Castro´s Beginning (kinda) and the Beach

This weekend I went to Tuxpan and Tecolutla in the state of Veracruz. Tuxpan is centered on the banks of the Río Tuxpan, and about 10 min to the Gulf of Mexico. To get across the river, there’s a bridge, or you can use the shuttle system of small boats (lanchitas) that run back and forth. On the other side of the river (opposite the center of town) is the Mexican-Cuban museum of friendship. This tiny museum marks the departure spot for Fidel Castro, his brother Raul, Guevara, and the other leaders of the Cuban Revolution as they left Mexico for Cuba in a private yacht (Granma) to begin the Revolution in Cuba. So it was an interesting coincidence to be visiting this site in the same week that Castro officially stepped down as Cuba’s leader. Tuxpan is a pretty quite town (about 200,000) and most of the economy is centered around its port and the petroleum industry.

From there we headed to the tiny town of Tecolutla on the Gulf of Mexico and the Río Tecolutla. This also happens to be the terminus of one of the watersheds that I’m working with. This beach town comes complete with hammocks on the beach and a plethora of seafood vendors with push carts right on the sand. Not too sure about the logistics of a seafood cart in hot sun, but I guess it works. Also not sure how much of the seafood you really want to eat seeing as most of the beaches along the Gulf of Mexico are fairly polluted from the petroleum industry. But all in all another good weekend in Veracruz and out of the office. Posting has been a little slow as the Mexican govt does a great job of blocking any and every website that you would actually want to go to.

La Huasteca, concrete art, and the Superbowl (Mexican style)

With a long weekend thanks to Mexican Constitution Day (Feb 5th for everyone that is keeping track of important Mexican holidays.....Benito Juarez´s birthday is next on the 21st of March), I headed up to visit some other volunteers in Ciudad Valles in the state of San Luis Potosí, only a short 12 hour overnite bus ride away. Saturday was international wetlands day so I tagged along with the volunteers and their SEMARNAT office to a cienaga (big wetland basically) in the Huasteca region for a trash clean up and small get together with the local community. This area is the heart of sugar cane production in Mexico. There are sugar can fields as far as the eye can see and the road out to the cienaga had tons of trucks laden with cut sugar cane to be processed. It’s definitely a little warmer in this area than Puebla (and much more humid). In the summers, the highest temps in Mexico have been recorded here, over 130°F…..thankfully Puebla maxs out in the 90s in the summer!

Sunday we headed to a town about 2 hours away called Xilitla, although technically we never made it into town, only to Las Pozas. Las Pozas is a hard place to describe because I’ve never quite seen anything like it. It is basically a garden of concrete structures created along a series of waterfalls and pools (poza means pool) and was constructed in the 1940s by a Brit named Edward James. A place like this would never be open to the public in the US as there are narrow staircases without railings 2 stories above the ground and all sorts of other lawsuits just waiting to happen. It’s set in lush tropical vegetation and everywhere you turn there is another strange structure, arch, gate, sculpture, or staircase just waiting to be explored. These pictures do not do it justice at all, but they give you an idea of what it was like.

We got back Sunday night just in time to watch the superbowl with Spanish commentary. The only unfortunate thing was that Mexico does not get the normal superbowl commercials….oh well. Monday I bummed around Ciudad Valles, saw a bull in a pick-up truck, explored the market, made some excellent guacamole, and then started the journey back to Puebla by heading to Tampico. Unfortunately, upon my arrival in Tampico, the bus to Puebla was sold out, no fear though there was another at 9 pm that would get me into Puebla at 6am, in time to shower and go to work, right?...wrong. Got stuck on the high way somewhere in Veracruz for quite a while so I didn’t actually get back to the bus station in Puebla until 7:30. With the gynormous line at the taxi stand, I opted for the city bus at the height of morning rush hour and arrived at my house at 8:20, to find my host mom in the shower. 5 min later and I was out the door, unshowered, but ready for a great day at the office. All well worth it for the weekend.

