5. No smiling, please! (Amy, 6/5/07)

Well I am smiling because we´re only on day 2 and feels like a year.
At this moment, Craig is writing about our great dinner last night and how tasty it was. (unfortunately before I published this, he accidentally erased it so maybe he is starting over with his account of our day).

Last night at a very nice local restaurant called El Fogon de Jovel, which is turistic but lots of atmosfera, we had a great local chicken soup with calabashes and chayote, to die for, and a poke in a rich red sauce. Thinking of this soup reminds me, there are all kinds of hidden ingredients in the cooking, herbs that we don´t usually use like epazote and other things. They make a simple chicken broth radiate. How can we ever learn what they use...

This morning we got up and walked about 6 blocks to the traditional market, and ended up breakfasting there in one of a group of stalls in a little courtyard; we chose it because of the sweetness of the girl who was very seriously and not smilingly trying to encourage us there. ´would you like to breakfast, we have beef broth and chicken mole and pork chops and stew...´- a long list of what we would not think of as breakfast items. So we sat down in our plastic chairs on the wet cement and the plastic laminate tablecloth and soon many, many other folks came too so we must have made a great choice. A small yellow puppy kept trying to join us but the ´hostess´kept pushing him out with a broomstick. She was wearing a nice cotton floorlength skirt from India with bangles on it, which seem to be popular with the young folks, it was dragging in the last night´s rainwater. So back to the herbs... while people were coming and being waved in and seated and ordering, and we were eating our huevos rancheros and hot chocolate, meanwhile, local ladies would drift by with packets of fresh leaves and herbs that they brought in from the countryside, and she would call back to the kitchenette area,´luci, you need any epazote today? You need any fresh saints herb today? Holy herb?´as the different ladies came by. We were in a corner of the market where people emerged from one tightly packed alley and turned a corner past the juicemaker´s stall into another. A lady with a raucous voice was singing loud Pentecostal songs off key, turned out because she didn´t see too well and she was fundraising for herself. We had a nice time. The different colors of different towns came by, mostlly in the ladies clothing, sometimes in the men´s.

Craig will tell you all we did. I liked best a little exhibit in the wonderful house of Trudy Blom, the place where she and her wandered turned archaeologist husband settled, a set of houses around 3 courtyards, now full of old photos and old memories of the local mayan indians. In one room they showed how the local costumes have changed, between 1960 and now. It was great. Turns out the ladies wearing the turquoise, blue and green glowing costumes used to have a very simple costume then got more flowery then changed to this very elaborate brocade style embroidery over the years but always preserving some customary elements. So what I see for sale now is nothing like it was but it is so cool! So now I feel free to buy some if I can find one that would fit, just to celebrate the evolution of art. We saw lots of other great small museums and stores where they are conserving the old weavings, but meanwhile, to see these girls still choose a costume, and make it ´stylish´, and use it while they are talking to their boyfriends on their cell phones, well, welcome to the 21st century! At least all the traditions aren´t going to disappear. Just transmute. Transmogrify. Whatever.

Another thing I really liked today was when we went way out to this craft village, which is having a new town square built for it, and we were practically ignored, the ladies are like, well, we make this stuff and we have our markets and if someone came out to see us, well, we are too dignified and they can humble themselves. So after asking some questions of different people we went to see a local artist, who didn´t have anything done, and then he sent us back down to the crafts stalls by the highway. There we found some really cool stuff, and again, these 3 gorgeous ladies painting their clay art they had made, and again, very dignified, very reserved. We ended up buying 3 really interesting pieces from one lady, and she was very polite and just fine, but not a smile for us! Just dignity. It was very nice. We got a monkey, a jaguar and a pot with 3 jaguar heads coming out of it. We would have LOVED to ask her for her name or her picture, we thought she was phenomenal, but she was really kinda intimidating! i loved her. I loved the experience. The artists keep their prices fairly high, they won´t bargain down, I think that, because of all the exposure they have had now during this recent war and the net access they got, they know what their stuff is worth in the world. They don´t barter it down. Too much.

We went way out to this ceramics village, called Amatenango, because earlier in our wanderings, we met a really lovely smiley lady called Paula Salazar Santiago, she has a shop called Él Encuentro, the find, and it´s on Real de Guadalupe 63A. And she has really great, old weavings and embroideries. She liked talking about ´the old days´. And she told us Amatenango was just 10 minutes away, why not just go there, don´t buy pottery in town. So as a result we snagged a cab and he drove us there, but it was a lot more than 10 minutes! it was maybe 30 each way... a great, wild ride up over the mountains, which are sometimes pine covered, sometimes over cut, with limestone ridges exposed by the overzealous farmers, with lots of small farms built mostly of wood. And lots of soldiers... unfortunately. The area is like the Green Zone - small niches of security for the soldiers who come from the rest of Mexico, trying hard to prevent another independent uprising. Very interesting. Very much an occupied state.

Another big highlight was the tiny Museum of Jade. It´s mostly copies we believe, of jade masterpieces that are sitting up in Harvard´s and Yale´s and Mexico city´s museums, but they are great and informative, really nicely displayed, and we really loved a full size copy they did of King Pakal´s tomb in one of the main palaces in Palenque. Amazing, done in what they think were the original colors. They mocked up the whole immense limestone tomb and the room it´s in, and all the murals, and buried him with all his jade riches, but as he would have appeared the moment he was placed there, with all his clothing and finery and a real face below his jade mask. Quite impressive. And the owner also made a full size model of the immense Mayan structure he is buried in, that you can take apart and realize how incredibly deeply in this palace his tomb is hidden. Really need. We will see the palace in Palenque, and it will be the more magical for this.

Tomorrow we go out to San Juan Chamula and Zinacantan and then to Ocosingo for the night. We think. One day at a time... living from ATM withdrawal to ATm withdrawal, since Craig´s card for some reason won´t work here, so we can only use mine. If we get stranded, we´ll let you know.