Puerto Escondido Reprised: A Few Final Notes & Images from Oaxaca's "Hidden" Port

La Bandera de Mexico, Santuario de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe 

The name Puerto Escondido means "Hidden Port" in Spanish. That's magic, as with all things the name and the actuality are fused in mystical fashion..


It's occurred to me that I've spent too much time on this here blog complaining about Mexico and Mexicans.  I need to right that karmic balance, to testify to my true affection and love for this magnificent place.  Let the record herewith stand and reflect the fact that I love this crazy country and its people fiercely, and that the pleasures of being here among them are innumerable.  So many, and so exquisite, in fact, that it is overwhelms to recount them.  


First, let me begin with how much I like the Mexican flag.  A red white and green tricolor in the tradition of the French Revolution (Viva la Republica Mexicana: Secular, Anti- Clerical, Revolutionary..)  it is understated yet fiercely emphatic, much like Mexico itself.


And if you'll notice, there's an eagle eating a snake as the crest in the center.  This, I did not know until recently, is a depiction of the founding myth of the primordial establishment of the Aztec capital in the Valle de Mexico (the ancient Pre-Columbian capital, today's Ciudad Mexico).  The Aztec tribe had been wandering, and had come into the great valley when they saw the eagle eating the snake, as depicted.  This was interpreted by their priests as being an omen that that was their place.  


It strikes me as being much like the Roman foundational myth of Romulus and Remus suckling the she-wolf.. The icon has that same vital atavistic force.. 

That first image of the Mexican flag above - it seems really evocative to me, which is why I use it here, as I begin to praise Mexico - I took in Mexico City.   Note the overcast sky, something I haven't seen in the past month since being in Oaxaca.  Because that the weather here is uniformly beautiful, and utterly constant because the Pacific keeps the temperature and humidity stable, and outside the rainy season it rarely rains. We've had one brief afternoon storm since I've been here, the rest of the time it's been absolutely sunny, warm, perfect. 


Let me show you exactly how perfect:  


I found these neat climate charts online, and they paint a picture of paradise, better than Paul Gauguin I say.  I think they are poetical, they make me glad to study them:

Average Maximum/Minimum Temperature	Rainfall and Humidity

When I arrived in here in Puerto at the beginning of the month, the rainy season had just ended, and the land is verdant until say about February when it all begins to turn brown, becoming sepia until the rains return.  The temperature and humidity remain constant all year long, though:

Average monthly:	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Rainfall(inches):	0.2	0.0	0.0	0.0	1.4	11.1	10.1	9.9	13.8	6.3	1.1	0.3
Temperature(°F):	80	80	79	81	83	84	84	84	83	84	82	81
Humidity(%):	81	79	79	77	77	79	77	78	80	80	81	81

The first few scuba dives I made here (of about twenty all told) they had me wear a wetsuit, until I told them that no self respecting Mainer who was whelped frolicking in the Atlantic (where it never tops 60 F / 15 C in summertime) could wear prophylactic blubber that makes you feel like a overstuffed bratwurst, not when the water is as warm as the air.    


No.  Like hell was I going to use a wetsuit!  Even with the thermocline at 20 or 30 feet, it is still bathwater.  The Mexicans were very impressed.  Bred Yankee tough. We gringos don't play. Nossir.

I just realized I've not posted a map of where Puerto is.  This next chart clears that problem up.  Puerto Escondido is that blue dot on the right of the orange balloon of warmth erupting off the Mexican coast into the Central Pacific, on the chart below. 

Which merely shows that the waters here are some of the warmest in the world:

But enough fun with maps, charts and graphs..

Now for some images I took this afternoon, when I belatedly realized how derelict I've been here with the camera.  Like with my Spanish I have been putting no effort into mastering the new Nikon SLR I bought this summer.  Like with the language I just figure I'll learn by doing it in unstructered informal fashion, without much self induced stress.  

But in my haphazard indolence I've been missing opportunities to document some interesting stuff.. 


I've also been loathe to take images of strangers.  I respect their privacy, and felt awkward and too obvious usually.  Today, I decided to hell with it, I am going to try and take some people pictures anyway.  I decided to try and be as subtle as possible, and start learning the art of understated observation.  Being deftly unobtrusive, while mastering shutter speed.. Shooting quickly and intuitively, trying to catch the fluid moment in poetic stasis, nailing the moment..

