October 24

Yesterday we left San Miguel (so sad) and drove to Mexico City (I shudder in terror). If you hear me referring to “Mexico”, it is Mexico City. Here, no one calls Mexico City “Mexico City”. It is known just as “Mexico”. It gets quite confusing when people talk about Mexico this, and Mexico that—it is sometimes hard to tell which they mean, the country or city. Driving into Mexico was a nightmare (or so I was told, I was asleep). It took us three hours to drive from the edge of the city to our friend’s house. Carlos (one of the friends) went to university with my Dad. Carlos and his wife, Alla, are kindly showing us around Mexico over the next couple of days.

On the way to Mexico (and I mean the city!), we stopped at Tula, another archeological site. My mum says that this one is very famous; it has the second biggest ball court in Mesoamerica. The game that was played on the ball court was kind of like soccer. Two teams would try to score goals through narrow hoops. The ball was made of raw rubber and was very heavy. It was passed back and forth by hitting it against your head, legs, hips, shoulders or arms. It was quite dangerous and legs and arms were protected. It was sometimes played for fun but also for religious ceremonies. The losing team was sacrificed. Toltecs (the group before the Aztecs, who the Aztecs took many of their bloodiest ideas from) built Tula. They were into the whole ritual sacrifice and “lets build big pyramids” thing. At the top of one of the pyramids were large carved pillars (one meter diameter and three meters tall). How did they get them up to the top of the pyramid? The pillars represented war chiefs. At the bottom of the pyramid, engraved in a low wall only a couple meters high, were images of the Feathered Serpent God devouring human skulls. In some places, we could see the original paint, vibrant blues, greens and yellows. Unfortunately, we couldn’t stay there very long, we wanted to get to Mexico before rush hour, a task at which we failed hopelessly!

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I forgot to write about where we ate dinner our first night in San Miguel: a little place called Ten-Ten-Pie. The name is a colloquialism from Spain, meaning “a little snack”. The food was wonderful and so was the setting: tables outside on a street corner one block from the Zocalo. But what made the restaurant spectacular was the music. There were two guitarists playing jazz standards with a Latin twist. I have never seen anyone’s fingers move as fast as did those of the lead guitarist. I also had no idea that guitar could be so interesting to listen to.

But we were the only ones in the audience clapping; no one else acknowledged the end of a song. Our enthusiasm made up for everyone else’s rudeness. After the set was done the musicians came to talk to us, the most enthusiastic members of the audience. We bought their CD and somehow it came up that Daddy plays this type of music on the violin. So they invited him to perform with them the next night. Keep in mind that this was before they had asked him how long he had been playing or knew if Daddy was a good violinist or not.

The one-night performance turned into two nights, then three, and then a performance at a fancy restaurant. It was the best music I had ever heard Daddy play. He was playing blisteringly fast and it was so interesting to listen to. I don’t know how to describe it, the music was so wonderful. It was a lot of old swing standards (like Reinhardt/Grappelli’s “Minor Swing” and “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing”)—but mixed with flamenco-like songs and original latin-sounding tunes. Maybe if I describe the musicians response to my Dad’s playing. They are, one, coming to Oaxaca to perform with him there, two, are going to make a CD together and three, (always three) want Daddy to join their band permanently. Did I mention that we are going to try to get them to perform at the Folk Festivals in B.C.?

That second night everyone from the B&B came to the restaurant to listen. The Québécois ladies had a table, and we shared a table with the Houstonians (Houston is in Texas). I learned many things about Texas: It is not all a desert, in fact Houston is humid. Another thing I didn’t know was that some people there don’t vote Republican. Our new friends said they didn’t know anyone who would vote for McCain. I had no idea that parts of Texas were so civilized! Bonnie took the picture of the church (the one that looks like a Disney castle) and of the worker re-cobbling the street. Thank you Bonnie for the photos!

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Local Mexicans seem to ignore people begging for money and selling things. They turn their head away and practice “if I can’t see them they don’t exist”. One thing that marks us out as tourists is that we say “no gracias” to the sellers and give the beggars, mostly old women, money or food. If a way to blend in is to be rude and indifferent, then I don’t want to blend in.

October 20

We are in San Miguel de Allende. It is a colonial town, which means it has a Zocalo. All the colonial towns have them, these squares in the center that the whole town, now city, is organized around. Often the zocalos have musicians playing and people wondering around selling things. There is almost always a church, more a cathedral, or two, just off the square. If the towns have a zocalo, then they are old—dating to Spanish colonial times. The streets are cobbled (who needs speed bumps!) and the walls of the houses lean in, giving us the feeling of being a in a canyon. The streets are narrow but the sidewalks are narrower. Barely one person can walk on them without doing a balancing act. When a car comes roaring past you want to disappear into the wall. The sides of adjacent houses touch, in fact, it would be impossible to tell where one house ends and the other begins if not for their different colors. One house is yellow, the other blue and the next one gray. It is almost as if there is a contest going on for the most colorful building.

