Goodbye to Metztitlan

We had a nice long weekend thanks to Día de la Revolución (which actually falls on 20 of Nov, but a gov’t rules moves all holidays to the Monday of the same week) and so with Janet’s upcoming change, we decided to head out to Metztitlan for one last weekend. While some other people that decided to come were stranded on the highway for up to 2 hours or stuck on second class buses that stopped so the drive could eat, I had my fastest, least interesting trip ever. Saturday we “toured” the normal sites of Metztitlan in the morning: convent, cemetery (still filled with flowers from day of the dead), and the cactus sanctuary.

The cactus with the white hair are called viejitos (which means little old men). Some of the ones in the cactus sanctuary in Metztitlan are more than 300 years old.

This is me with a biznaga.

courtsey of Jen (thank you)

At 3, we got invited by Janet’s host family for esquite. Esquite is a corn dish cooked in a big pot (sometimes with chicken too) and then lime and mayo (and sometimes cheese) are added to it. It was the perfect food to be eating as the cold started setting in.

Somewhere between esquite and several tequilas and squirt, the carnival masks were brought out. In Metztitlan, for carnival, there is a day-long dance that is preformed that winds through the town with all the dancers wearing masks (and yes it is hot) and dancing to Huapango music. Janet’s host dad is one of the dancers that endures this hot, 12+ hour long tradition and before long he (as well as a few of us later) were running around in some very very frightening masks.

Sunday, after a breakfast of barbacoa (sheep cooked in banana leaves in a pit in the ground), tamales, and quesadillas in the market, Janet’s host family was nice enough to load us up in their truck and take us to the laguna of Metztitlan, at the far end of the canyon. Before getting there we stopped at a high point on the road with incredible views of the canyon.

another incredible view....
Once we got to the lake, we were pleased to find that the migratory while pelicans that call the lake home from about November to May, had in fact returned. Just as the cold was starting to set in with the setting sun (and yes for those of you at home its probably a lot colder right now, but its still getting down to about freezing here at night without heat and with concrete and tile houses, so cut me some slack), we headed to the small town of San Cristóbal to see some ancient paintings on the rock walls of the canyon. By that point, the paintings didn’t really get their full deserved attention because we were so cold and already thinking about hot tea and blankets back at Janet’s place.

Xantolo en la Huasteca

After wrapping everything up with work late on Friday night, we headed to Huejutla, hidalgo for Día de los Muertos. The area is known as the Huasteca and includes parts of the states of Veracruz, Hidalgo, San Luis Potosí, and a little of Puebla. There is a very distinct culture and still many indigenous people that live in the area, which is partly why Xantolo (the name given to the festival for día de los muertos in the Huasteca) is so different from other parts of Mexico. The altars are all adorned with an arch made of marigolds and instead of the traditional looking bread (pan de muertos), the bread is made in the form of animals and people. There are also traditional dances, one where the men dress up as women and another called “Comanche” where the dancers wear wooden masks and represent the link between the living and the dead.

Altar

Bread in the form of dolls, flowers, and animals

More bread, hanging from the arch over the altar

Papel picado

Row of altars

From Huejutla, we crossed into the state of Veracruz and went to the town of Tempoal. Planning on only spending the morning there, we arrived to find that the dances and festivities were later in the day. However, the market was already busy and there were a series of altar displays. The above photos were from Tempoal. Planning on returning to Tempoal in the afternoon for the dances (and they were shooting a TV special), we headed to Tantoyuca, another small Veracruzana town with one of the best markets I have seen. The zocalo of Tantoyuca was also filled with altars and people in wooden masks.

On the bus back to Tempoal you could see preparations for the night´s events on the dirt roads to the smaller towns. People had their bundles of marigolds and the men were already in their dresses and masks for the dances.

After waiting through the TV introduction for the night´s actual events (there is a huge push to get more national recognition for Xantolo and it is virtually unknown to international tourists, we were the only gringos in the area), some of the most amazing dances I have seen in Mexico began. All the dances were set to a trio playing Huapongo music (you can hear it in the video clip). There were a mix of men, women, and children, all dancing in hand-craved wooden masks with amazing outfits. Each colonia (neightborhood) in Tempoal had a dance group representing them and each seemed to get better and better as the night went on. The governor even stopped by for a while which was cause to set off the end of the preformance fireworks in the middle of the event.

A LONG Friday

At work we are in the middle of planning and doing all the logsitics for the Reuninón Nacional de Ordenamiento Ecológico Territorial y Por Riesgo a Desastre. To explain a a little, in Mexico they use the process of Ordenamiento as a tool for land use planning and management. Boundaries for the areas under particular ordenamientos may correspond with watersheds, area under risk of volcanic activity, political boundaries like states or counties, or natural reserves. While I haven’t ever really talked that much about work, my main responsibilities are helping out with our current ongoing ordenamientos in the state of Puebla. Our main focuses right now are the Tuxpan Watershed (states of Puebla, Veracruz, and Hidalgo) and the Necaxa-Laxaxalpan watershed (Puebla, Tlaxcala, Veracruz, and Hidalgo). So, we have this big 2 day meeting planned for the 30 and 31st of October and are pretty much fully occupied with getting everything ready for the meeting. So far it looks like participation should be good as we have people confirmed from 11 different state delegations for SEMARNAT as well as universities, directors of various national parks, consulters, and other heads of state and federal offices.

