Mexican Basketball and Yoga in Spanish

Close-up of the edible bugs.

My new hand embroidered clothes!

Mezcal Making

Our room at Posada Ganesha

 

Monday, March 12, 2012

Today we left Oaxaca after getting some fruit, vegetables, meat and chocolate frio con leche at the market.  We drove east on Mexican highway 190 stopping only once at a mescal distillery before we reached the Pacific coast.  The area that we drove through was a mountain desert ecosystem where the world’s best mescal is produced.  There are wooden shack and tin roof distilleries everywhere.  The one that we stopped at was just a dude sleeping in the shade of his shack waiting for his mescal to ferment.  Mescal is a broad category of liquor produced from the agave plant of which tequila is one variety.  This guy’s distillery setup consisted of a millstone pulled in a circle by a horse to crush the juice out of the severed tips of the plant.  Next the pulpy juice is thrown into large wooden open vats to ferment.  Then comes the distillation where it is boiled and the final product comes out of the coil.  There is also some part of the process where a large fire pit full of hot stones is involved but my Spanish is not great so I didn’t exactly catch everything he was saying.  We got 2 bottles from him, one Anejo and one Blanco for a total of 50 pesos ($4.25 US).

After that everything was running smooth until about 5 hours into the drive we came upon traffic backed up in a rural area where there should not have been a traffic jam. 

We pulled up to the back of the line, put the truck in park and I got out to see what was going on.  I asked an old man parked in front of us but I could not understand his response so I walked up to the front of the line of cars, trucks and buses.  At the front there were logs and rocks purposely placed in the road along with a car parked sideways blocking both lanes of traffic.   The car had a bed sheet draped over the side with a message painted on it.  The message said something like “Libre De Beto”.  So this whole thing was a public protest by a big group of people there to free this guy De Beto who the police had put in jail.

At this point the traffic was backed up in both directions for a good quarter mile and I was pissed.  We were making great time up until that point and now here were these idiots messing up everybody’s schedule.  What the hell were they blocking the road for?  If they had a problem with the police why didn’t they blockade the police station?  It was really hot out and there were probably 50 cars just sitting on either side of this roadblock unable to get through and as far as I could tell none of the people being inconvenienced by the protest were the ones holding De Beto prisoner.  So myself and a few others conversed loudly en Espanol within earshot of the protesters about what dumbasses they were and then I stared them down with the deathstare and shook my head slowly from side to side to express my displeasure with their selfish action. 

After about a half hour of waiting (people waiting near the front of the line had been there 3 hours) they started to take down their silly banners and move their rocks.  I thought that maybe my imposing stare had something to do with it but then I saw that 6 police officers with machine guns had just shown up.  It was about time.  There is no way that idiots like these guys could pull a stunt like that in the USA.   Before the police showed up I was working up the nerve to organize all of the men waiting on my side of the block to just walk up together, move the blockade, tell the protesters “Tough shit”, and drive on thru. 

Anyway, we eventually got thru.  Marcie did a lot of the driving today thru the state of Oaxaca, into the state of Chiapas and now we are parked at a park watching kids play soccer on a basketball court in the town of Cintalapa, Chiapas.  You see a lot of basketball courts in small towns all over Mexico but you never see anyone playing basketball in them, only soccer.

Once the soccer game died down I approached some high school aged kids about playing hoops.  So we had a game of 2 on 2.  They play a little different than I am used to.  First, they take the ball out under the hoop instead of the top of the key.  When they did this at first I thought that they wanted to play full court and were going to shoot at the other hoop, so I backed off my guy to let them inbound.  But my guy turned around and put in a layup at the hoop they just inbounded under.  1-0 them.  They play make-it-take-it so it was their ball.  My teammate wasn’t playing defense with as much intensity as I would have liked and got beat for a layup.  2-0.  We finally got the ball back and missed our shot.  When the other team got the ball back I found out another way that they play differently than I am used to.    On the rebound of our shot the other team did not clear the ball out to the 3-point line but instead put it right back up.  3-0.  Eventually, with considerable effort we came back and won 10-7.  That about did it for the day.  We had already introduced ourselves to the local police and they were very friendly so I don’t think that we will have a problem spending the night here.  Tomorrow we are off to San Cristobal de las Casas.   

~Jon

Tuesday, March 13 2012

After about 5 hours of driving, a breakfast of tamales and a stop at the local Wal-Mart to buy a new Tupperware for our dry goods box we made it to the crisp mountain air town of San Cristobal de las Casas, We went through several military checkpoints today with only two of them asking us to stop.  However, the two stops today were what these stops are supposed to be like (they ask us where we’re from, where we are going and look superficially in our truck then send us on our way).  Completely legitimate.   To get here we continued to drive up in elevation and are now in a very comfortable environment at about 6500’.  The air is fresh and crisp, the trees are green and tall, the buildings are old and medieval looking and the town is very walkable. 

We got a double room tonight at Posada Ganesha.  This place serves as a hostel type hotel with private rooms, dorm rooms and shared baths but they have hot water!  It’s also a Yoga studio and they have breakfast included for 250pesos.  The Yoga classes are daily at 7:30pm so we were able to attend this evening’s class which is free but you can give a donation if you like.  The class was taught in Spanish and it was Kundalini Yoga focused mainly on breathing and meditation.  I thought it would be a little difficult to follow in Spanish but it wasn’t and both Jon and I really enjoyed the class.

We did some walking through the town today since we got to town around noon and we ate lunch, snacks, dinner and visited several of the market areas.  I got a pair of embroidered pants, which I really like.  The ladies around here make really extraordinary textiles and I wanted to buy lots of stuff, but alas we don’t have the room.  Today, for lunch we went to a restaurant that advertised organic food.  I picked out an item on the menu that said it was a local dish called empenades so I was pretty excited.  However, when I received the dish it looked like a bologna sandwich with avocado and cheese.  I wasn’t very excited but it turned out to be ok.  Our dinner was much more authentic and it was the first time we got to try to famous deep fried pork skins which we added as a crunchy topping to our soup.   This region is also known for its chocolate drinks.  These are made from ground up cocoa nuts with milk and almonds and sugar added.  They are the absolute best chocolate drinks we’ve ever had and are good served caliente (hot) or frio (cold). 

Tomorrow, we head on to yet another climate.  It will be jungle where are going to spend the last days of our Mexican leg in the Yucatan.  Then on to our third country, Belize.  Hasta lluego.