Heart Sick

I leave Zihua tomorrow and will probably not live here again for at least 30 years. I am heart sick. I don't want to leave. I know I have complained and whined and nit-picked on this blog, on facebook and over skype, but the truth is, this. is. PARADISE.

I'm a pretty big cry-baby normally, so you can imagine the state I've been in for the last week. Spontaneous crying (which I am albe to hide from everyone except Pako) and boughts of meloncholy and depression. Ho hum.

There are reasons that I'm leaving: two valid teaching licenses in Minnesota that need to be worked in order to be renewed, a pretty sweet job offer for me, more job offers and advancement opportunities for Pako, the chance to make enough money to travel between the two countries, student loans that INSIST on being paid (ugh), etc. Yes, there are reasons. Logically, Pako and I know that this is the best course for us and we've set it in motion, but dang! It hurts!

Things I will miss about Zihua:

1. MY HUSBAND (for at least the next couple of months)

2. My family here in Zihua (Jim, this means you, too)

3. Tekila (even though he is bat-shit insane and growls at me more often than not)

4. My students (they made every day at Montessori fun and interesting and I love them all)

5. The weather!!! I'm still here and I already miss the weather! Especially November - February weather. Uff.

6. The food. Coconut shrimp... oh. my. god.

The worst part about it is that it seems I'm destined to leave a huge chunk of my heart behind, no matter where I go. If I'm here, the list of things I miss goes on and on and once I'm in Minneapolis, I know the same will be true of Zihua. How is that fair?

Since today is the release of the last Harry Potter movie (SO excited about that), I will run with it and say that if I were a witch, my most treasured power would be that of apparition because it would mean that I could be at the birth of my new niece or nephew in Zihua one afternoon and back teaching school in Minneapolis the next day. Ahh, if only. I love Harry Potter, don't you?

The last few weeks of my life have FLOWN by and I have no idea where the time has gone! Seriously, how can I be leaving tomorrow, already?!? On Saturday, July 2nd, my seniors graduated from high school and officially entered the next phase of their lives. Good googly moogly, I am so proud of them! They are ALL off to college in different parts of Mexico including Colima, Toluca, Mexico City (at UNAM, no less!!), Cuernavaca, Morelia and Guadalajara. (Those places are in no special geographical order, that's just how they came into my brain). I'm at Lorena's house writing this while she and Pako and Teki are all still asleep, so I'll have to upload those pictures later. I am so excited to see where their journies take them (so cheesy, I know, but all of a sudden I'm a huge cheeseball)!

The rest of the time was spent planning Lorena's baby shower, gathering papers for Pako's consular interview (FINGERS CROSSED EVERYONE!) and mentally packing up my apartment. Also, Pako and I went to the beach a lot and ate at all of our favorite restaurants, one last time. Whirlwind. Busy, but enjoyable. Except for the crying parts, those aren't that great.

Here are some photos (carefully edited in order to NOT show any hint of the baby's sex - still, view at YOUR OWN RISK) of the baby shower. Including Lorena, Petra, Eliseo, Pako and Tio Amado, we were about 25 people. We played lots of mildly ridiculous games and the other mom's gave Lorena advice and then we ate barbecued chicken a la Eliseo and cake! It was an all around good time and Lorena lots of good stuff! Success!

Contest to see who could tape a bow highest on their back... It's harder than you think!

Feed the baby! Nobody objected to eating baby food... weird!

What exactly is in that dirty diaper? (Prune baby food, peanut butter, dijon mustard, Worchestershire sauce, snickers and chocolate pudding)

Eyeball the belly and then check your measurements! I might add that I got it EXACTLY right and I did NOT check before!

Showing Lorena exactly how to love her baby



If you crossed your legs, you lost your party favor and had to beg for it back by acting like a baby. Oyuki drew 'tantrum' and eventually won her necklace back.

For the last game, Lorena had to remember who gave her what present (it's not the custom to give cards or write your name on presents in Mexico) and if she forgot, she got lipsticked! This was the some total of her mistakes, so she did pretty well!

Cutting the cake: the last bit of baby shower for the evening. Phew!

You might as well settle in... this is going to be a long one!

Even I'm intimidated by this post. Pako and I took some 415 photos on our 10 day trip to Chiapas and after sifting and sorting and deleting, I'm still left with a good 370. What happened is that Chiapas turned out to be a pretty cool place to visit. Very interesting and extremely beautiful. Ok, that's great except I'm trying to avoid becoming that person who, at a party, makes everyone sit on the couch and look at their 7 boxes of vacation slides. It's actually kind of terrifying. I can see it, hovering in my future...