The main drag along the beach here. Very chill.

I went to the tourist beach here, this afternoon.  It's a 25 peso (2 buck) and five minute cab ride from here.  Known as Zicatela, it's a (over a kilometer long, I'd wager) beach across the harbor opposite my digs here. In the three weeks I've been in Puerto I'd been there twice.   Unlike the Playa Principal in front of my hotel, it's directly exposed to the open ocean, and the waves that come in are imposing. The swells today averaged about 5', but were to me (a Mainer, born where waves are frigid but understated) still impressive.  

The surf here is famous, and attracts surfers from all over. There are several surfing competitions here a year, and the surfing X Games have been held here. In fact, Zicatela's surf is so monumental it is christened the Mexican Pipeline by the surfing community. May through July the surf breaks sometimes as much as ten times the height it was today. As I say today was awesome enough. It's always unwise to go into the waves there without a board because the currents are dangerous. 

Anyhow, that's just to say that the gringos hang at Zicatela.  I wasn't interested in that scene, so I avoided it.  Too many stereotypical surfer dudes and hippy chicks, all into Marley and ganga.  Not my set, really. 

Still, I feel I should share this video of what the surf is like here in the summer. Saves me bothering to upload my own mediocre, far less impressive clips..  

As you'll see the sea is much more massive than today.  The largest waves today (which were breaking quickly and unevenly, and so weren't very surfable) were between 5 and 10', which is still pretty damn big if you are only used to the waves we get on the Atlantic.  

As you'll see here, they can get to be 30 to 50' during the peak season, or storms.  Absolutely huge, taller than houses:

Pretty awesome.  Magical, even.

This, Magic Seaweed, is a site I used this past month to plan my dives. It's for surfers, but the same information is useful to forecast water clarity. High swells (good surfing) stirs sediment and usually brings in plankton, which clouds the water and reduces visibility dramatically.  Low swells (bad surfing) makes for good diving, in other words. 

When the swells were forecasted at two feet or so, that's when we would dive.  I mean, I dove in murkier conditions, too.  But I really made sure to hit the low surf days.  

My end of the bay from Zicatela

Opposite view, facing away from town.

Dramatic crags divide the beaches, and are good places to body surf..

Now, like I say, I've preferred to hang out on the less glamorous Playa Principal.  

There are a half dozen good restaurants on the beach, and the dive boats are based here. 

This is where the authentic Puerto (the town that is behind the crest that rises immediately behind the beach, where all the natives live) meets the sea.  The harbor master and the Navy compound (there are always a few sailors hanging out near the beach in fatigues, carrying carbines - I feel my impotence as a documentarian here, I should have taken far more shots of the local color.. ) and the fishing fleet are all there.  There are dozens of boats anchored in the harbor and pulled up on the beach.  

There's a levee that shelters the beach, so the waves in the cove behind it are no where near as large here. The levee and the cliffs beyond it are excellent snorkeling, too.  

The lack of intimidating surf is the reason Mexicans congregate, to fish and bask in the water here.  So the crowd is usually very blue collar and almost entirely Mexican.  A stark contrast to Zicatela, in other words. 

This past weekend there was a fishing derby with large prizes (a new Dodge Ram and a VW SUV for the largest catch) and they had a stage and all sorts of other stuff set up along the beach.  There was constant Banda and Techno blaring, and a live announcer blabbing away almost constantly.  This noise began - I'm not exaggerating, though I wish I were - from Friday thru Sunday at 6 am, when the fleet of fishermen departed for the day.  

I travel with earplugs for a reason, people.  

They were out for sailfish, which I guess is a type of swordfish.  These things can get to be like 6 to 8 feet long, and can weigh well over 100 pounds, I'd guess.. Based on the monsters I saw hung by the stage (which again, I never thought to photograph, I am so sorry my public..) 

Here are some shots of my preferred habitat, hanging with the Oaxacans:

Roughneck, Hardscabble Oaxaca.

El Cocho sobre el playa.. 

Families Frolicking in the Sea..

 Women here balance stuff on their heads, impressing and amusing me..