Many of you have asked about my apartment status. I think I now have a place and hopefully should be moving in at the end of the week, more to come on that as I get some more details.

Papantla and El Tajín

This past weekend I headed over to central Veracruz. Spent Friday night in Poza Rica, not much worth noting about this town. It’s basically a distribution point for petroleum from inland sites to the port in the city of Veracruz. But from there, headed to Papantla, a small town about 35 minutes from the Gulf of Mexico in lowland rainforest. This region is the center of vanilla growing in Mexico and jewelry, artwork, and food products from vanilla are widely available. Papantla was a nice break from the colonial architecture of central Mexico and had a cute, yet simple central plaza complete with black squirrels, a nice market, and voladores. Voladores (see video below....make take a min to load) partake in a ritual dance common to the indigenous group of the area. This basically involves 5 men climbing a large pole. One sits on top and plays a musical instrument similar to a wooden flute while the others swing around in a circle as they descend to the ground.

Also close to Papantla, are the ruins of El Tajín. The main pyramid is known for its windows, of which there are 365. Set in humid rainforest with palm trees and nice green vegetation (a sight that is lacking in Puebla since it´s the dry season), these ruins are by far my favorite so far in Mexico.

Puebla

I’m officially in Puebla and have been working for about 3 weeks. I work SERMARNAT (the secretary for natural resources and the environment) which is an entity of the federal government. My job over the next two years is to assist with the management of two large watersheds in the state of Puebla. One, Alto Atoyac (about 5,000 km2), includes the city of Puebla as well as other parts of the state and the state of Tlaxcala. The end point of this watershed is a highly contaminated reservoir about 30 min outside Puebla. The main contamination issues in this watershed are from untreated sewage and industrial discharge. Ultimately the rivers in this watershed join with others and flow into the Pacific Ocean. On the other side of the continental divide, I´ll be working with the Necaxa-Laxaxalpan watershed that flows into the Gulf of Mexico in the state of Veracruz. The majority of the section I will be working with is located in the Sierra Norte, or the northern section of the state of Puebla (much of which is cloud forest), but also some parts within the states of Tlaxcala, Hidalgo, and Veracruz. This watershed, while still contaminated from untreated sewage, is much more rural and has more impacts caused by agriculture and intensive livestock grazing. Basically my job will be to coordinate all the other federal agencies that fall under SEMARNAT (things like the national commission for water, and the equivalents of the forest and national park services) as well as state and municipal governments in the management of the two watersheds.

One of my other jobs is to organize a conference on natural disaster preparedness. At first I figured this would be flood risks since my background is in water resources, but I have since come to find out it is actually going to be about volcanic risks since Puebla and the surrounding municipalities are situated near several volcanoes (Malintzin, Popocatèpetl, Iztaccìhuatl). So that should be right up my area of expertise.

I’m currently apartment hunting and think I may have found a place. Looking here is a little different than searching in the state for several reasons. First, you pretty much have to walk around and look for signs on buildings. For the most part, most apartments don´t come with anything so you have to get a refrigerator (think dorm size) and a stove (lucky if you can get one with an oven). I’m looking in the historic center of Puebla which presents some other obstacles. There are no closets in any of the apartments and the bathrooms are usually a tiny room in which everything gets wet since there’s no space or real reason to have a shower curtain. My two favorites right now are in the same building. One, is two rooms and has 2 balconies that overlook the street. It has 15 foot ceilings with exposed wood beams, tiled floors, and is in a nice old historic building with an interior courtyard. (plus its like 2x the size of my apartment in Vermont). Sounds great right? Well, the thing is that right now there’s no shower, so the landlord is looking into the logistics of putting one in. If that happens I’ll definitely take it, but it still is lacking one other little thing…a kitchen sink. Fortunately, with a combination of plastic wash tub in the apartment and the communal area to hand-wash your clothes, this shouldn’t be too big of an issue and is overshadowed by the two balconies. So we´ll see. If not I´ll take the one big room in the same building that has a balcony that overlooks the interior courtyard.