The city is older than the cars that drive on it’s streets. The streets are narrow and bend at weird angles. There are almost no street signs. The main streets are two way, but the rest are only one way, for the main reason that they aren’t wide enough. With cars parked along one side of the street our little car could barely squeeze through. A big SUV wouldn’t have been able to make it. To get from one place to another two blocks away, sometimes you have to drive 4 bocks up, three blocks down, two blocks past where you want to end up and then you have to circle back. The streets are a bewildering maze of twists and turns where the map shows a straight line. I love the convoluted maze of this town’s streets. Where we were the last couple of days, in Zakatecas, it was impossible to drive up two blocks without getting lost. It makes me long to see Europe.

This morning we went to the Mercado here, in San Miguel. It was huge. There was a food section and a craft section. The food section was stuffed with fresh fruit and vegetables and others that were dried. There were two full isles of fresh flowers, each flower stall managed by a separate person. Another person sold dog food in bulk. And the rows of dried chilies!—ones of every size, shape and texture were present. That was only the food half ( almost a square kilometer).

The second half was filled with beautiful crafts that we, unfortunately, didn’t need. I wish I had more presents to buy! The mercados are a bargainers dream. Everything is of a superb quality and extremely cheap by our standards. There was amazing beaded work, and woven goods, and carved bits and, and, and…

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Zacatecas doesn’t have a zocalo, but it has many plazas. There was always music playing in the plazas. Our last day there was the first day of the Festival de Calle (street), so the plaza outside our hotel had an Italian group practicing what seemed like a street opera. It looked kind of like Romeo and Juliet (with the stairs on plaza), except that there were three people singing. Maybe it was their version. After they left the plaza Daddy and I took it up and played some fiddle tunes. It was fun, even if no one noticed.

The hotel where we were staying is a beautiful, old, domed, tiled mansion. It used to be a seminary, where monks got trained. I think the seminary must have changed quite a bit to make it the elegant, lovely hotel it is today. There were two courtyards, one of which had a well. I looked down to see if it was fake, but it wasn’t. There was the glint of water in it, a long way down, and when it rained we could hear the water draining into the well.

The night of the 17^th was the opening night of the Festival de Calle. The Festival de Calle is an international festival of street theater. Groups come from all over the world to perform and watch it. To name a few countries, Spain, England, France and Italy were partaking in the festival,. The opening performance was done by a group from France.

It started out much the same way Circus Soleil starts, with the “stage” (in this case a large cobbled square by the biggest cathedral) dark. Then the first performers apparently stumble upon the set and look confused at what they find. The apparatus for the set was huge. It was like an enormous, inverted, metal flower hung from a construction crane. The top-most part was a net, like the rigging of a ship. Right at the start, one of the performers climbed the tall metal structure. He sat in the point made by the net and just rang the large bell that hung there. The big bass bell signified the end of a “scene” in the performance.

Out in the crowd were structures like mini circus tents without the cloth, just a metal birdcage like frame. In the beginning of the show, people in a white costume ran around lighting torches in brackets on the birdcages. People in medieval jester garb got up on the birdcages and started performing. Every time the bell sounded the performers would rotate stages. The people in jester’s clothing each performed separately for their section of the crowd—by this time several thousand people. While the jesters were making jokes (which we couldn’t understand because they were in Spanish) the women in white climbed to the top of the central large metal apparatus and waited in the ropes hanging there. When the bell rang again all the jesters left their birdcages and climbed into small metal cages hanging from the main inverted flower and started playing the bells and drums that hung there. Each “cage” was just metal strips for feet, a bit that clipped onto their costume and a thin backrest which then curled around in front of them to support the bells. There was a rope that attached the top of the “cage” to the larger structure in general.

[A pigeon just pooped on my computer. Gross!]

Anyway, then the whole structure was lifted into the air by the crane (everyone still playing the bells). The thing had looked dumpy and useless on the ground, but in the air it was quite graceful. It looked like a giant flower. At the tip of each petal was a musician. In the middle hung guy with the bell and the three women in white were up there too—as acrobats. They hung suspended on their trapezes spaced evenly around the flower. Then the flower started spinning around—the musicians were still playing their song, which got more complicated by the minute. Then the petals opened up, pulled open by some complicated machinery at the base of the flower. And it closed, and opened again and again. The petals did this several times and when they stopped, the musicians were above the center of the flower. The bells kept on playing through all of it. The job requirement must have said “never gets motion sick and loves heights”. They were all very high up—probably 60 metres—level with the top of the cathedral’s spire. And they were spinning briskly too. It is amazing that they never faltered in their playing or made a discernable mistake. The acrobats were good too, performing so high above the plaza. They did summersaults and tricks I don’t know the name of, all without falling off their rope. The whole aerial performance was lit from below, giving it a very surreal feeling. Fantastico!

