October 24 and Other Days...

I have been amazingly sick for the past three days. That is why I haven’t written. What is ironic, is that we, my mum and I, got sick at the nicest hotel we have stayed at yet. What was even more upsetting was that the morning we got sick, the 26^th, was my mum’s 50^th birthday. We were both as sick as dogs and spent the day sleeping and shivering (and other unmentionable things).

October 24

We spent this whole day wandering around the part of Mexico where Carlos and Alla have their apartment—the Coyoacan district. We did not get in our car at all! One of the things we did in Coyoacan was visit the Frida Khalo museum. Its in the house where she grew up and where she lived with Diego Rivera. Her art is powerful, but very disturbing, often focusing on graphic images of how difficult her life was. Diego Rivera’s art is much more pleasant to look at.

The only way to be able to drive in Mexico City is if you were born here. While there are lanes marked on the street, the drivers ignore them. There are no distinct lines of traffic, only a herd of rampaging cars. Mass honking seems to start with the least provocation. For whatever reason the traffic has slowed and stopped; drivers seem to think it will undoubtedly be cured by honking loudly and consistently. The speed bumps are ginormous, one almost needs a 4x4 to get over them without scraping the bottom of the car. So we drive as little as possible in Mexico City.

October 25

On this morning “we”, meaning Carlos, drove us to Cuernavaca, a city an hour away from Mexico. Alla stayed there, and the rest of us drove on to Xochicalco, a huge archeological site. Walking around, we saw three iguanas. One was bright green, which meant it was young. While Xochicalco was not as magnificent as Teotihuacan, the site sported three ball courts and many pyramids. The pyramids are stacked, a base with smaller ones on top. We would climb up one of the pyramids to find another flat expanse with more pyramids rising up like hills. The smallest pyramid had glyphs carved into it’s sides. The carvings showed a great event. The Mayan calendar and the Xochicalco calendar were off by one day. So the Mayans sent some people to Xochicalco (a journey which probably would have taken months) to make the calendars match. There is an amazing glyph showing a hand pulling the errant day forward to make the calendars match up.

As is our tradition, we played hacky sack on the largest of the ball courts. One of the ball courts here represented seasonal changes and had gradually sloping sides, another represented day-night changes and had more steeply sloping walls. We played in the seasonal-changes ball court. To learn more about the ball game go to: http://www.ballgame.org/ . To view a movie of the game click on the second circle (explore the game). On the right hand side click on the word GAME. Then click "watch a game". I would suggest exploring the site, it is a wonderful website that is very informative.

Under one of the pyramids there is a artificial cave. We walked along dark tunnel to a cave with a shaft of sunlight coming in from the top of the pyramid. On solstice, the sun shines right in. The cave is an observatory and has been connected with viewing the stars and solar-lunar cycles (like predicting eclipses).

That evening we checked into our hotel in Tepotzlan, a beautiful little town nestled in the base of some mountains. We ate dinner at the hotel (and it was a five star hotel), that was the dinner my mum and I got sick from. We shared a well cooked spicy chile relleno. We woke up feeling well the next day, but quickly felt much

October 26

Georgie, Carlos and Daddy hiked up part of the mountains and saw coatis (coatimundi). Coatis are related to and about the same size as raccoons, but have a thinner tail, long noses and hang out in family groups. I don’t remember much else from that day except that the drive back to Mexico City was miserable.

October 27

We hung out in Carlos and Alla’s apartment beating back the last of my bug. Daddy gave a talk to the organization Carlos works for, CONABIO (Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity).

October 28 and 29

We visited our relatives in Mexico City today. Our family in Mexico is very upper class. The head of the family—clan—is an 87 year old woman named Martha. Her husband is my second cousin once removed, ummm … the wife of my mother’s grandmother’s first cousin. Now Martha has a huge number of great-grandchildren. So we took a cab across town to visit them. Well, only Martha and Ceci (pronounced Sessy), Martha’s daughter. They were upset we had been sick, so Martha got her cook to make a three course meal. Lunch in Mexico is the heaviest meal, usually eaten around two or three o’clock. To start off there were two types of soup. That was all I had for lunch, the lightest broth. After the soups came cannelloni, a spinach casserole, marinated cabbage, and chicken. For dessert were several different types of Austrian pastries. When Martha was younger, the only things she ever cooked were mayonnaise and Austrian pastries. But now she doesn’t because “the maid has finally learned how to do it better than me”. Martha grew up in Austria before the war and lived in Switzerland and Cuba before moving to Mexico with her family. Martha told us her driver would drive us back to Carlos and Alla’s and would pick us up for lunch the next day.

The place where we had lunch would have had me beaming, except that I could hardly stomach anything on the menu. Most of the items were delicately done seafood. One of the more interesting things on the menu was fried ant eggs—a seasonal specialty! Of course we had to try them. They came in a little dish and each egg was white and about the size of a lime seed. Apparently they are supposed to taste like cheese. I put some ant eggs in a taco with guacamole and raised it to my mouth—and couldn’t take a bite. I was eventually able to try them after putting a little spoonful on a chip and then covering it in guacamole. I could not taste them, but I could feel their texture in my mouth. I had the horrible thought that some would be caught in my retainer. I don’t think I will try ant eggs again.

After the lunch we walked around outside. There was something going on because the sidewalk was covered in large paper mache creatures made in Oaxaca.

Martha is the quintessential eccentric matriarch. She wears beautiful old clothes, always with some high heels. She says she can’t walk without them. The pair of shoes she wears the most are high-heeled pink boots with jingly bits. Another pair, the same except black, are “old”, at least five years old. Martha has a full head of bright blond hair and wears long fake eye lashes. She couldn’t wear the lashes while we where there because of an eye infection. Her ears and fingers are adorned with large pearls and rings. On her fingertips are inch-long bright red nails. She says she can’t pick anything up if she isn’t wearing the nails. Martha doesn’t believe in saying “no”; Georgie loves that because he can have as much pastries as he wants, whenever he wants. What Martha says goes; no one contradicts her. Everyone in her clan adores her!

October 30

Today we left Mexico City and drove to Oaxaca, about 5 hours drive. We drove through a not-so-barren wasteland covered in tall cactus forests. They gave the impression of looking through a microscope at someone’s hairy arm. And of course there were the requisite turkey vultures flying around. My dad says it was extraordinarily beautiful, but I don’t know ‘cause I was doing my math most of the drive! More on Oaxaca later …but I may not be able to update the blog too often because we don’t have internet in our apartment—we have to go down the street to an internet café.