In two days it will have been two weeks since I arrived in Oaxaca. For me this is hard to believe. During the past three months, two weeks has seemed like such a long time - I usually cover many hundreds of miles and pass through many different towns and scenery. But this last two weeks I have stayed put for the most part, getting to know a city and its residents, and time has flown by.
My very dear friend Leigh Ann came to visit. I was excited at the opportunity to meet her at the airport in D.F. (Mexico City). This meant for me a six hour bus ride, where I sat comfortably inside an air conditioned bus periodically moving my stare from the movies (in Spanish) to the scenery outside - the same scenery I had biked over and through less than a week before. It was quite an experience to cover the same ground by bus; it was nice to be off my bike, but at the same time I felt very far removed from the hills, the trees, the dirt, the sun, and the wind, and I realized how much more connected I feel to the land pedaling over it.
According to the most recent definition agreed upon my state and federal governments, the Mexico City metropolitan area population is 21.2 million people, making it the largest metropolitan area in the Americas and the third largest agglomeration in the world (Wikipedia). I say this only to emphasize my anxiety upon approaching this city - although I grew up only twenty minutes from San Francisco, I am not a city boy. I do much better in dirt than I do on pavement, and especially after almost three months on a bike, I was a little nervous. BUT, I found the metro system of Mexico City quite safe and easy to use. Paying just three pesos to hop on the metro, you can transfer to any of six or seven different lines that take you quickly to a wide variety of stops all over the city. I spent most of my time in D.F. near the zocalo, the central plaza dominated on the north by a the city's cathedral, and on the east by the Palacio Nacional. The entire city, especially the center, sits on the old Aztec capitol of Tenochtitlan, and there are signs of these great ruins all over, peaking their ancient heads out of the subway, in the subway, and in digs on the city's cement floor. The great Aztec temple, in which the most well known Aztec king, Monteczuma, presided, sits just kiddy corner to the back of the cathedral, peaking its destroyed stone head out from excavted cement ground. You can barely get a feel for what it once was though, peering out over a balcony that looks into the ground, and compared to the cathedral which sits just next to it, looks like an abandoned warehouse. The cathedral, on the other hand, sits tall and proud. Inside it is beautiful, almost too hard to describe, so I will let the few pictures I was able to take try to do that. The Palacio Nacional is a work of art in itself, with most of the walls of the second floor painted in murals by the famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera.
I spent the night at the airport, waiting for Leigh Ann's flight to arrive, and had a run in with an old lady trying to steal my sandals while I was trying to sleep (see Comment 2 on the last blog for a more complete story). When the plane finally did land the next day, I was overwhelmed with excitement at seeing a friendly face and having a week to explore Mexico with her. We started our trip with another visit through Tlaxcala. This time, I explored the cathedral on top of the hill. This cathedral boasts a baptismal font where the first four elders of Tlaxcala were baptized. Also inside is the pulpit from which the Christian Bible was first read in the New World - a significant little lecturn, considering how much of North and South America now practice the Christian faith; and yet it is sad in a way to think about how the soldiers and merchants of the conquest of the americas used this good deed of spreading their faith as an rationalization for the destruction and demolition of great indigenous cultures and cities. We revisited Puebla, where performers of a capoeira exhibition in the Casa de Cultura got us dancing on the stage in front of an audience, and we got a good look at the inside of the oldest library in the americas.
We spent the final five days of Leigh Ann's trip in Oaxaca, staying comfortably in the house of my Argintinean host, Caro. Just three miles from the zocalo in the center of Oaxaca, we made the walk or took the bus almost every day into the busy centro, which was alive with the spirit of Semana Santa. People from all over Mexico and the world had come to this medium sized city to enjoy its cobblestone streets, open air markets, and many cultural festivities. During the night, after the sun dropped, the air was still very warm and the gentle breezes created the perfect atmosphere to visit small cafes, bars, and restaurants and walk the streets, where at seemingly every other corner there was some type of performance, whether it be a silent procession in memory of the Passion of Jesus Christ, a symphonic ensemble playing classical music, traditional Mexican dancers, marriachi, or some other type of Latin music in vivo (live). The city has a small town atmosphere, and is not nearly as overwhelming as Mexico City, or even Puebla for that matter.
One day we hopped on a tour bus (the most touristy thing I have ever done in my life) which took us to five different places. The first was Tule, the widest tree supposedly in the world (I've seen bigger). Second, we visited Teotitlan, a Zapotec town, where we sat in on a workshop showing how wool from the sheep was turned into thread, and all the different natural methods of dying the thread, which is then turned into beautiful tapestries. There are only two other places in the americas as well known for their tapestries as the Zapotecas of Teotitlan are: they are the Navajos in the U.S., and another small community west of Mexico City. Afterwards, we visited Mitla, an archeological ruin site, Hierve el Agua, where exists petrified cascades (I don't know how water can petrify - I think its just minerals in the water left behind to form rock structures falling from a cliff in the form of a waterfall), and a Mezcal factory, where we got to taste from at least 15 different type of mezcals and mezcal creams, and see the process of how its made. They say in Oaxaca that drinking tequila is for sissies...
The weekend finished up with a peaceful Easter Sunday, consisting of mass in Santo Domingo, a beautifully decorated church built in the seventeenth century, followed by fine dining at an Italian restaurant on a terrace overlooking the city. On Monday we painted a tarp purchased in town to create a Oaxacan scene, and hung it up on the rooftop terrace of our hosts house to create some shade in which she can relax after we leave. It was a gift to our kind, generous, and fun host, who has been a friend to me now for almost two weeks. Leigh Ann took off yesterday, and I returned to Oaxaca alone again. It was a sad day, and I feel that finally my break is over and it is time to move on.
So, wiping the small layer of dust off my steed, finely tuning several spokes, oiling my chain, and packing my things once again, I pack my house firmly onto the back of my bike, and prepare to hit the pavement on two wheels. I have about a three day ride I believe to Puerto Escondido and the coast of Oaxaca, of which I have heard repeatedly has some of the most amazing beaches in all of Mexico. I have calculated about 1000 km left of biking before I hit the border of Guatemala. That is about the same from San Francisco to San Diego.
So here begins the end....
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