During the day before that evening performance, we went to a world class museum. Zacetacas is a very rich town; its fortunes were made in nearby silver mines during colonial times. Many of the town’s inhabitants are either artists or art collectors. Since the people were so rich, they were able to buy some very big deal art. When a collector dies, usually his house turns into a museum for the art. We saw a collection that belonged to one individual: it was amazing. There was a wall full of Picasso, mostly his saner pieces. Two walls were covered in Miro originals (when he was just getting into Ubu) and several of Chagall’s pieces. There were many other artists there too, but I didn’t know them beforehand. Even the restaurants had original art! In a café that we ate in there were several pieces by Miro and one beautiful Chagall—along with lots of others I didn’t recognize. Anywhere else they would be reproductions, but there they were the original prints! It was amazing to see so many fabulous art works in one place!

October 15

For the past five days we have been with Felice in the Sierra Tarahumara with the Rarámuri (who are sometimes called the Tarahumara). Felice is a friend of ours who works with the Rarámuri. Her family visited this region a lot when she was little and that is how she formed her first connections with these people and place. Now she is an ethnobiologist—a person who studies traditional ecological knowledge, who works with Rarámuri communities. Last year, when we told her we would be traveling through Northern Mexico, she hatched a brilliant plan. Felice decided that she needed to talk to her community and get permissions for photos she was using in a paper. She also needed to tell them she would be returning for a longer visit in the spring. There is no electricity in the Rarámuri communities, no phones, and not really any mail service, so the only way to talk to her friends was to go there. Felice thought we should meet her there. Which is what we did.

Felice met us in Creel on the evening of the 10^th. The day before, we had done some exploring in and around Creel. After all the bicyclists left, it turned into a sleepy little town. We got our first introduction to the Rarámuri in Creel. The women and children are painfully shy, not acknowledging you if you say “Buenos Dias!” and barely talking if you ask them for directions. Around the zocalo (town square) there were Rarámuri women selling arts and crafts. Also selling their wares were the Rarámuri children, holding up a string of bracelets and asking “compra, compra, (buy, buy)”. They say this in a high pleading voice that would tug at the hardest heart. When you say “no gracias” their plea turns to “un peso, un peso”. They beg without shame, because their situation is so desperate; at the worst they won’t get anything, and at the best they will have a peso or two. (However, I may be reading this all wrong because Felice told us that in their culture there’s no shame in asking for what you need and it’s almost like you’re doing the person a favor by asking directly. I don’t know if this applies to the people in town). Just so you know, one peso is equivalent to 10 cents. Just that little bit of money makes all the difference.

Now let me describe the appearance of the Rarámuri. The men wear cowboy garb, hats, button-up shirt and pants—we didn’t see anyone wearing shorts. Modesty is a big part of the women’s dress. The women make all their own clothes. Women wear long colorful skirts, like the type that were in style in Vancouver a couple years ago—the ones that are very full and have lots of body. The shortest skirts were well below the knees. People wear many layers of skirts to build up the triangle effect (the most Felice counted was 8!). The blouses are often made of the same cloth as the skirt. But even when they’re not, they still match in an eye smarting way; anywhere else the colors would clash. The blouse is very loose with the sleeves getting tighter at the elbows. There are no jackets; the warm layer is a long bright shawl. The shawl, or rebosa, can also be a sling, baby holder, or sash. The children wear smaller versions of what the adults wear—all in bright colors. We also saw a few men wearing the traditional white loin cloth. Shoes are made from pieces of old tire tied on to the foot with rope. If not these shoes, than none. The Rarámuri’s skin color is a deep and rich copper colour. It contrasts wonderfully to their bright clothes.

The people Felice had worked with live in a very remote valley. It is a two hour drive from Creel on paved road, and then an hour drive into the valley on a dirt road that our car could barely do. It was only thanks to my Dad’s fantastic driving skills that we didn’t have to hike in. No one there has any cars. The mode of transportation is walking, bikes, or horses. Rarámuri farm for a living, not to make food to sell, but to eat. If a crop fails, then they starve in the winter. Most of the fields we saw were filled with dried corn stalks. The harvest was over, so the animals were allowed to graze wherever they pleased. Felice said that the main reason grazers were kept was so that they would fertilize the fields and for meet at festivals. But, they have had other effects too. The grazers eat all the plants on the hills and cliffs, which frees up the soil for erosion. This in turn gets rid of all the precious top soil necessary for the corn.

I don’t know how to describe just how remote we were in the Sierra Tarahumara. For those of you who have been on Lasqueti, the road to the valley is worse than “Good Road”, which isn’t very good. Also, where we were makes the remotest part of Lasqueti feel like downtown New York. There is no running water or electricity. People get water from a spring that feeds into the river. People used to have solar panels, but the government is running power lines in to the valley so the people took the panels down. They cook on open wood fire.. One can only imagine what the inside of the houses looks like, but the outside is adobe.

In the winter, some Rarámuri move from their homes into south-facing caves on the cliff faces. These hold the warmth of the sun. We were told by our guide in Quarentas Casas that a couple of years ago there was a snowstorm and many Rarámuri got snowed into their caves. Since there was no way to escape out of the cave, many Rarámuri starved.