I´ve been living with a host family for the last month and one of the rules of the house is that I have to wash my socks and underwear by hand and hang them out to dry on the clothesline. I mention this because I think many of you would laugh at the image of me hunched over a wash board scrubbing and wring out my underwear. Good news is my possible new apartment has the same washboards and washtubs so I can continue that tradition if I want to.

Geography Lesson

Here's a little Google Earth visual in case you were starting to wonder exactly where in Mexico all the places mentioned in my blog actually are....

My favorite word.....Vacation

We had a little free time in between swearing and the end of training and our start dates for work. I traveled with a friend from the states for about 10 days in the central region of Mexico to Zacatecas, Morelia, and Pátzcuaro.

Zacatecas

Zacatecas is another colonial city of Mexico located in the state of Zacatecas, about 6 hours northwest of Queretaro. While the city is surrounded by barren semi-arid lands, the city itself is a great example of colonial architecture and has what is considered the best example of a baroque cathedral in Mexico. Originally, Zacatecas was established around the large silver mine (which I did go down into, but is no longer functioning and most is flooded). Built in a valley, the surrounding hillsides offer great views of the city and its many churches. One of the museums in town has one of the best private art collections I have even seen and included works from around the world and by artists such as Miró, Dali, Chagall, Picasso, and Goya.

About 40km outside of town, there are Aztec (actual origin is still disputed) ruins dating from 500AD called La Quemada (nickname means the burned and reflects the fiery end that the building met at the hands of the Spaniards). Getting there involved convincing a 2^nd class bus to drop us at the nearest road crossing (literally in the middle of nowhere as you can see from the pictures) and then walking about 3km to the ruins and then hoping that you could flag down a bus on the way back even though it was Christmas Eve. We did make it back and spent Christmas Eve with one of my PC friends on the top of our hostel overlooking the cathedral.

Morelia

After 9.5 hours on a bus, we finally arrived in Morelia, the capital of the state of Michoacán, another colonial city. Here we did the normal looking at churches, plazas, and government buildings, but also had the chance to go to a tiny natural history museum that had the strangest collection of Siamese twin animals and deformed fetuses (no worries I’m not including the picts that I took of those). Morelia also has a fairly large market designated almost entirely to sweets which the state is famous for.

Pátzcuaro

Pátzcuaro is a small town about an hour’s bus ride from Morelia. The town is near a lake (Lago de Pátzcuaro) and many of the residents of the area are Purépecha ( type of indigenous people). Just outside of town is a fairly large hill that offers good views of the town, lake, and islands on the lake. We took a small boat out to one of the islands (Isla Janitzio) that has a huge statue of Morelos on the highest point. One the second day, we visited two other small villages (Tzintzuntzan and Ihuatzio) near the lake that have Tarascan ruins. This town and surrounding areas might be one of my favorite places that I’ve visited in Mexico so far.

Pátzcuaro also had a huge market for such a small town that featured a lot of fish from the lake (which is highly polluted), a huge raw pig’s head, and chicks that were dyed and wearing football helmets.

I spent new years eve in Queretaro, where surprise surprise there were more fireworks. I really don’t think that I have been in Mexico a single day without hearing a firework. I’m currently in Puebla and about to finally start working. More about Puebla and all that in a later post……

I did manage to get one picture from the swearing in ceremony so here’s a group shot (for the most part, I think one got cut out).

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from Zacatecas...