"Espero.. "

The details of this last shot amuse me. First, he's half crackin' and fanny packin' boldly.  Which is awesome. Then, he's wearing crocs. And not just crocs, but orange crocs. That's a sartorial choice before which I can only stand in awe and applaud. I'm busting the crocs here, myself, boldly flying in the face of all that is fashionable, a true woman repeller. But I need shamefully acknowledge that mine are beige. No where near as daring as this muchacho, here.   

Then, he was repeatedly scribbling a word on the sand with a stick. I stood and watched him, pretending to be taking pictures of the beach, while surreptitiously taking shots of him.  

The tide kept coming and washing away his work, reminding me of this:

ONE day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washèd it away: Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide and made my pains his prey..  

I imagined he must be writing the name of his beloved. I was bemused, and touched. I couldn't read what he was writing and didn't want to be too obvious I was watching.. It had to wait until I got back to the room and could zoom the photographs in on the word.  

He was writing espero.  Again, and again.  I have multiple shots of him doing it, always writing it anew after the tide repeatedly came and made his pains its prey.  Perhaps a dozen times while I watched.

Espero. 

That my friends, means I hope.  

I hope.  How beautiful, How sad,  How glad..

This boat struck me, especially, for some reason..

One coconut two coconut three coconut four..

I took this shot walking down the main drag in town here, accidentally using my groovy Nikon "color sketch" mode.  When I got back and saw it, I loved it.   

That my friends is how Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca feels in a snapshot.  

Study that image with a beer in your hand. 

Now you feel just like you're here.

One last requisite gratuitous self portrait of yours truly in the hall outside my choice digs..

Pure Sex..

Tomorrow I'm leaving here for Ciudad Oaxaca, San Cristobal, Chiapas, and eventually the Yucatan.  I made my reservation to return home for Christmas this afternoon, I'm flying from Cancun into Orlando on the 20th.  I come bearing gifts.  Which is to say several bottles of tequila and Mezcal, amongst other beautiful things. 

And with that newsflash, I am off to bed.. Buen' Noche..

----

Song of the Day: Awake My Soul

Lyrics:

How fickle my heart and how woozy my eyes
I struggle to find any truth in your lies
And now my heart stumbles on things I don't know
This weakness I feel I must finally show


Lend me your hand and we'll conquer them all
But lend me your heart and I'll just let you fall
Lend me your eyes I can change what you see
But your soul you must keep, totally free
Har har, har har, har har, har har


In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die
Where you invest your love, you invest your life
In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die
Where you invest your love, you invest your life


Awake my soul, awake my soul
Awake my soul
You were made to meet your maker
Awake my soul, awake my soul
Awake my soul
You were made to meet your maker
You were made to meet your maker

---

Oaxacan Reverie

So, the past week I've been diving a half dozen times, gone snorkeling, been to daily mass, and read two books.  


I've been eating out at the same four or five restaurants, usually only doing soup and salad once a day.  I'm tired of meat, having eaten far too much of it for weeks before I got here.  I've also been eating (okay, binging, because I'm usually eating 6-8 a day) Mexican twinkies and a sleeve or two a day of vanilla/butterscotch creme sandwich cookies for snacks, which are even more disgustingly delicious than the Hostess ones we have at home.  I drink a lot of bottled water (unsafe tap, here) and a couple liters of calorie free fruit drinks, of which there are several brands here, and they too are all nasty and super delicious.


So, the virtue of the soup and salad discipline is balanced by the sponge cakes.  Miraculous effects upon the physique, naturally.  I plan on becoming all tan and chubby, a sort of big bellied American Budda Baby in exile, only bearded, and bobbing serenely in the surf.  Instead of a bohdi tree and figs, I'll subsist eating banana splits under an umbrella, my ass cheeks rolled like cannoli in the sand.  


That last image is meant to poetically evoke powdered sugar.


Besides the Laguna (see previous post) I've done little else than this.  Which explains the dearth in posting, here.  I've been mulling a few posts about things like the quirks and beauties of Spanish, the differences of custom at mass here, mildly racist meditations on Oaxacans (they're such cute little fellows.. I have this urge to try and date one of the girls, just so I can make up funny little pet names for her like mi gordita or Malinche - I'll of course be Carlos Cortes, of absolutely no relation to Hernan..),  and my visits to Guadalupe and the other Mexican shrines.  But I've only scribbled a few notes, so far the muse has left me mute..


