Monday, January 4, 2010
Painting from Cultural Bazaar
We bought this great painting by H. Landa at the Bazar del Sabado y Tianguis. It's a market held every Saturday--an outdoor painting and arts-and-crafts and an indoor craft gallery (higher quality). Inside the market building we had freshly made corn tortillas--very tasty. The artist's other paintngs are seen hanging on the fence in the park. Now I have to make sure that Air Canada doesn't crush the painting on my flight back.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Ohana means nobody gets left behind (or forgotten)*
Natasha and I aren’t exactly what you would call organized-tour folk. Vacations, from where we sit (ideally, on a beach enjoying delicious mojitos), should be about taking it easy and taking in the sites at your own pace. Pre-set agendas, set times at various predetermined locations – invariably not enough or too much – all that rushing around while a tour boss rides herd over everyone: it’s all a bit too much like work.
But sometimes a tour is the best way to get to something you want to see. Late last week we were in Oaxaca, an artistic centre of Mexico with a couple of interesting ruins close to town, but far enough to require some sort of transportation. And so we booked a tour with a company called Monte Alban Tours. The itinerary: the world’s oldest tree, a Zapotec rug-weaving demonstration, the ancient city of Mitla, and a stop at a market about 30 minutes outside of Oaxaca.
For all our dislike of tours, they do have their upsides. You don’t have to worry about tiny things like finding your way around a strange country where you don’t speak the language (I speak Spanish; Natasha doesn’t) and you might meet some interesting people. Even the set timetable can be a bonus: at least you know that you’ll be back in town in time for dinner.
At least, that’s the theory. Through our guesthouse, we signed up for the three-hour tour – that alone should have been a sign that we were headed for trouble – only to be told that they were offering a special that day: a six-hour tour to a waterfall and a mescal factory on top of the tree, carpets, ruins and market. Yet when we were picked up by the tour bus, the tour had shrunk back to the tree, carpets, ruins and market. Which was fine by us: we were mainly interested in the ruins.
Less fine was the bus or, rather, minivan. Fifteen people crammed into a 14-seat minivan without air conditioning is exactly as much fun as it sounds. Or perhaps that was just their way of building anticipation for our arrival at The Tree in the small town of Tule, 20 minutes later.
While many communities around the world are based on various wood-products industries, I feel confident in claiming that Tule is the world’s only tree (singular)-based economy. What can I say about this tree? It is wide (54 metres), though not tall, and old (2,000-3,000 years). Given the fact that it requires over 10,000 gallons of water per day to survive in a very dry area plagued by water shortages, its continued existence seems to depend exclusively on tourists (like us) dumb enough to pay five pesos to be near – but not within touching distance – of the tree. The fact that tourists (including us) would pay any amount of money to be near a tree (a tree!) that you can see just fine outside the tree’s fence is proof that being on vacation robs people of any sense when it comes to money.
We did manage to catch a break at The Tree, as we were switched to an air-conditioned van in which we were able to enjoy the novelty of each of us having a seat to ourselves.
Which brings us to the big double-edged sword of organized tours: the other tourists. We were the youngest ones on the bus by a good 15 years, except for a Chinese woman, Joy, a Mandarin teacher at the University of Virginia. We immediately hit it off with her, enjoyed some good conversation and exchanged Facebook info (so very 2009).
Talking with people who are doing interesting things is one of the best things about traveling. In Puerto Escondido, we learned about the problems with patenting seeds and the difficulty of importing corn into Mexico from some folks from Idaho, and talked Australian politics and speeding laws with a whole slew of Aussies. Unfortunately, for all the interesting, interested people one meets while traveling, one inevitably comes across their boorish opposites.
Sitting in the middle seats of the minivan, our idyllic conversation with Joy was swamped in volume by two older American women, friends of a sort. They were walking stereotypes of the Ugly American: self-impressed, self-involved, spectacularly dull and unwilling to let anyone else get a word in edgewise. One sat in the front of the van, the other in the back, dominating the hapless souls unlucky enough to be trapped next to them. Natasha theorizes that each one’s need to dominate conversation was so strong that the two could not be seated together.
Oh, what we learned from them! “I have 20 close friends with whom I do various activities, such as skiing, but not one of them is a woman of substance,” claimed one of the white-haired matrons, whose lack of self-awareness was nothing short of remarkable. Sounding like a character out of an Edith Wharton novel, the van was informed haughtily of their real-estate holdings, including a beautiful apartment in San Miguel – a town described by the Rough Guide to Mexico as “inward-looking, often pretentious and gossip-ridden,” which, judging from our betters in the van, is exactly right. “My apartment costs more because it has so much light. I always need to be in the light,” claimed one or the other (to be truthful, they have blurred together in my mind into a single unpleasant stereotype). From their freely offered biographies, they were easy to peg as artist hangers-on – the type of people who wear beaded necklaces, flowing scarves, custom-designed earrings and who just won’t shut up about how now is the perfect time to purchase property in Mexico. Oh, and whose command of Spanish, despite spending half the year here, is practically non-existent, a mixture of gestures and English pronounced with a faux-Spanish accent. One even claimed to have her own personal shaman, a clear sign that they exist in their own peculiar world.