December in Queretaro

Lots to report since the last update. I’ve been super busy trying to finish everything up before the end of training, but as of the 19th I am officially a volunteer and as of the 20th I’m officially on vacation until I have to report to Puebla on the 4th of January. So here’s the summary of the last couple weeks…. We visited two different children’s homes (orphanages more or less) and brought Christmas things and piñatas (piñatas are traditionally used in Mexico during Christmas).
December 12 is the day of the Virgin Guadalupe (this is the patron saint of Mexico) and the day is capped off by masses, fireworks, and other festivities. The church is the picture below is the church of the Virgin Guadalupe in Queretaro and the metal structure is the firework tower for later in the night. There was also day of the payasos (clowns) in December. Also, around Christmas time, many posadas are held. These are basically a type of Christmas party and have a piñata. Unfortunately for me my attempts at actually hitting the piñata were fairly unsuccessful, although as can be seen in the picture, the piñata was a little high.

I also spent a day and a night in a small town in the state of Guanajuato called Apaseo el Alto. Not a whole lot going on in this town, but it was nice to spend some time outside of Queretaro, in a small town, and without any other gringos or tourists to be seen. There was supposed to be a huge old convent somewhere on the outskirts of town (as seen on the towns website), yet someone not a single person in town had heard of it or knew where it was…..

Then finally, on the 19th, we had our official swearing ceremony. Our host families, some of the heads of the SEMARNAT offices (unfortunately no one from Puebla could make it), our Spanish teachers, and officials from the embassy were in attendance. After the ceremony, there were tacos and a mariachi band. Still awaiting the official pictures, but the one below is me with my host mom.

That is about it for now. I’m headed out of vacation for ~10 days to visit Zacatecas, Morelia, and Pazcuaro. Happy Holidays!

Jalisco (but not the part with Puerto Vallerta, the beach, or the town of Tequila)

This week we headed to the state of Jalisco on the Western side of Mexico. We visited a couple natural protected areas (La Primavera, Nevado de Colima, and Sierra de Quila) to learn about different management strategies and things like that. We also had a couple days of seminars and workshops on a variety of topics including: growing mushrooms, building straw bale houses, worms, medicinal plants, forestry programs, and making charcoal. We did get to “ride” horses for a little bit, rigged up a volleyball net, and went to a river with hot (geothermal) water.

The highlight of the trip was the visit to Nevado de Colima, a volcano. We went up to 14,000 feet on the peak of a mountain right next to the volcano and from there you can also see the peak of an adjacent volcano. We spent Friday night “in” Guadalajara (didn’t see anything of the city because we basically were on the side of a highway next to a gas station). Saturday went to a market in a nearby town before heading back to Queretaro.

Coming back was a little bit of a surprise as it seems that Christmas exploded on the city while we were gone. The main garden has about 4 nativity scenes, an elephant that moves, a scene with devils, an Adam and Eve scene, a large cow next to a giant cactus, and the gigantic plastic poinsettias. All the streets are adorned with giant sparkly Christmas shapes and most of the plazas have some of the largest tinsel “Feliz Navidad” signs that I have ever seen.

more picts than you would even care to look at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/daninewcomb/

Feliz cumpleanos y dia de gracias

Not much to report on the 25^th birthday other than a successful night of playing quarters (get it….25) with real American quarters in a bar with bulls heads and matador posters on the wall. This was preceded by a quick trip to a bar with plaid cloth on the walls and the largest collection of model cars that I have ever seen…..interesting.

For Thanksgiving we cooked a full on turkey dinner at our language school. I must admit that having a Costco in town makes finding traditional thanksgiving foods much easier. We did have some salsa and tortillas (you can’t have a meal in Mexico without tortillas) and a jello mold cake. All that was missing was football and cold weather.

Snowballs and Turkeys.....in Mexico??

We are currently working on designing a watershed management plan for a watershed in the southwesten corner of the state of Queretaro. So this Sunday we had a trip out to the watershed, but encountered a bit of unusual weather. We got hit with a decent sized hail storm, possibly the biggest one I’ve even been in, and within 20 min the ground was covered enough to actually look like snow. We even had a snowball (or ice ball depending on how you look at it) fight. Later we ended up in a small town to try and conduct some interviews and ran into a large flock of turkeys. Who knew that the days leading up to Thanksgiving in Mexico would be so similar to those in the US…..