Anywho, after much thought and deliberation, I've narrowed it down to 30 photos that I'll show in this blog (if they ever decide to upload themselves... it is taking a rather long time). I'm going to go in chronological order because any other order would just be confusing and not very practical, now would it?

We left Zihua at 3pm on June 17th. Lore and Tito took us to the airport and hung out with us until it was time to go through security. That turned out to be really nice because once we got to Mexico City we had a 4 hour layover in the National terminal which seemed to go on forever! I should note that the international terminal in MC is pretty awesome and includes, among other stores, Victoria's Secret and Puma. I could have spent a good 2 hours just in those two store alone, but alas, we weren't allowed in that terminal. Our terminal included some book stores and a string of fast food restaurants. FINALLY, our flight to Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of Chiapas, took off at 8:30 and we landed just before 10. We got to our hotel at 11ish and turned on the air conditioning and went to sleep.

The next day we spent the morning walking around the downtown area, observing and trying to feel out what was different in Tuxtla. There are 4.5 million people in Tuxtla so it's just a smidge bigger than our 100,000 in Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo, so the obvious differences were all there: more traffic, more people, more stores, more physical area. We also noticed a LOT of graffiti on the walls, some fancy, some not even a little bit. Also, the people are shorter. A lot shorter. I went from feeling like a tall, semi-tourist, to an ENORMOUS, total-tourist. That's the other thing, there aren't that many tourists in Tuxtla because there really isn't that much to do or see in the city itself so I stuck out. And people made no bones about staring me down. It amused Pako to no end when all manner of man, woman and child just totally grilled me, but after awhile I felt it got rather old.

This is a graffiti mural done on the side of a bank, on the main Avenue that runs through downtown Tuxtla.

We also noticed a lot of indigenous women, in full traditional garb, walking around selling everything from shawls to necklaces to pens with clay figures of the Zapatistas glued to them. Their outfits were pretty interesting, but they were a persistent group and one had to start shaking one's head at them from a distance of 5 meters in order to get them to leave you alone within a time frame of 5 minutes, but one doesn't begrudge them this as one realizes that everyone has to make a living somehow. Ok, one has pissed herself off with this 'one' business. Sorry.

Here are some lovely vendors, taking a break from literally hanging off my arm in front of the Cathedral in downtown Tuxtla.

We spent the afternoon at ZOOMAT which is a pretty awesome zoo on the outskirts of the city, nestled right into the rain forest that still tries to reclaim it's lost territory. It's big and sort of confusing, but also really awesome because it only houses local animals that are present in Chiapas (which are quite a lot of interesting animals including big cats and many a bird). One guy set it up and did a lot of the fund raising and bureaucratic work necessary for it to open, Miguel Angel del Toro (hence the M.A.T. part of ZOOMAT). The same guy did a lot of research and preservation at Cañon del Sumidero, which we might get to in a few chapters, if we're lucky. Anyhow, at this zoo, Pako saw a Quetzal and I saw some Spider Monkeys playing in a tree, so we were happy, right from the get-go. Also, it rained, pretty heavily, 3 or 4 times while we were there, but nary a drop did we feel because of the canopy of the trees. Pretty awesome.

SPIDER MONKEY!!!

After a combi ride in which I, unfortunately, was reminded of Acapulco drivers and a hike during which I have NO idea how Pako oriented himself and got us back to our hotel, we ventured out for dinner and stumbled upon Jardin de la Marimba, which is a charming little plaza with a central gazebo from which there are free, live Marimba concerts every night of the week. Charming! So we sat and listened to Marimba and people watched and enjoyed some delicious crepes, straight from Paris, according to the vendor. This plaza was definitely my favorite part of Tuxtla.

Jardin de la Marimba, in action.

These guys could dance better on stilts than I can on my own two legs, after two weeks of intensive dance lessons. Sheesh.