I figure I should enjoy this last hurrah of Gringo ascendancy before all hell breaks loose.. 


Soon, we could well be begging for - and not bitching about - these Mexicans coming North to work for us, I reckon. We don't appreciate what we have, and we deserve to lose it, I say.  You never appreciate the value of cheap labor until you are the one doing the work.  When the money power contracts away from the average American and European to the international plutocracy, these salad days when a chump like me can take a trip like this on a dime (a privilege we've enjoyed since WW II) will seem a sueno perdido..


All the more reason to enjoy it, now.  Manducemus et bibamus cras enim moriemur..


Tonight, I'm branching out and doing a night dive (with expert instructors) from the beach here.  I'm scared crapless about it, actually.  There aren't that many things that scare me, and I tend to avoid the very few things that do.  But I figured I should face this fear.  I used to be mildly scared of diving at all, but now that I've done it so many times, I've grown to love it.. Everyone I've talked to says that a night dive is seeing the sea in a completely new way.. That's the great charm of diving and snorkeling for me, seeing all these hidden underwater worlds in all their variety and profusion of life, which means that going at night is the next obvious step in the ongoing revelation..


Anyway, enough of my day to day activities and that tiresome editorializing, let me slake your overweening curiosity and give you all pictures of this little piece of paradise down here..  

My desk by my window, where I sit and type this - no balcony, but this is the next best thing.

The view of the Playa Principal and Bahia from my window.

My room: 250 pesos, or 18$ a night.

I'm very proud of this: my snorkeling inner tube.  I had to make a foray to an auto parts and then a hardware store to acquire it.  13 bucks for the tube (camera de lleva) and 4 bucks for the paint and rope, all negotiated in Spanish (which, for the record, I have never formally studied, but have taught in an American public high school (this is the sound of me belly laughing my ass off at how wonderfully absurd life is..)).. I use it when snorkeling along the levy, beaches and cliffs here, to avoid being run over by boats or drowning in a rip current or some such nonsense.. 

This is the cover page of a book I found in their great little swap library here at the hotel.  It's a bio of Teddy Roosevelt, who other than Eisenhower (and I'm counting Lincoln) was the only worth while Republican president we've had.  The book is loads of fun, a great beach read, and is a signed copy, but has had the crap beat out of it, and was orphaned by its cruel and capricious owner here in Oaxaca, which makes me laugh..

Don't tell Sam Bam (my dino obsessed 2 year old nephew) but this is his.  I bought it on the street here from a little Indian woman.  It's hand carved and varnished, and the neck and tail are both spring loaded..  It's pretty cool, I really hope it makes it home intact for Christmas..

This last is the painting - and actual painting, not a print - that is on the wall of my room.  It's awesome, really evocative, and makes me happy to look at.  If you look closely (the painting is large, and in person this is obvious) you'll see all the little campesinos working away throughout the landscape.  I may have to steal it or something.  Art theft from a hotel room?  Maybe they'll sell it to me?

It reminds me of my favorite painting of the Turkish landscape that our art teacher neighbor did, that Rich & JD have in their living room now.  It's very different stylistically, but just as lyrical in that I can study it for hours and it leaves me in mild bliss..  It's the type of thing that I'll want if Oaxaca and I develop a long term relationship..

And who knows what could happen?



---

On the Laguna

Yesterday I hired a guy with a boat to take men out on the Laguna just north of the town here.  It's not that different from lakes in Maine, if you blur your sight a little..  The water is brackish, mixed with the ocean, and it is surrounded by mangrove trees and "canales" which are basically narrow mangrove swamps.  There are lots of birds (pelicans, ducks, egrets, eagles, osprey, so forth) and all sorts of reptiles, spiders and crabs and things.  We only saw one small boa, and since I was hoping to see more snakes, that was a bummer.  Otherwise it was a good time.  It felt good to get out and paddle for a while.  

On the way to the landing we saw a kingfisher, which as you all know is an excellent omen and good luck.  The kingfisher is maybe my favorite bird.  The word "halcyon" is derived from the Greek for kingfisher, and that fact pleases me immensely.

Tomorrow, I'm going on a two tank dive on a reef near here.  That will make for six dives so far in Puerto Escondido.   I'm also going to try and hire a tutor for some strategic Spanish lessons..