San Miguel de Allende

On Saturday I went to San Miguel de Allende, a town in the state of Guanajuato that has become a major destination for North Americans. A lot of Americans are currently building homes there along with some other oddities like a retirement ranch for old burros. It’s another town with a picturesque city center, lots of churches, and a large botanic garden with many native cactus species. Not too much more to say about it but here’s some picts…..

Guanajuato

This weekend Janet and I took a weekend trip to the cities of Leon (leather and shoe capital of Mexico) and Guanajuato. We went to Leon Saturday morning en-route to Guanajuato to see the shoe markets and a little bit about the shoe industry. That’s about it for Leon, but Guanajuato is an amazing city. It is an old silver mining town that is nestled in a valley. This basically gives the town three layers: (1) the old mining tunnels under the city are now used for most of the car and bus traffic, (2) the main/center part of town, and (3) the rest of the houses that are build ascending the valley walls on two sides of the city.

The city is also the birthplace of Diego Rivera and his boyhood home is now a museum that contains sketches for his murals and of Frida, as well as water colors and other paintings. There is also a unique tradition that was imported from Spain. During the weekend nights, there is a group of students from the university, called the Estudiantinos, walk through the streets dress in medieval Spanish dress playing traditional musical instruments, telling jokes, singing, and passing out wine to the crowd that gathers to follow them through the streets. There is also a “Romeo and Juliet” story that takes place in the callejon de beso (alley of the kiss) where the street is so narrow and the balconies of the houses are so close, that two forbidden lovers were able to kiss from their respective houses.

Guanajuato also has unique soil that creates natural mummies. In Mexico, it is very common to only bury someone for 6 years, after this 6 years the body is removed, cremated, and the site in the cemetery is rented to someone else. When this occurred in Guanajuato though, it was discovered that with the combination of minerals in the soil and a very dry climate, the bodies being removed were fully mummified and many are now on display in the museum of the mummies. They even go so far as to sell mummy shaped candies. All in all a good weekend away from Queretaro and first experience with the Mexican bus system. This week things are pretty much back to normal with Spanish classes, training, and working on our technical project that is an assessment of a nearby watershed……

Dia de los Muertos

Día de los Muertos was celebrated on November 1^st and 2^nd. The 1^st is the day to recognize children that have died and the 2^nd is for all the others who have died. The main day is the 2^nd and this is when families travel to the cemetery to clean and place flowers on the grave. Many times families will spend the entire day at the grave site eating and playing music (mariachi bands are at the cemeteries).

Another part of this tradition is the creation of an altar in the home, to help the soul find its way back, complete with the deceased’s favorite foods, drinks, sweets, and even clothing or memento of a favorite futbol team. We constructed on of these in school, but an incident with papel picado (tissue paper cut into various designs with skeletons) and a candle led to a burnt wall and a torched picture of the deceased. The city constructed a huge altar in Plaza de Armas which was dedicated to two brothers important in the revolution (the bicentennial is in 2008).

All things sugar are also an important aspect of the holiday (they are placed on some altars, especially those honoring children and additionally are consumed in mass quantities by children). Sugar skulls (calaveras) are the most widely constructed, but there are also fruit, animals, and coffins made entirely from sugar. Pan de muertos (bread of the dead) is also widely eaten.

Race Day

Last Sunday I got to run my first Mexican race. It’s pretty much the same as a race in the US except (1) they play the Mexican national anthem (2) there are virtually no women (3) you have to run on cobblestones for quite a while and (4) all the markers are in km. This one was a 12.5 km race. The other interesting thing that occurred is that at one point in the race you’re running down a fairly large road which is closed to traffic, except they decided to let buses and trucks continue driving on it. So all the runners are on the far left side of the road with some traffic coming down the middle and the right. This would be fine except for the fact that they placed the water station on the far right side so anyone who wanted water had to dash between traffic to get water and return to the other side. As you might imagine this made for some close calls on the road. There were 5 in our group that decided to run.