The Rarámuri live in many side canyons of the larger Copper Canyon. Many of these canyons don’t have roads. All the children living in those communities walk into a valley that does have road and therefore a school. We hiked to one of the more remote valleys and it took us about two hours one way (including stopping and looking, which is what the Rarámuri also always do). We had to hike up to the rim of the valley and then down the other side.

Felice told us a story about hiking up and down valleys. In a valley farther a field than we walked to, a father had to send his six year old child to school. Twice a week he would see him off. The father was worried about his six year old walking by himself so he would hike up with the child to the first ridge and then watch as his child went down into a valley and then appear again on the next ridge. The father would watch until the kid was on the last ridge. That is too long a walk to do every morning, so the kid stays where the school is during the school week.

The Copper Canyon is labeled the “Grand Canyon of Mexico”. But the Copper Canyon is actually grander. The Copper Canyon is four times the area of the Grand Canyon and 1.5 times as deep. It’s sides and valleys are covered in a thick green forest, with only the most vertical of cliffs not robed in pines. Instead of being a dusty red, they are an elusive gray with water stains running down the face. While we were never in the Copper Canyon itself, we spent a large part of our time in the canyons leading into Copper Canyon. Most of the time we could see the Canyon down the valley as a haze of blues trees on towering mountains.

GCC (global climate change) also has an effect here. In Zuni, there was just the right amount of rain at the right time this year. Here, however, there was too much rain and the harvest wasn’t very good. It is not good to be going into winter with low stocks of food. When Rarámuri run out of food in the winter, they won’t be able to buy it because with no outside job, they have very little or no money.

Many of the children we saw have an upper respiratory infection. They have runny noses and deep coughs. The only bonus to them being so sick is that if they overcome the disease then their immune system is stronger for the battle when they are adults. Older people have very few teeth, and what they have is usually blackened. There are no tooth brushes there. The kids faces are encrusted with several days worth of dirt and for the sick ones, snot.

Let me tell you a story. There was once a Rarámuri family with a mother, father and four children, two boys and two girls. Then the father fell sick, it was a sudden thing, healthy one day, in bed and delirious the next. He died only a couple days after falling ill; it came as a shock to the family. With no adult to bring in money, the oldest child, a boy of ten, left the valley to be a migrant farm laborer to bring in some money. Life was hard though with only a ten year old boy bringing in money, and life became too hard for the mother to bare. She killed herself, orphaning her children. The second son left to work; he was only eight. The two remaining sisters about 4 and 5 were adopted out of the community for a few days before their Aunt and Uncle took them back in to the community. The family hasn’t heard from the younger brother so they think he must be a street kid somewhere. We met these two sisters and played Frisbee with them. They haven’t given up; their eyes are filled with sparkle and they are always laughing or smiling.

Our last day in Rarámuri country we played violin in the secondary school. We did our normal set, but with less fiddle tunes and more classical tunes. We did less fiddle tunes because the Rarámuri have violins and fiddle tunes as part of their culture. Their violins are quite rustic. It is the varnish on violins that make them sound good and Rarámuri violins don’t have any varnish. This was the only place we had played that the students had seen and heard violin before. But classical and Jazz music is completely different than the Rarámuri music. Also, I think that they liked seeing someone their age play violin. My dad played Oh Canada and I sang the words. Then they sang the Mexican Anthem, which is all about war. And they asked us questions about life in Canada.

The Rarámuri culture, especially for the women, is all about not calling attention to themselves. For instance, the women talk quietly and don’t meet peoples eyes. Shaking hands quite gently, not trying to break peoples’ hands. People put there hands together, as if they were about to shake their hands, but they don’t grab the other persons hand, just gently squeeze with their thumbs.

So it stands to reason that clapping is not appropriate. It was quite unnerving to finish a song and be greeted with dead silence. I knew beforehand not to expect clapping, but it still surprised me not to be applauded. I knew they enjoyed the music because they weren’t talking among themselves, but there was no other way for me to gauge their feelings.

The school was one story, with a dirt floor. There was graffiti on the walls, but the school didn’t have enough money to buy paint to put over the graffiti. There is about 80 percent Rarámuri people in the school. After we were done performing I got a picture of me, Rosa Eva, and one of her friends.

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The USA and Canada are wrecking Mexico with there fixation on drugs. Mexico’s drug lords grow their dope plants for marketing in the US and Canada. If people stopped buying dope and poppies the drug lords wouldn’t have a market to sell to. The drug trade effects the locals living here too, more than the tourists actually. One of the Rarámuri that I made friends with, Rosa Eva, said that we should lock the car just in case the drug traffickers came through the valley at night. Felice said this was highly unlikely and even if they did, they wouldn’t touch the car. It is sad though that the worry of safety is always at the back of their minds. It is a type of oppression. Felice told us that there has been well over 3000 drug-related murders in the State of Chihuahua this year.