Now, though, I'm off to bed.  Good night.



---

Both Scenarios Involve the Police and Stopping It.

Since I've been in Mexico, I've - naturally enough - begun to think again about the Legionaries of Christ and Father Maciel quite a lot.  In fact, this past week, I've been becoming obsessed with it once more.  It's so lurid and entrancing, and like the story of the Mormons and Jos. Smith, it is a train wreck I just can't take my eyes from.  The Legion's story has had a direct and profound impact on me, since I was briefly though intensely involved with the Legion and Regnum Christi personally in the mid 90's.  I went to several Legion vocation retreats, and hung out with a girl who was in Regnum Christi, who taught at their school for consecrated women in Rhode Island (we didn't say that we were "dating" - it was the 90's after all.  It was more a very intense truncated friendship, romantic on her side, platonic on mine, where we spent weeks - chastely - together over a two to three year period.)  Due to all that, I seriously considered becoming involved in "the movement" myself, before it became very, very clear to me on those retreats that the Legion and I were not at all a good fit.  


When the news about Maciel ("Nuestro Padre") broke in 1997, it devastated me.  I knew in my gut that it was true, and I did - and in some ways still do - not understand why the curia did not react more strongly than it did.  I also had significant questions about the Legion itself, due to several things that had unsettled me when I spent time with  them.  


It was a slow burn acid of doubt that ate away at me.  The subsequent revelation of the wider scandals just compounded the effect and left me completely shattered.  That anguish over the scandals was intensified by other doubts that I had about the nature and theology of the Church, and led to me joining the Army (and so rejecting the idea of going to the seminary that I'd been entertaining) and then, later, converting to Orthodoxy.  


I've of course since reverted, and am now picking up all the shards of my innocence and trying to completely own my faith again in an active, mature way.  Still, the ongoing saga of the Legion is harrowing me even now.  I want - need - to see them canonically suppressed.  They have to be disbanded, and the members of the Legion and Regnum Christi need to find new ways within the Church.  Furthermore, the scandal in its wider sense is still a live wire for me.  There are too many questions about sex and indeed money and power within the Church that remain unanswered for me.  There needs to be an accounting, and people need to come clean.  On everything from usury to birth control people are fudging and bullshitting and not being sincere.  


I include myself in that assessment.  Being more honest about sex money and power has been one of my central struggles these last few years.  


I want to talk about all of that more, and soon, on this here blog.  Not because I am under the illusion that what I think matters to many people (even though I hope it matters a bit to my immediate audience of a couple dozen, who are mostly friends of mine) but because I need to finally articulate these things coherently for my own sake, so that I can name them, and think about them well, and so hopefully put them in their proper places and so then grow and become more integrated.  


This isn't funny, but it does sum it all up as far as I am concerned:

Brief money quote from the transcript of the preceding interview:


All right, by now you've probably heard about the situation unfolding at Penn State University, where longtime football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was arrested last weekend for alleged sexual abuse of children.


It's terrible.  But it's also come out that those around Sandusky knew about his behavior for years, including an incident in 2002, where a 6'5" adult eyewitness walked in on Sandusky raping a child in a Penn State shower, and didn't do the two things most people would do in that situation:


(a) stop it and call the cops, or
(b) call the cops to come stop it.

Both scenarios involve the police and stopping it.  

Ecco.  Isn't that obvious?  Isn't that what "most people would do" damn the consequences to themselves (such as losing a job), anyone's reputation (creating a scandal), or any other extrinsic consideration when faced with something so evil?  

Apparently not, eh?  Because let's be clear here, sexual abuse is pretty common and when exposing it will compromise powerful interests, most of us seemingly become sluts to security and power, and maintaining the status quo. Because the scandals in the Church, that in the "Legion," both like that at Penn State, involved many people keeping silent and not exposing the truth, thereby allowing the violation of innocence to fluoresce..


It's almost as if having integrity means knowing you ultimately have nothing to lose but your soul. 




---

Oh, By the Way..

I'm sitting by my window which looks out over the bay here.  There's a public balcony immediately to the left of my room, and someone is out there smoking a jibber. It's wafting pretty hard into my room.  I'm pretty sure it's hash, not pot, from the smell.   Since everyone in this hotel seems to be either German or American, mostly 20 something, it seems that the kids have no compunction taking advantage of Mexico's recent legalization of possession of small amounts of everything from pot to heroine.