So anyway, on Friday we had 2 tasks to try and accomplish. (1) Pick up a display to be used for the meeting and the press breakfast in Pachuca, Hidalgo (2 hours from Puebla). (2) Go to a meeting at SEMARNAT central offices in Mexico City for the Ordenamiento of the Tuxpan watershed. So trying get both done, we drove to Pachuca, then went to Mexico City with the rep from the Hidalgo SEMARNAT office that also needed to go to the meeting in Mexico City. We even got to take the chauffeur from the delegation that that to deliver some important papers. He was a taxi driver in Mexico City for 16, so at 11 we were feeling pretty good as we left Pachuca.

That feel quickly dissipated as we first hit miserable traffic and then road closings for a demonstration. After getting a nice tour of some previously unknown parts of the city, we arrived an hour late for our meeting at central offices. That meeting ended up only lasting 30 minutes, but with our tardy start, there were still things to be delivered for the delegado on the other side of the city. So after another hour and a half in the car, we finally arrived. Normally when we have papers to deliver, we take them to an office, the secretary signs for them and signs a receipt and we are on our way again. However this time, our driver returned and said he had to wait til the person he had to deliver the papers too got back from lunch (5:30). Strange, but we were starving so decided to eat while we waited.

It was not until we were seated in a restaurant that the driver decided to reveal what he was actually delivering. He pulled a gold medal out of his pocket. The delegado (the boss of each state semarnat office) of Hidalgo was a former Olympian in speed walking and was donating his gold medal for the 1977 National Sport Award for Mexico to a museum, hence why the medal couldn’t just be left with anyone.

With more heavy traffic we finally made it back to Pachuca at 9:15 and Puebla at 11:30 and meant that in 1 day we visited 4 states, Mexico city, delivered a gold medal, had a 30 min meeting, and spent a good 6 hours in traffic.

Monday morning we had the press breakfast for the event which had a fairly good turn out of media. Here is a pict of the restaurant where the event was and then my boss carrying the display down the street.

Hot springs in the rain

To mark Janet’s birthday (won’t say which one), the two of us planned a fun-filled weekend in the state of Hidalgo. Unfortunately in our planning, freezing cold, rainy, foggy weather was not initially included, but kinda overtook the weekend. After arriving in Pachuca on Friday night to rain, cold, and fog, we remained optimistic that it would pass by Saturday, or that our Saturday destination, Tolantongo, would be free of the Pachuca weather. However, even after traveling an hour and a half north-west to the town of Ixmiquilpan, we were still not out of the damp weather, but at least while waiting for the combi to Tolantongo, we got to see pick-up trucks full of the traditional day of the dead flower (yellow carnations basically).
Once a group had collected, we packed into the combi and set out for the ejido-owned Tolantongo. According to literature on the internet and word-of-mouth, Tolantongo is supposed to be a gorgeous place with thermal springs, waterfalls, and strikingly blue water. Before we could get there though, we had to endure one of the top five scariest transportation adventures I have had in Mexico so far. Picture 10 kilometers of a descent with 15+ hairpin turns, combined with a continuous downpour, fog, mud, and bald tires on the combi. After several tense moments of fish-tailing, the driver slowed down a little and drove with a little bit more caution, but we were all sharing questioning looks as an alarm started sounding and the smell of smoke became increasingly apparent.

But we finally arrived, and found the crystal clear blue waters running a chocolate milk colored brown, the valley wrapped in thick fog, and the rain coming down even harder. So swimming in the thermal river was a no-go with the currents and the mud (and who knows what else from up-stream waters), but there was a “thermal” swimming pool. So we hopped into our suits and headed to the pool to warm up, but only got about ankle deep before realizing that our definition of “thermal” or “hot” water was markedly different from those in the water. So we headed back to the changing rooms and our rain coats and into the restaurant.

Feeling slightly discouraged by the lack of hot springs, we decided to make the hike to the waterfall, and that is where the day was salvaged. The waterfalls were some of the most beautiful I have seen so far in Mexico. The wild noche buenas (or poinsettias) were blooming all around and everything was wrapped in fog and steam from the hot springs. There was also a tunnel behind the falls that Janet went into, braving the long, wet, cold ride home (wrapped only in a very small sarong) on a 1950´s bus with an amazing gold and maroon interior.


Sunday we bummed around Pachuca (a town with strong British ties since it was founded by British miners) and went to the photography museum and dodged more rain and cold. The offices for one of the state universities of Hidalgo has an impressive display of topiaries in their front lawn, complete with dinos, bulls, unicorns, giraffes, and just about anything else you can imagine.