There had been some gang violence in Creel, too. We were told that the Prime Minister of Mexico decided that he would get rid of the drug gangs. These gangs had divided up the Country into their own “drug territories”. So, when the President gave one group guns and money, he upset the balance and created a gang war where there hadn’t been any before. Last year there was some shootings. Thirteen people died, including one baby. Only a couple of the people were actually involved with the drug trafficking, the rest were just innocent people, in the wrong place at the wrong time. The people of Creel were quite upset. So, the government went out and arrested a few people. But the towns folk felt like the people arrested were just as scapegoats. We asked someone what had happened and she made shushing sounds and pointed to a security camera in front of the bank. She was afraid that the drug lords would be listening and get her if she talked about the massacre. Across the street from where we talked to her was a memorial commemorating the people who died. The poster was in Spanish and English. It said, “Welcome to Creel, welcome to Creel, land of encountered….with death, insecurity, impunity, and corruption, where justice does not exist. Massacred.”

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After Daddy and I finished playing the violin we all hopped in the car. Felice needed to catch a 7:00 plane in Chihuahua City, so we drove on the steep mountain roads a little faster than was strictly good for our stomachs. We were giving a Rarámuri father a ride to Creel, so the rest of us were crammed in the backseat. The Rarámuri man wanted to see his daughter in the Creel hospital. A year earlier she had fallen into a campfire and had to be hospitalized. She has been in a hospital for over year.

We didn’t stay in Chihuahua City though because it is huge. Instead, we drove 45 minutes south of the city to a town called “Delicious”. It is famous for its fried catfish, but they were all out so we couldn’t get any. I am sorry that I wasn’t organized to upload this then, but it was only half written.

October 9

Yesterday we hung out in Madera the whole day. The original plan was to drive on to Creel without a day spent in Madera. But it is a 6 hour drive to Creel after my parents had phoned around to find a place to stay there, we would have arrived in Creel after dark—and everyone says not to drive after dark. Besides, there was a big bicycle race going on so it wouldn’t have been save to drive (too many bicycles) and there were no hotel rooms available. So we decided to stay another night and leave the next day.

The owner of the hotel we were staying in suggested we stay at his campground, a twenty minute drive out of town beside a lake. In fact, he even drove us there to show us and to give us a tour around his town, which he was obviously proud of. We decided to camp there, it was quiet and peaceful.

However, there were still several hours of daylight to fill. We decided that we would drive out to see some ruins: Cuarenta Casas (a cliff dwelling known as 40 Houses). The plan was to do the two hour hike and then go back to our campsite. We didn’t know that the park closes at 5:00 and you need to be out of the canyon before that. It was 3:30 and the guards/rangers wouldn’t let us go down into the canyon. We were somewhat upset, but them Momma started talking to one of the rangers (in Spanish). He said that it was a worthwhile hike, and if it made a difference, we could start at nine instead of ten the next morning, the official opening time. He also said that there was campsite right outside the gate where we could camp.

Well we drove around for several minutes trying to find the campsite, there was no place for us to stay, but there were houses with goats. Since we couldn’t find the campsite ourselves, we asked the people at one of the houses. They said they would go ask the owner if it was okay and then unlock the gate. Another ten minutes passed while we waited for the verdict. Meanwhile the light was fading. Then everyone came back, and us silly tourists were handed off to the campsite people, who showed us where to go and set up our tent. And that is exactly what we did. The camping area was a big grassy field in the pine forest. It was on land owned by the Ejido – a communal area that individual members of the community can farm or use. They were obviously very proud to be part of the Ejido and the land.

Our sleep was interrupted in the morning by a lovely soft sound on the plastic of our fly-less tent. Any guesses? To be fair, there where no clouds when we went to bed, and it almost never rains here. Just our luck to be camping. So of course our tent, sleeping bags and therma-rests were soaked. Right now we have the wettest stuff draped over the chairs in our car in the hopes that they will dry.

After it stopped raining we got out of the tent and broke camp. Our supposedly 9:00 start was actually at 9:30. This canyon where the cliff dwellings are was very different than the others. For one thing, the canyon was completely treed, and not stunted ones either. They were big, tall, glorious pines. The canyon was treed because we were at a higher elevation, so it was colder, and it was wetter, there was even flowing water in the bottom.

There were more than three cliff dwellings; our guide, Martin Martinez, said that each cave had ruins in them. It was a whole city. The biggest cliff dwelling was more in an alcove than a cave. All the lower stories’ wall’s were still standing, through the doors we could see that there were three rooms leading to the back of the cave. We could see the walls and rock darkened by soot, and see the ash in the rooms. None of the walls had been rebuilt, though some had been had supports added. In some places the second story was still standing. Cuarenta Casas was occupied around the same time as Casas Grandes. Our guide said that when he started working there, 20 years ago, most of the second story was still standing. It isn’t standing because of vandals. Imagine people who would destroy an 800 year old archeological site. Those walls were the originals! Now they are gone—for good. Not only were people breaking pieces of wall off, but some people wrote their names in the adobe. Need I say more?!

On the way back up the canyon wall Martin found a dead rattlesnake. He said that it hadn’t been dead for very long (no smell) and that he would carry it back and eat it. Georgie was eyeing the rattle so he broke it off and gave it to him. We asked how the rattle rattles and Martin told us that the different sections knock against each other, there isn’t anything inside the rattle. The head was gone, we asked why. Martin said it was because even though the snake was dead, it’s reflexes could still make it bite when you picked it up. The snake had been killed because they are dangerous with so many tourists around. The poor snakes!