Here's CBN (Pat Robertson's Claque) with the details on that .. 

Since I've given up even tequila and mescal while here, and am just drinking a beer or two every night with dinner, I won't be joining them.  Still, I have to say that I like the law, a lot.  Decriminalize recreational use, make moderate possession and sale a misdemeanor or minor felony, and nail the the big guys hard..  

Another thing I forgot to mention was that Mexico City has a big gay scene, and that the Distrito Federale (analogous to D.C. in the States)  has also recently legalized "gay marriage" (none of the other 31 Mexican States have done so yet. Again, here's CBN on that) - Something I am "personally opposed" to, and find mildly disgusting (call me homophobic if you want, I don't care - but then, I'm pretty "anti- fornication" overall, anyway, being all Catholic and repressed and such..)  There was quite a bit of gay male PDA on the subway, for example, which surprised me.  Mexico's reputation for machismo aside, Mexican gay guys have no compunction boy-handling each other on the metro in Mexico City, because I saw no less than three gay couples in two days doing it with gusto, and people were ignoring them..  I've never seen that in the States.  But then, I don't do gay pride events, and while I've been to San Francisco many times, I can't remember ever seeing it there, even.. But then we gringos don't generally do PDA of any sort, do we?  

On a similar note, there was a woman sitting outside church yesterday at mass openly exposing her breast while breast-feeding her baby.  I thought that was both bizarre (in that it was equally unexpected) and awesome.  And no, I didn't stare at her, even though it was a beautiful thing..  And even though that is infinitely more sexy than two dudes pawing at each other.. Which unlike nursing a baby isn't in the technical sense about sex at all, if you want to be all biological and ontological and metaphysical about it.. 

Which I of course do.  LOL ;) and all that.  Cheers.

---

Upon My Past Week of Discontent: In Which I Bitch Fulsomely about Mexico City

I wrote most of this when I was in Mexico City as a therapeutic act.  That place really got to me, and I wanted to purge..

I've since arrived here,

Playa Principal, Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico.

however, in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca.  This has radically altered my frame of mind for the better.

Still, I thought I'd share this anyway.  I've blogged much less than I could, and I'll try to put a bit of the backlog of pictures (at least, if not a few stories) up this coming few days or so.  I'll definitely post more about this place I'm at now, here..


Which will make very clear that I do in fact (and for the record) that I really do love this country.  Immensely.


But there are minor irritants and discontents.  This past week in Mexico City they intensified and proliferated, attacking me all at once.


Mexico City is Mexico on steroids, and the greater part of the things I dislike here are both more common, and usually more acute. It's over-stimulating, and so everything is felt more harshly.  Like I say, it reminded me of Cairo, which is even more of a Third World megalopolis hell-hole, only one overrun by fellahin..  Who, while fascinating to encounter, are far more "retrograde" and alien to us than Mexican campesinos, who really are great people on the whole, just difficult to handle when nine million of them attempt to simultaneously jam themselves into a valley over a mile high in the mountains, and you happen to be stuck in the scrum with them..

Which is merely to note that while not quite as chaotic or grubby as border towns like Tiajuana, Mexico City is still a great sprawling urban morass. The streets are generally narrow, traffic is bad, and there are hoardes of people everywhere.  It also has several apparent centers, and so seemed to lack coherence to me.  Admittedly, one week is not anywhere near enough to learn such a vast place, but most cities seem to make more sense too me, at once. Cairo, for example, while a great jumble, is a great jumble around the Nile.  Guadalajara has much more focus, a well defined center with almost everything of consequence there, and a few suburbs with things of interest clustered about it..  Easy, no stress navigation there.  Not so Ciudad Mexico: there are several centers, and many things are scattered about it in a cloud.. Furthermore, the streets in Mexico City are also much narrower on average than say Guadalajara, and there were few obvious landmarks that can be widely seen and orientate oneself by, making it feel like a great chaotic maze.

