel

La Soledad Tepehuastitla, San Diego La Mesa Tochimiltzingo

On Friday, my boss and I went to La Soledad Tepehuastitla in the municipality of San Diego La Mesa Tochimiltzingo to check on the progress on the construction of 70 stoves and take their gps coordinates. These stoves are more efficient at burning wood (thus the hope is that it will reduce the number of trees that are cut for firewood) and have a chimney that leads outside. While this may seem like a very basic idea, it is actually a major cause of health problems for women that are often in enclosed in confined spaces with their stoves and the smoke they produce. Our first stop though was actual a mezcal distillery. Mezcal is basically tequila, but unlike tequila which must be made from blue agave in a certified tequila region, mezcal can be made from various types of agave and is produced outside of the tequila region.

Distillery and the owner

My boss sampling the product

One of the stoves under construction

Many of the houses in the community are still made from palm, here is the view from the outside

and from the inside

storm rolling in

Unlike the other projects and communities that I have been posting about, this project is a special type of temporary employment fund that is directed directly at women, which after visiting the community and hearing stories of what happens there, is an extremely important group to focus on. Like most of the rural communities in Mexico, migration is an issue. In talking to one woman, 3 of her 8 children (though she said she had 8 still living, so not sure how many she had in total) were in the US (actually relatively low), and of these 3, one was in Chicago. She was very curious about the city where her daughter was living. The saddest quote of the day and perhaps of my time in Mexico was when the guy (non-community member who is assisting with the construction of the stoves) told us that (a) we need to leave before dark because things could get a little feisty since it was a Friday afternoon and most of the men were well into their rounds of beer and mezcal and that (b) in this town, una mujer vale menos que un guajolote (which translates to: a women is worth less than a turkey). Domestic violence continues to be a huge problem in Mexico and more so in many of the rural communities.

Giraffes

The head of the Spanish firm we are in the process of contracting was in Mexico for a visit to the project site last week. Unfortunately there wasn’t room for me in the helicopter, but after the ride over the project area, we had a work meeting at a zoo called Africam (yes cam and not can) Safari (that is one of Puebla’s largest tourist attractions and is within the limits of the project area). Before the meeting we were shown around on a tour and got to see the animals and feed some kangaroos. After the meeting, we had a nice meal with giraffes as the backdrop. The British firm will be here the following week, so we’ll see what we get to feed during that meeting.

Eating lunch with the giraffes

This is an unrelated picture, but I finally took a picture of a cemita, which is a famous type of sandwich from Puebla. So here it is.

Real de Catorce

This past weekend I finally made it to Real de Catorce, a small, old mining town in the middle of the desert in the state of San Luis Potosi (about 11.5 hours from Puebla). The town was abandoned in the past, but is making a come back as a tourist destination and has been re-settled by Italians. We went there via Matehuala which means you have to enter through the Ogarrio Tunnel. The bus doesn’t actually fit in the tunnel, so you take some bus to the entrance of the tunnel and then switch over to a smaller bus to get through.

The main church in town is the church of San Francisco and inside is one of the best collections of retables, which are pictoral representations giving thanks for various things like the birth of a child or overcoming an illness.

That day we wandered up to the “Pueblo Fantasmo” which is an old abandoned mining site about 4km outside of town up in the hills. In addition to being able to climb all over old mining buildings and look down mine shafts, there were great views of Real.

The view from the terrace of our hotel the next morning….

We decided to just follow a road that headed out of town on Sunday and see what could be found. We first found a dog, a blonde German Shepard, that decided to accompany us for the rest of the morning and all the way back into Real later. We found 2 more abandoned mines with open access to parts of their tunnels. The access points to the mine shafts were also easily accessible, but in a kinda scary way. It took about 10 seconds for a thrown rock to hit the bottom of the dark shaft.

Who knows.....

Huichol crafts...

Then we tried a second visit to the church of the virgin Guadalupe and attached cemetery and luckily it was open this time.

On the way back to Puebla, we stayed at another vol’s house in San Luis Potosi. Her newly adopted dog had recently had 7 puppies…..