Martin needed to skin the snake so we stopped by the river. He gripped the skin by where the head used to be, and tugged. The skin came off the snake pulling the guts with it, I guess they are attached. When the skin was off and inside-out, Martin pulled off the intestines and stuck them in a bag. Apparently they are really oily and are good for ear infection and skin cream. Then he threw the skin away. What was left of the snake was a long and white, with a slice in it’s middle where the guts came out.

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We have this one fly in our car that has been here for several days. It just sits on the roof and stares at the scenery. Sometimes The Fly flies around the car and lands on us, we shake it off, and it goes back to the roof. I think it must be bored because the view isn’t that great hanging upside down on the ceiling. I hope The Fly didn’t have a family wherever we picked it up who are now missing it! I also hope wherever we drop it off won’t be a bad climate for The Fly.

Now we are only 30km from Creel. It is still treed outside and the temperature is quite cool. The road is wet, it looks like it rained. Tonight we will put the fly on the tent.

October 7

Today was a long day. I have no idea what time we woke up this morning, but it was before eight. Breakfast was scheduled only moments after we woke up, so we rushed over to the breakfast room. There were two people cooking and we could eat what ever we wanted. Not many places let you get whatever you want for breakfast. There was only one other person staying at the B&B. He was an owner of a art gallery that specializes in ceramic pots from Northern Mexico. Through breakfast we had an interesting conversation about a local town and its pottery with him.

The town that we were discussing is Mata Ortiz and it is famous for it’s pottery. Mata Ortiz used to be a lumber town and when the lumber supply collapsed, so did the town’s economy. Meanwhile, a young man was experimenting with different forms of art, mostly pottery. An American discovered him and said “If you quit your job on the railway, I’ll buy anything you make, pay you $300 dollars a month, and create a market for your art in the States.” Even when he was young he had experimented with digging different sources of clay, different tempers, and different firing techniques. When the artist’s family saw that he was making better money with the art, they asked him to teach them. Now that is what most people in the town do—they are potters. There is a big market for their work among American and tourists. The art has saved the town. 800 of the 3000 people are potters. Some of the pots made by the original potter in the town sell for more than $4,000 and many people from the town teach workshops in the US.

The B&B were we were staying had it’s own mini-gallery of Mata Ortiz pottery. The art dealer told us that the pots in that gallery were the best around. They were only the perfect pots. He showed us the different types of pots, and how they were made. Later, the B&B owner/curator explained the potting process in greater detail. First the clay is gathered from the mountains and strained through a cloth to purify it. Then they make and smooth a coil pot. The next step is to polish—“burnish”—the dried clay with a substance that is harder than the clay, usually a rock. They don’t need to do that, but it produces a shiny finish when the clay is fired. The design on some pots is done in alternating patterns of shiny and not shiny surface. Another technique they use is putting graphite on the red clay. When the clay is fired, the graphite turns black. If it has been polished, then the black graphite surface has a silvery shine, otherwise it has a matte finish. The design done with those two reflective surfaces is truly amazing. The other ones have designs and patterns painted on them. The intricacies on those pots are mind-boggling, I would go crazy, and end up smashing the pot if I tried to paint something so detailed. However, I would love to try doing the graphite technique someday…

The actual reason we were in Casas Grandes was to see the Casas Grandes ruins. Casas Grandes is like the Chaco Canyon of Northern Mexico. Except that even Chaco Canyon has Casas Grandes influence, like the keyhole doorways. There used to be 2000 people living in Casas Grandes, a huge amount of people at that time. Like Chaco Canyon though, the city only lasted for about 200 years. In this case however, the civilization ended with raids and a big fire.

Where we are tonight, in Madera (meaning wood), is a longish drive from anywhere. It is situated in mountains that are covered in a Pine forest. Daddy says that the landscape looks like Ireland, just not as green, but the rolling hills and stone spires are the same. I was really missing the mountains and forests of Vancouver, so seeing this area eased the ache in my heart somewhat.

It is late, I am tired and I going to bed. It is 10:20 right now, an hour later than it is in Vancouver.

Later on October 6

Apparently we were wrong. We are connected to a wireless network here. “Here” is a little town called Casas Grandes. Actually, I just checked, the computer says we are signed on, but I can’t access the web.

Where we are staying is an adobe building. Adobe is like a mud brick with straw, stone and other stuff inside, which they plaster on the outside. It is really beautiful. Our hotel is a bright peach colour.

Crossing the border this morning didn’t merit the fuss everyone makes of it. There was a tall metal fence with border guards just waving people through. There was no line. On one side of the fence everything was in English, on the other everything was in Spanish. It was weird sensation. On the Spanish side of the border there was a town, on the other side was just dry scrubland. Instead of a border guard checking you into the country at once, like we are used to, each part of customs is in a separate building. First we went to a tourist permit building where the guard looked at passports. Then we went to a different building where we got a car permit. We had to get the permits and daddy’s ID photocopied, so we went to a different building yet again. Then back to the car permit place to get everything signed. At least, that is what I think was happening, everything was spoken in quick Spanish. It was a typical Mexico experience, everyone was super friendly, but the whole system was convoluted and no one really understood it.