The next day we took another hike to find yet another terrifying combi to take us to Chiapa de Corzo (somewhat confusing when the city is referred to as Chiapa and the state as Chiapas...) which is 10 km away from Tuxtla and is the launching place for boat tours on the River Grijalva through the Cañon del Sumidero, which is a canyon, if you hadn't gotten that far yet. We had breakfast, checked out the Mujedar-style architecture of the gazebo in the central plaza and headed down to the river. I thought maybe the boats were going to be a little fancier than they were, but clearly I was wrong. They were large-ish, flat speed boats with seats for 24 people and a captain. Also, the front end lifted quite alarmingly when we were going full throttle, but I guess that's what the life jackets were for. The trip lasted about 2 hours and in total we traveled 84 km round trip. We buzzed from Chiapa de Corzo all the way to a hydroelectric dam, created by some guys at some point in time. Along the way we saw about a thousand herons, cranes, and other crane-looking birds, pelicans, vultures (ew), etc. We also saw some SPIDER MONKEYS and a crocodile, who was in the grisly process of eating... something. The canyon walls were between 300 meters and 1 km high and stunning. They were alternately stripped rocks and lush green vegetation covered plains. The guide stopped to explain various parts of the canyon or interesting rock formations. There's a stalactite that looks like a seahorse, a waterfall that is shaped like a Christmas tree and, not surprisingly, the body of Jesus nestled in the rocks in a cave, surrounded by pink and purple striped rock, caused by different minerals, or some other such scientificky reason. Before leaving Chiapa, we headed to the church and up the bell tower to take in the view. The most significant part of this adventure was the extremely narrow, windy staircase that seemed to go on forever.

The totally Spanish/Moorish looking gazebo in the zocalo of Chiapa de Corzo.

It was still early enough in the day (10am-ish) that the fog hadn't totally lifted. This particular shot is depicted on the official state seal of Chiapas. It sort of forms a V, but I'm not sure why that was significant.

Here's the Christmas tree waterfall, except it's without water due to it not fully being the rainy season yet.

WILD SPIDER MONKEY!!!

Pako stuck in the never-ending windy staircase of the bell tower of the church that boasted (untruthfully) panoramic views of the Canyon and Chiapa de Corzo.

The next day we took a 6 hour bus ride that, surprisingly, did not feel like it lasted 6 hours, to Palenque, the not-so-notable town just minutes away from the extremely notable archeological zone of Palenque. It was HOT in Palenque! Pako thinks it was hotter in Tuxtla, but he's wrong. As we were looking for a taxi at the bus station, a nice man approached us and told us that he had a cheap hotel available if we didn't have lodging lined up. Straight out of a horror movie. And like excellent horror movie victims, we agreed to take a look. Turned out to be legitimate and we're still here today to talk about the experience. We also booked a tour for the following day of Palenque and then two waterfalls: Misol Ha and Agua Azul, with the same nice man. The ruins were amazing and the site is so large, it's crazy! We got there early enough that it wasn't too hot (thank goodness) and there was still some mist hanging around so we didn't overheat/burn (in my case) at all. We spent about 3.5 hours exploring the ruins and the museum at the site. Palenque (which is not what the Maya called it, but the name given to the site by Spaniards) is a whole village, complete with palaces, temples, ball court and regular dwellings for the non-nobles. The museum had a lot of recovered artifacts from daily life including jewelery, masks, pottery, and ceremonial objects.

Proof that we were there!

Pako, taking a rest.
The quick cat nap worked.

This charming fellow was used in ceremonies. Blood and incense were mixed and then burned in a clay receptacle that sat at the top of the totem.

Around noon we took a 30 minute bus ride (with our tour) to Misol Ha, which is a gorgeous, tall waterfall. You can walk up behind the falls and see it from all angles and there is a swimming area cordoned off. We only had 30 minutes at this spot so we didn't do either, but rather bought a yummy mango and sat in the shade in front of the falls and ate. Then it was a seriously twisty and turny hour-long ride to Cascadas Agua Azul.

Pako likes to prove that he went places.

Now you know we were both there.

Ahem, that should say Cascadas Agua Cafe. Supposedly, during the dry season, these falls are famous because a special combination of minerals in the water (more science, yuck) makes the water a brilliant blue. Turns out, we got there at the beginning of rainy season and the water was... brown. I mean the falls are beautiful and massive. You start at the bottom and walk up and stop for a scenic view, then you walk up some more, more scenic views, then up some more, and so on in that fashion for about 4 more commas. Also, you can get in this river too, which is pretty cool as it was at least 4pm and HOT at this point. So we did walk up, up and up and got in the river!

The not-so-azul waters of Agua Azul
We were hot, but the water was quite shockingly cold!