In short, they were not the type of people with whom you would want to be trapped on a desert island, or, say, depend on to help convince the tour driver not to abandon one of his charges in a market 30 minutes outside of Oaxaca.
To be honest, I’d always wondered what happens when someone is, let’s say, 20 minutes late getting back to an organized tour. Would the tour guide go look for the lost soul, ignoring his set schedule to ensure that, in the proud tradition of the U.S. Army Rangers, Disney cartoons and tour guides the world over, that no one gets left behind? Would the other tourists, in the spirit of common humanity and the fact that you’ve all just spent four hours together, insist that the need not to strand a newfound companion far from home in an unfamiliar small town where they don’t speak the language outweighs their desire to hit the bar before the end of happy hour?
Apparently the mercenaries running Monte Alban Tours and our Fellow Americans have never seen Saving Private Ryan, let alone Lilo and Stitch. Apparently for them, completing a tour one tourist short of what you started out with is considered to be an acceptable loss. And so, when Joy was 15 minutes late returning to the bus from her explorations of what is an incredibly rambling market, she was greeted by Natasha, sitting alone on the curb. I was in the market, looking for Joy.
“The tour bus left,” reported Natasha to an incredulous Joy.
“No, really,” said Joy. “Where’s the bus?”
The bus had, indeed, left. Nobody even suggested that the tour bus wait, although one woman, an American who had been living in Oaxaca for the past year, pointed out the direction of the second-class bus station from where we could catch a ride back to Oaxaca, since Natasha and I had made it clear that we weren’t going to leave Joy behind. One of the Ugly American women charmingly dismissed the whole situation, opining that Joy was operating on “Chinese time,” as in: “I remember I had a dinner party for some Chinese and American friends. The Americans showed up on time at 8 p.m., while the Chinese showed up at 11:30 p.m.” She somehow forgot to mention that at that same party, she even shook the hand of a Chinese man and didn’t even think anything of it.
The irony is that getting left behind turned out to be the best part of the day. Liberated from the shackles of the itinerary, out of range of the fatal snobbery of the American artist hangers-on, the three of us were free to explore the market, checking out the food stalls, the crafts, the bootleg CDs and DVDs, just soaking up the ambiance in a way that’s impossible when you’re thinking about getting to your next event. We enjoyed a great meal: I had some of the tastiest roast chicken I’d ever come across and Joy and Natasha both had some great tacos.
As for getting back to town? Piece of cake: 75 pesos for a half-hour taxi ride. And the lack of pretentious gits going on about their love of aht? Priceless.
* With apologies to Disney, Lilo and Stitch and the people of Hawaii.
But sometimes a tour is the best way to get to something you want to see. Late last week we were in Oaxaca, an artistic centre of Mexico with a couple of interesting ruins close to town, but far enough to require some sort of transportation. And so we booked a tour with a company called Monte Alban Tours. The itinerary: the world’s oldest tree, a Zapotec rug-weaving demonstration, the ancient city of Mitla, and a stop at a market about 30 minutes outside of Oaxaca.
For all our dislike of tours, they do have their upsides. You don’t have to worry about tiny things like finding your way around a strange country where you don’t speak the language (I speak Spanish; Natasha doesn’t) and you might meet some interesting people. Even the set timetable can be a bonus: at least you know that you’ll be back in town in time for dinner.
At least, that’s the theory. Through our guesthouse, we signed up for the three-hour tour – that alone should have been a sign that we were headed for trouble – only to be told that they were offering a special that day: a six-hour tour to a waterfall and a mescal factory on top of the tree, carpets, ruins and market. Yet when we were picked up by the tour bus, the tour had shrunk back to the tree, carpets, ruins and market. Which was fine by us: we were mainly interested in the ruins.
Less fine was the bus or, rather, minivan. Fifteen people crammed into a 14-seat minivan without air conditioning is exactly as much fun as it sounds. Or perhaps that was just their way of building anticipation for our arrival at The Tree in the small town of Tule, 20 minutes later.
While many communities around the world are based on various wood-products industries, I feel confident in claiming that Tule is the world’s only tree (singular)-based economy. What can I say about this tree? It is wide (54 metres), though not tall, and old (2,000-3,000 years). Given the fact that it requires over 10,000 gallons of water per day to survive in a very dry area plagued by water shortages, its continued existence seems to depend exclusively on tourists (like us) dumb enough to pay five pesos to be near – but not within touching distance – of the tree. The fact that tourists (including us) would pay any amount of money to be near a tree (a tree!) that you can see just fine outside the tree’s fence is proof that being on vacation robs people of any sense when it comes to money.