And though the smog was no where near as bad as I bet it was in the past, it was still bad.  Mexico City is in a great valley surrounded by mountains, and like in L.A. the mountains trap the pollution.  The buildings are all begrimed with soot from decades of smog and exhaust, indeed everything's besmirched and blackened on account of this ambient pollution.. And while I was able to see the mountains when I got above the buildings (a sight I've heard was rare until very recently. Things are improving - government regulations and the catalytic converter are working wonders), there was still quite a lot of haze, and you can smell and feel the pollution in the air.

This is a view across the Valley of Mexico City from the hill of the apparition at the Shrine of Guadalupe.  From the north of the city facing south.  It was the only time the week that I was there that I was able to see anything beyond the buildings immediately about me.  Notice that you can see the far mountains indistinctly through the haze of smog..

hazy sunset over Valle de Mexico..

One minor saving grace of Cd. Mexico is that there is an extensive, well run subway system.  It's a bit aesthetically muddled, in the lines are designated dull pastel institutional colors that I thought ugly, and then numbered or lettered by whether the train ran on rubber tires or rails (I think.. It was a bit unclear why both letters and numbers are used..)  It was all a bit indistinct and understated, anyway.  

I like urban transport that makes clear, bold statements, designating lines by (say) primary colors "Red Line" "Green Line" "Blue Line" and such, not "pastel rose line known by a number" then "puke institutional green line known by a letter, just to confuse things."

I will credit them this: one nifty aspect of Cd. Mexico's metro is that it has a icon system where each station is assigned it's own unique iconic image.  The images are ugly and crude, but they all correspond in some way to the stations' names.  Probably devised due to high illiteracy, I'd guess.  It worked pretty well for me when I was trying to keep track of where I was going.  It was one of the few things other than the Shrine at Guadalupe that I liked about the city.


Anyway, herewith a bulleted list of things that I dislike in Mexico, made more annoying by being strained and overwhelmed by Mexico City:


1.) There are very few free public bathrooms in Mexico.  You usually have to pay three or four pesos (20 cents or so) for the pleasure of using an uncouth toilet, usually without soap at the wash basin, which is one more reason why I always carry a small bottle of sanitizer.  This public toilet situation is very, very annoying, especially since most restrooms in places like bus or metro stations have turnstiles where you have to deposit coins.  There's often an attendant inside (cheap Mexican labor) who dispenses (rations) a few sheets of toilet paper.  Again, I carry more with me, either a pack of tissues or small roll of my own.

If you are traveling alone with bags turnstiles at the bathroom entrance makes going to the restroom at the station into a strategic logistical endeavor. I'm at the bus station now, waiting  a few hours for my bus to Oaxaca, and I needed to go.  I had to ask a shoe shine guy to watch my two larger bags (which would definitely not fit past the turnstile).  I carried my camera and laptop with me, and the bag got stuck in the turnstile, and I was caught there for a few seconds.  The shoeshine guy (coincidentally?) let loose a huge yapping guffaw at that very instant.


2.) Which leads me to my second major annoyance:  Mexicans tend to stare.  They meet your gaze, and do not look away.  Walking through a crowd, you turn your head, and there's often a few people there just gawking at you.

Now, I used to like this on past visits to this country, if I remember rightly.  I felt that it gave me license to stare right back.  Something that was especially fun if the person staring at you happened to be female and cute, as was often then the case.  Now, I guess I've become jaded.  I no longer enjoy being starred at by anyone.   I don't care if you are beautiful and like me, keep your eyes to yourself.

Well, alright.  Maybe if you are female and pretty and really want to.  I guess I could put up with it..

The staring issue was getting to me before I got to Mexico City.. But because there seems to be an inordinate number of crazy crippled bums, people dressed in disturbing costumes (due to this last week being the Feast of All Souls - la Dia de Los Muertos, Halloween - such were very commonly encountered on the streets) and "developmentally diabled"  people (read retards, occasionally spasmodic and drooling) and - I'm not exaggerating here - an unusually large number of midgets, often dressed in bizarre costumes such as Mexican Professional Wrestling masks..

That always seemed to single me out for attention.. Sometimes they smiled, smirked or laughed.. I returned and met their gaze, but they rarely looked away...

Things began to seem a bit uncanny..