Sierra Gorda

This past week we took a group field trip to the Sierra Gorda region located in the north eastern part of the state of Queretaro. This area is extremely mountainous and sparsely populated. There are several medium sized towns, but the rest of the people (for the most part) are dispersed in smaller communities throughout the area.

Day 1:

We set off in a caravan from the city of Queretaro with a small bus/van thing, and several other cars. We got to have our 1^st encounter with the Mexican military and a machine gun as they have check points on various roads to search cars for drugs and weapons, everything went smoothly though. From there we spent some time on an oregano cooperative and got to see where they collect oregano from (grows wild so it is not cultivated). Our next stop was a community of about 50 people on top of a mountain ~8,000 ft high. The road was a little rough, to put it lightly, and we had some issues with all the vehicles making it up to the top, but we eventually made it just in time to see the clouds, fog, and rain roll in to completely cover the view that the place is known for. Some of us did hike up to the scenic view after lunch, and between clouds were able to see why people would venture up that far. Our next stop was Jalpan, where we were based out of for the next several days, but the drive took a little longer than expected since the road pretty much disappeared for the majority of the drive down into the valley.

Day 2:

In preparation for this field trip we were told that this area was always hot. Well guess what, we hit a cold front. Tuesday was cold and rainy which left a slight glitch in the schedule since we were supposed to take a hike that involved crossing a river at several points, but with all the rain the river was a little too high to safely cross. Instead we crossed one of those long, wobbly, pedestrian bridges that you get ½ way across and really start to question the intelligence of your decision. We also went to an aquaculture site to see tilapia (which we ended up eating for lunch later), tomato fields, a tree nursery, and got to drive the vehicles through the river.

Day 3:

This morning we got to wander around a market in Jalpan and then headed farther north in the Sierra Gorda to an town called San Juan de los Duran. En route we stopped at a mission (Sierra Gorda is famous for its numerous, beautiful missions), a ceramics factory, ate lunch in a field, and stopped at a carpentry shop where we had some arts and crafts time. Wednesday night we stayed in cabins (with bunk beds) in the reserve and even had a campfire complete with marshmallows (although warning if anyone is planning on buying Mexican marshmallows….it is impossible to find a bag that is not mixed with pink and white ones and the pinks ones are definitely strawberry flavored and are not so great roasted over a fire).

Day 4:

We went on a hike this morning to see the destruction caused by the pine bark beetle and the management strategies currently in place. Then later we saw the opening of a community run ecolodge/campground which was complete with live local music and dancing. We also got to try this food that looks like the world’s largest tamale (think the size of 4 or 5 footballs), but then gets opened and served from. When we finally returned to Jalpan we had a final dinner next to a large reservoir that is there and had Mexican corn on the cob for the 1^st time (called elote), although I’ll admit I skipped the mayonnaise on mine and only had chili powder.

Day 5:

After walking around the reservoir (same as the night before) and killing some time while a tire got repaired we headed off to go for a hike to a 30 m waterfall. Then we went to the town of Pinal de Amoles where we arrived knowing the name of the place where we were supposed to have lunch, but not the location. Seeing that the town was very small we figured that we would have no problems just asking around, it seems that that strategy only works if the name of the restaurant is correct to begin with. We finally found it, ate (great mole), and then headed back to Queretaro. All in all it was a great week. I failed to mention some of the funnier stories like (1) the night at the cabins someone got up to go to the bathroom and crawled back into the wrong bed when she returned (2) dinner was pretty much in the dark the last night and some grabbed and ate an uncooked ear of corn (3) dinner was also pretty much in the dark on the 3^rd night and numerous people at the very hard shell of some type of squash that was served for desert. Guess that’s about it for now.