We did manage to catch a break at The Tree, as we were switched to an air-conditioned van in which we were able to enjoy the novelty of each of us having a seat to ourselves.
Which brings us to the big double-edged sword of organized tours: the other tourists. We were the youngest ones on the bus by a good 15 years, except for a Chinese woman, Joy, a Mandarin teacher at the University of Virginia. We immediately hit it off with her, enjoyed some good conversation and exchanged Facebook info (so very 2009).
Talking with people who are doing interesting things is one of the best things about traveling. In Puerto Escondido, we learned about the problems with patenting seeds and the difficulty of importing corn into Mexico from some folks from Idaho, and talked Australian politics and speeding laws with a whole slew of Aussies. Unfortunately, for all the interesting, interested people one meets while traveling, one inevitably comes across their boorish opposites.
Sitting in the middle seats of the minivan, our idyllic conversation with Joy was swamped in volume by two older American women, friends of a sort. They were walking stereotypes of the Ugly American: self-impressed, self-involved, spectacularly dull and unwilling to let anyone else get a word in edgewise. One sat in the front of the van, the other in the back, dominating the hapless souls unlucky enough to be trapped next to them. Natasha theorizes that each one’s need to dominate conversation was so strong that the two could not be seated together.
Oh, what we learned from them! “I have 20 close friends with whom I do various activities, such as skiing, but not one of them is a woman of substance,” claimed one of the white-haired matrons, whose lack of self-awareness was nothing short of remarkable. Sounding like a character out of an Edith Wharton novel, the van was informed haughtily of their real-estate holdings, including a beautiful apartment in San Miguel – a town described by the Rough Guide to Mexico as “inward-looking, often pretentious and gossip-ridden,” which, judging from our betters in the van, is exactly right. “My apartment costs more because it has so much light. I always need to be in the light,” claimed one or the other (to be truthful, they have blurred together in my mind into a single unpleasant stereotype). From their freely offered biographies, they were easy to peg as artist hangers-on – the type of people who wear beaded necklaces, flowing scarves, custom-designed earrings and who just won’t shut up about how now is the perfect time to purchase property in Mexico. Oh, and whose command of Spanish, despite spending half the year here, is practically non-existent, a mixture of gestures and English pronounced with a faux-Spanish accent. One even claimed to have her own personal shaman, a clear sign that they exist in their own peculiar world.
In short, they were not the type of people with whom you would want to be trapped on a desert island, or, say, depend on to help convince the tour driver not to abandon one of his charges in a market 30 minutes outside of Oaxaca.
To be honest, I’d always wondered what happens when someone is, let’s say, 20 minutes late getting back to an organized tour. Would the tour guide go look for the lost soul, ignoring his set schedule to ensure that, in the proud tradition of the U.S. Army Rangers, Disney cartoons and tour guides the world over, that no one gets left behind? Would the other tourists, in the spirit of common humanity and the fact that you’ve all just spent four hours together, insist that the need not to strand a newfound companion far from home in an unfamiliar small town where they don’t speak the language outweighs their desire to hit the bar before the end of happy hour?
Apparently the mercenaries running Monte Alban Tours and our Fellow Americans have never seen Saving Private Ryan, let alone Lilo and Stitch. Apparently for them, completing a tour one tourist short of what you started out with is considered to be an acceptable loss. And so, when Joy was 15 minutes late returning to the bus from her explorations of what is an incredibly rambling market, she was greeted by Natasha, sitting alone on the curb. I was in the market, looking for Joy.
“The tour bus left,” reported Natasha to an incredulous Joy.
“No, really,” said Joy. “Where’s the bus?”
The bus had, indeed, left. Nobody even suggested that the tour bus wait, although one woman, an American who had been living in Oaxaca for the past year, pointed out the direction of the second-class bus station from where we could catch a ride back to Oaxaca, since Natasha and I had made it clear that we weren’t going to leave Joy behind. One of the Ugly American women charmingly dismissed the whole situation, opining that Joy was operating on “Chinese time,” as in: “I remember I had a dinner party for some Chinese and American friends. The Americans showed up on time at 8 p.m., while the Chinese showed up at 11:30 p.m.” She somehow forgot to mention that at that same party, she even shook the hand of a Chinese man and didn’t even think anything of it.
The irony is that getting left behind turned out to be the best part of the day. Liberated from the shackles of the itinerary, out of range of the fatal snobbery of the American artist hangers-on, the three of us were free to explore the market, checking out the food stalls, the crafts, the bootleg CDs and DVDs, just soaking up the ambiance in a way that’s impossible when you’re thinking about getting to your next event. We enjoyed a great meal: I had some of the tastiest roast chicken I’d ever come across and Joy and Natasha both had some great tacos.
As for getting back to town? Piece of cake: 75 pesos for a half-hour taxi ride. And the lack of pretentious gits going on about their love of aht? Priceless.
* With apologies to Disney, Lilo and Stitch and the people of Hawaii.
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