I ran into one guy looked like that guy who played the midget sidekick Tatto on Fantasy Island and Nick Nack in the James Bond flick The Man with the Golden Gun (which I just caught on cable here last week, reminding me of him), Hervé Villechaize.. A dead ringer for him, actually, except he wasn't ringing a bell and yelling "zee plane, zee plane," but was instead sitting on the hood of a car murmuring to himself while waving his hands through the air like they were airplanes, and staring straight at me as I passed him in the street..

As I say, I began to have a lingering, inescapable feeling that I was stuck in a surrealist nightmare.  I became a bit paranoid.  Mexico City: a great Fellini-esque performance art production designed just for me.  A gigantic contemporary flash-mob like Satyricon, that I couldn't escape.  Since I hate Fellini, and have learnt to hate hallucinating, this sensation was extremely unpleasant.

Some of this attention seems to me to smack of xenophobia, even racism..  I don't take it all too personally, tit for tat (1836, 1848, and all that) after all. Most especially seeing how I am 6' 2" and very obviously a gringo.  It just becomes exhausting after a while.  Being the focus of objectification and innate impersonal dislike is no fun, and while it's only occasionally openly felt here, I notice it far more often and intensely than anywhere else I've ever been.  Even the Middle East..


3.) Mexicans tend to blare their music with a lot of bass.  From store fronts, cars, taco stands.. Very early in the morning, very late at night.  Techno, Banda..  It can be an assault, one I guess I've grown less tolerant of noise pollution in my old age.  There's a lot of this in the city, and I really hated it.


4.) There are a lot of strong smells, too.  Good and bad.  Frying meat, sewage being very common and two of my least favorite.  You get rotting garbage, fried food and sewage in the same moment, sometimes.  Not cool.   While Mexican street food can be awesome,

10 pesos: that's less than a buck for one big, fat, yummy taco..

it can also be pretty disgusting.  Mexicans eat the entire animal, so you see everything from intestines to brain frying away at stands on the street.  I used not to be annoyed by the smells and sight of stuff like that, but I've become more sensitive..  Something that used to amuse me when I noticed it (look at them eating brain! cool!) now tends to make me queasy.


5.) Public display of affection.. This should be higher on the list. I only just remembered.   This is on par with the staring issue, in that  it's both disturbing and surreal.  And like with staring, I used to enjoy such displays.  Mexico is like Italy, in that when you go to a park or anywhere where people are making "la vuelta," which is to say walking around in public together, you get some serious PDA.  And - I don't know if it's me, or what - but unlike Italians (if my memory serves me) they really don't kiss all that well. They muckle onto one another like lampreys, and just eat one each other's faces.  It  (if you are close enough to hear) sounds like they are slapping one another's faces with raw slabs of  steak or something.

I imagine cartoon bubbles above them making the Cookie Monster sound, "om nom nom nom" because that is what they'd sound like if they were muppets:

Cookies!

As you can see, it's not just teenagers who do it.  The last meal I ate in the city I sat behind a forty-something couple seated facing away at the table opposite mine.  Like they were across from me at my table, but back to me at the table opposite.  Throughout the meal, between courses, they would periodically attack one another, "french" kissing, smacking loudly..  I sat there astonished, and had to look off to the corners and ceiling to avoid watching.  Not out of politeness (anyone who does anything so vulgar forfeits their right not to be gaped at in astonishment) but because it was utterly revolting.


6.) I dislike baroque architecture, and most churches here are baroque.  I'll blog more on this point, later.  I'll just note here that it's an issue, and a good one for me to wrestle with.  I need to make my peace with  the Inquisition, campesinos, and all the church ladies of the world.. Church Ladies like kitsch, and hence so should I..  Herewith resolved, I will force myself to dig rococo..

7.) Mexicans make absolutely terrible coffee.  You might as well just drink hot water, that's how awful it is. I've tried it probably a dozen times so far, and it's always awful.  I ate at a place owned by a German woman, and I thought for sure that she'd guarantee a decent cup, and it was merely mediocre...  Tea sucks here, too.   This isn't a big deal, really, but I've been wanting to finish my meals with a good cup lately, and I keep getting frustrated..


Another reason to get back to Italy someday soon, it seems..


Except that this place may be home.  I like it so much here that I have to give it some time.. We'll see..


So there's the list of my piddling discontents.  Enough with being a gringo feo, I'm off to shower the salt and sand off..  Buenas Noches, todos.



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