San Cristobal de las Casas is a not-as-quick-as-the-first-trip 5 hours from Palenque. Luckily the busses were new and direct, so we had working bathrooms and only made one bathroom/stretch/quick buy some dramamine because these mountain roads are WINDY! stop. It was 6ish when we pulled into San Cristobal and had just finished raining. It was COLD. I have never seen Pako so cold. Ok, all you Minnesota and Wisconsin folks are thinking 'it couldn't have been that cold' and you're right. It was probably upper 50s, low 60s, but still, when you've had a month or more of 100+ with 90% humidity, dropping below 80 degrees feels colder than witch's you know what! Anyway, Pako stopped for one photo opportunity before running like a greased pig into the hotel and under the covers.

Pako, directly before diving under 2 blankets

San Cristobal is a beautiful colonial city of 250,000, but it feels like a small town. You can walk to almost ALL of the touristy things and you can catch a local, less-scary-because-it's-a-smaller-town combi if it's too far to walk. We walked EVERYWHERE. The first night, we were so cold we went to the Italian restaurant that was connected to our restaurant and then walked around a bit on Real de Guadalupe, which is a pedestrian street runs right off the main square where City Hall and the Cathedral are located. Then we went back to our hotel room and burrowed under the covers to watch the Mexico-Honduras finals match of the Copa de Oro (Gold Cup). Mexico won and it was a good night.

This hill was serious.

I think this is my new fave pic of Pako. So handsome!

The next day we walked all around. We ate a delicious breakfast at an outdoor cafe and because it was Thursday, there was a procession with the Chorpus Christi from the Cathedral to... I'm not sure where. But the thing is, it went right past our cafe and we felt mildly weird sitting and sipping our cappuccinos while a bunch of people walked by singing hymns. Anyway, then we walked to an arch that dates back to the 1500s and then we climbed a super hill to a tiny church that had great views of the city. Also, there was an interesting little work out area with exercise equipment that we took advantage of because walking up the hugemungous hill wasn't enough for us being the exercise buffs that we are... Then on the way down we found a SUPER awesome shop where we bought 3 dresses, 2 hats and a scarf. Back to the hotel for the afternoon rain and a nap and then out to dinner.

The Cathedral in San Cristobal
What did I say about the people watching? Wait, have I said that part yet? Anyway...

The next day walked to another church and market and then took a combi to San Juan Chamula, which is an indigenous village 10km away from San Cristobal. It was kind of nuts that day because it was the festival day of it's patron saint, surprisingly named San Juan. We didn't say long because it was a nuthouse, but we did see lots of interesting indigenous costumes (outfits? what's the PC way to say that?) and some super interesting fruits called Rambutans.

This is the other side of the city, another excellent hill. I like the pic because it shows how the clouds rolled in around 4pm and covered the town for a couple of hours.

Some of the hoards of people in the zocalo of San Juan Chamula.
Some styling gentlemen in San Juan Chamula
Rambutans! Weird!

Then we caught the combi back to San Cristobal and walked around the market, eying wool sweaters and socks and leather goods and amber and turquoise. We didn't have any fun at all. Then we went to the Na Bolom museum (Jaguar House in modern Maya) which is a museum and research site that was started by two archeologists from Europe who came to Mexico in the early 1940s and studied the Lancandon peoples that lived in the jungles around Palenque. It used to be their house and then gradually morphed into a museum and library. My favorite part were the pictures they took that depicted the daily life of the Lancandon. Then out to dinner at another super yummy Italian restaurant.

Inside of Na Bolom

The next day we spent the morning shopping a LOT and sitting in front of the cathedral, watching the melting pot of people that congregate in San Cristobal. There were people from all over. There were your typical dirty hippies who smelled serious about being hippies, Argentinians, Germans, Spaniards, Frenchies, Belgians, various indigenous groups and of course, two Zihuatanejenses. It was super good people-watching. That's enough of the word 'super' for awhile, ok? Ok.

A stinky hippie with excellent diaper pants.
Cutie Pies

Then we bussed back to Tuxtla and got ready to return to Zihua. We were excited to get back to our own pillows as the pillows in Chiapas appear to be large. We watched Mexico beat the US (woohoo) in the Gold Cup 4 - 2 and it was a good night.

That's it, phew! I won't bore you with anything else. Tomorrow my babies graduate from high school and I'm expecting to cry, so we'll see how that goes. Until next time my faithful readers!

XOXO,
Leah