The border town was run down and poor. You could see it in the peeling paint and the boarded up houses. I felt so sorry for the people living there. Not only for the people living there, but also for the people just passing through—The Illegals. The people who get smuggled out of Mexico would have to get over the fence, past the guards and then walk hundreds of km, without any water in a hot dry landscape. It is amazing any survive.

This town is named after the ruins near by. There is a town bout 10 minutes north called New Casas Grandes. It is bigger than the original town. So it was there that we stopped to pay our border fees. Normally you pay it at the border, but our border guard told us to pay it at a bank after the border. When we tried to tell the bank that is what we wanted to do, they said we were missing some paper work. We didn’t know what to do. Driving back to the border was out of the question. Luckily the bankers were able to figure something out, we’re not sure what, and we were able to pay at the bank. But we had to do it in cash, not with a credit card. It was something else entirely trying to get money from the ATM machine. Lets just say that first we couldn’t even get to it, the direct door on the inside was locked, so we had to go outside and then back inside. Crazy.

Getting a Mexican cell phone took two hours. We bought one fairly quickly, but then the clerks had to phone the company to ask about charging and phone cards. They sent us to an actual phone store (the first was just a pharmacy) who then sent us somewhere else to get a phone card. All of these funny quirks are what makes Mexico so fun, you never know what to expect.

October 3, 4, 5, 6

October 3

The people who we are staying with for a couple of days are old friends of my mum’s, of course. Dick Ford is my mother’s mentor. He taught her as an undergraduate 25 years ago. He and his wife Karen, live in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They have two very sweet cuddly dogs, who made me miss Willow.

Dick is an archeologist and ethnobotanist. He goes out to different farms that have pictographs and inspires a sense of awe and responsibility in the farmers. They are much more interested in saving history when they feel like they are somehow connected to it. Some of the sites he has saved are the oldest and highest density of petroglyphs in New Mexico (over 7000 images). Since Momma is an archaeologist, I have seen some pretty spectacular things. But what we saw that day almost tops all. Every rock was covered with rock art. I would look up the slope and immediately I could identify 8 or 9. And those were only the obvious ones. Some of the pictographs were the oldest in New Mexico (8000 years old)! We probably saw 1000 petroglyphs that day.

October 4

Now we are leaving Santa Fe, but first we will go to the Farmers Market and cruise around looking at art galleries (stores that sell art).

The farmers market was amazing. The stalls were covered in fresh fruit, vegetables and breads. And the hot peppers—we don’t know the meaning of hot in Vancouver. The mild made my mouth burn. Though apparently the medium had less of a punch than the mild. They roast the chilies in something that looks like a cylindrical bingo machines (the kind that you turn with a crank and spits out numbers). The smell of chilies permeate the air, and now our car does too because we bought two bags of them.

Santa Fe is a town for artists. The building are all smooth lines and arches. The stores all have beautiful clothes and jewelry in the windows. And the art in the galleries was amazing. Some of my favorites were some west coast First Nation pieces. Except that they weren’t carved out of wood, but were blown glass. The art in this town is truly amazing -- the sheer quantities and excellence. Tonight we will stay in Albuquerque, with some more old friends of my mums from her days in Zuni.

October 5

We left later than planned, at 12:30. We are not early risers. So sped out of Albuquerque with a goal of reaching Deming, a town an hour before the Mexican border. Driving to Deming we passed through many different landscapes. There was one town that was built in front of a water dam. I wonder what would happen if the dam burst? I wouldn’t want to live there.

At one point the sky turned black and started dumping buckets of water on the highway. We couldn’t out of the front or my side of the car, it was all one big raindrop. But on Georgie’s side of the car, it was barely raining, and there was still blue sky! This rain was nothing like we get in Vancouver, our rain is nothing compared to this. After the storm cleared (which it did in about 20 min) we saw three rainbows. There were all extremely vibrant and in one, both ends touched the horizon.

We got to Deming late and went to bed later still. There was a very interesting Planet Earth on caves that was playing on the TV.

October 6

We are one hour from the border, and as soon as Georgie wakes up, we will leave. We want to get as far away from the border as possible today. I have been practicing my Spanish. Hear is what I can now say: Entiendes (do you understand), Habla englais? (do you speak English?) no hablo espanol (I don’t speak Spanish). Hopefully I will learn really quickly in Mexico.

We don’t think we will have internet for about a week, so don’t expect anything. We will be hanging around Northern Mexico for the next while.

October 1, 2

October 1

Today is my birthday! Last night Rose gave me a painted wooden pendant. The wood is sanded smooth, and I can see the tree rings on the reverse side. My dad thinks the wood is the local juniper. On the front is hand painted Zuni image of Corn Maiden surrounded by traditional Zuni designs. The painting work is quite fine. Corn Maiden is a deity who is responsible for the growth and well being of the corn. She is revered because each year she gives a part of her body for the Zuni people to eat (the corn).

We left the house at 9:15; we seem unable to beat our record that we established earlier. Since we had to be traveling on my birthday, I got to pick our stops. Our first stop was where we had walked on the first day. We had seen petroglyphs (ancient images engraved into stone) and Daddy wanted to photograph them. It was a longer walk to find them than we had anticipated, so our schedule was pushed even later.

The only reason our timing mattered was that there would be an 11:00 tour at the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary that we wanted to catch. We arrived there later than planned and joined half way through the tour. The wolf sanctuary rescues wolves and wolf-dogs that people have tried to raise as pets. Wolves and wolf dogs are not dogs, they can’t be trained and have unpredictable behavior, like a wild animal. When they are around two years old they start to get out of control (teenagers) and try to find their place in the pack. This is normally when the panicked owners phone the sanctuary. The Sanctuary’s only purpose is to rescue wolves, they spay and neuter all their animals.

The canines are kept in family groups or pairs. All the mini-packs have their own wooded enclosure that is bigger than what they would get at a zoo. Also, the animals are matched with a human who they get to know and can go in and feed the animals and take care of them. Some wolves, though, are too unpredictable and no one can go in their enclosures. Remember, they are wolves—with a wolf’s instincts. I found the experience very informative. Did you know that you can tell how much wolf is in a dog by how round its ears are and how much fur is in it’s ears? Or that wolves have bigger paws than dogs, with webbing in between the toes for walking on snow? And of course, it was the first time I had seen wolves--and I was able to get close to these guys.

Then we drove on to El Morro, a canyon with only one wall; actually, it was a mesa. El Morro used to be an important place for the pueblo peoples. It’s walls are dotted with rock art, and ruins cover the top of the wall. We hiked to the top of the mesa and started talking with the three Zuni rangers who were cleaning the ruins of weeds and re-facing the stone work (amazingly enough, they were doing it in preparation for a group of Afghanistanis who were coming to study the ancient methods of stone work). They immediately recognized my necklace as Zuni and asked where I got it. I told them and it turns out that they know Joe and Rose. Not only did they know Joe and Rose, but one of them had done archeology with Momma when she had worked in Zuni 26 years ago. It is truly a small world after all. By the time we had finished talking to them, eaten lunch, and returned to our car, it was 4:00. With a three hour drive to Chaco Canyon, it would be dark when we arrived there. But we set out anyway.

The last hour into Chaco Canyon is on a narrow dirt road with very bad “washboard effect”. The washboard effect is a ripply pattern of the gravel that makes you feel as if the car has a bad palsy. From the window of the car I saw an elk, a big beautiful female elk. As I leapt out of the car to get a better look she took one look at us a galloped away into the distance. I watched until darkness had swallowed her form. Just after the last of the suns glow faded from the sky, the road got a lot worse, and a tire began making a clunking noise. It turns out the road hadn’t gotten worse, but our tire was completely shredded. So now we were changing the tire in the dark. But it got changed and we were driving again at 9:00 PM.

When we got to the campground at Chaco Canyon, all the tent spots were full. So were most of the RV spots. Our area was sandwiched between an RV and a snorer who sounded like he needed his muffler replaced. Never let it be said my birthdays are uneventful.

October 2

One day past my birthday, a morning in Chaco Canyon, and in the afternoon we will be in Santa Fay. Chaco Canyon is another differently-shaped canyon. It’s walls are short and squat, but the distance between them (i.e. across the valley ) is a mile-and-a-half (the brochures give the distance in miles and I can’t translate). One mile-and-a-half is very wide. Chaco canyon was an hugely important regional center for the ancient people’s – and today, of archeological sites. The Ancient Pueblo Peoples in Chaco Canyon built a series of structures, like condos, except was even more all-inclusive (including kivas, food storage, farming areas, dance plaza’s, etc.). The pueblos there were planned ahead of construction and built with a finished product in mind, not just adding-on rooms as needed. They were formed in a “D” shape, with hundreds of rooms, up to three stories high—all built in stone. You can mark how old a wall is by what pattern the rocks are placed in(mortar or no mortar, big rocks or little rocks). It is so dry here that the original thousand year-old wooden beams remain preserved in some of the walls. The ruins remain mostly unreconstructed, and they don’t need to be because they are so well preserved. Chaco Canyon was only occupied as a major centre for about 200 years; then everyone left. This is an especially short time considering it took several decades to build one of the D-shaped pueblos. There are more than six of them! People talk about the anomaly of the Ancient Pueblo Peoples (Anasazi) and “why did everyone leave”. Chaco Canyon is the archetype of that mystery.

In Pueblo Bonito, the biggest set of structures, you can walk inside the rooms, walk through the doors, and imagine the place bustling with life. It was especially emotional for me because my Grandma, who died when I was young, stood and walked in the same places that I was. I might even have touched a stone that she touched.