San Pancho Vida

To Weave a Story

Tucked in on a drab side street in Bucerias, just north of Puerto Vallarta, is a shop of colors. It has no obvious name, most of the time. The facade is draped with vibrant wool rugs and shawls on hangers. Inside is a big standing pedal loom where works the shop's owner, Javier Vicente, at his art and craft. I spent some time with Javier the other day and listened to his story.

Now in his thirties, Javier grew up in the town of Teotitlán in the state of Oaxaca, the son and grandson of a family of weavers. In the mid-nineties, when the economic problems and peso devaluation in Mexico caused very hard times all over the country, Javier left home alone and headed to the United States to earn money for his family. He knew no one there. He was fifteen years old.

After making his way to Orange County, California, he found a job washing dishes in a restaurant, living on the bare minimum so he could send money home to Oaxaca every week. He began studying and received his high school diploma. Over time, he learned to cook, and later became a waiter. He worked at that same restaurant for ten years. Ready for a change, he packed up and moved to Oregon, where he lived and worked seven years more.

Then he had an epiphany. He realized that he wanted to do what he'd been trained to do since age five, to go home to his family and become a weaver in the treasured Oaxacan tradition. 

Before long, Javier's original designs, worked in wool with all natural dyes, earned him the designation Master Weaver. Now, he spends six months a year working in Bucerias, and the other six at home in Teotitlán. His shop is called Arte Oaxaca and can be found two and a half blocks north of the main Bucerias Plaza, on Calle Mexico right beside the good Dr. Adrian Malja's dental office.

Do stop and visit Javier when you're in Bucerias. He's a lovely man and speaks perfect English.

To learn more about Teotitlán, natural dyes, and the Oaxacan weaving tradition, visit my post from March, 2010:

A Trip to Teotitlán 

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Guanajuato Redux

I've had a craving recently to revisit the state of Guanajuato...so, since I'm taking this week off to celebrate Valentine's Day, I thought I'd re-post for us one of my favorite trip reports, written two years ago. Hope you enjoy it!

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"If there's one thing I've learned in life, it's never ever say no to a road trip." Denny Crane

Last spring, as I languished in San Pancho during the months of Waiting and Hoping, I received a proposition from some friends.

"How about a road trip?"

I checked my non-schedule and hopped a Primera Plus bus in La Peñita to Guadalajara. Four and a half hours later--during which I'd enjoyed the scenery, a very strange movie, and the gratis Bimbo bread and mystery meat sandwich--the ubiquitous Travis and Allen picked me up at the insane Tonala bus station. They gave me a night to recover from my bus adventure, and the next morning we piled into the Honda and headed east and a smidgen north to the 450-year-old city of Guanajuato, which is pretty much right in the middle of Mexico.

To this day, none of us is sure exactly how we got there. Mexican road signs leave something to be desired: namely, how to get where you're going. I remember passing through an area that looked suspiciously like eastern Oregon...

...and we took some bypasses that turned out be longer than throughpasses; and by some miracle ended up in the outskirts of Guanajuato, where the manager of the house we'd rented met us to lead us into the labyrinth of the city. We climbed and climbed and turned and twisted and finally took a hairpin left into a narrow cobbled cliff-like lane which descended past houses and tiny stores and men toting water bottles up the hill on their backs. Our guide stopped beside a doorway just long enough for us to throw me and a few things out on the sidewalk, then led the guys to some parking garage somewhere far away.

The house was perched on the side of a hill, an imaginative remodel kitty-corner across the street from a very lively almost-all-night bar.

But the view from the roof was spectacular. We spent downtime up there pointing out houses to each other on the surrounding hillsides. "See the orange one over there with the tall windows? Now look left to the mint green one and straight up to the bright blue one. I really like the balcony on the yellow and red one next to it." 

There wasn't much downtime, though. We took the tram up to El Pípila for a view of the whole city...

                                                             Photo courtesy A. Pool 

...then wandered back down checking out the old houses.

Once back in the center of the city, we had plazas to visit,

churches to smile at,

serendipitous art to admire,

and a dark and deliciously eccentric bar to discover.

 
I'm sure you've read on travel pages and in traveler's reviews how some city is a "gem". I'm here to tell you: Guanajuato is the whole jewelry box. A feast for the eyes, a history that is as rich and haunted as its fabled silver mines, and some undefinable joyful dignity to it all. People fill the plazas every night to talk and watch and be in the community. The sidewalk cafes are always busy. Students from the University of Guanajuato stroll through the streets playing their instruments and performing street theater. Salsa and tango music twirls through the night air. Teatro Juarez--the opera house--topped with its huge muses, hosts music from all over the world.

  

On our last night there, we were invited to a restaurant near the main plaza by our new friend Betsy. We sat at a long table chatting with people from all over Mexico, Europe and the U.S. Then a young man walked in, sat down beside the open windows, opened up a black case and began to play his cello. To be wrapped in that tender music in the heart of this intelligent and whimsical city was pure magic. It was like nothing I'd ever experienced in or out of Mexico.

It was one more good reason never to say no to a road trip.

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This post was first published on Feb. 12, 2010. I haven't returned to Guanajuato since, being busy with other things, but I intend to soon. The cello player, by the way, turned out to be the first chair cello for the University of Guanajuato Symphony Orchestra. I can't tell you how many times I have relived that scene: the long tables covered with white cloths, the big windows open to the night street, the indescribably beautiful music winding through it all like a flowering vine. A moment of magic, indeed, that still holds my heart.

xo

C

My Truth About Travel in Mexico

I received an email recently from a very nice man who is a regular reader of this blog. He told me he had been a frequent visitor to Mexico in the past, had even planned to move to Mexico upon retirement. But now, with all the bad news they'd been receiving in Texas about Mexico in general, he was questioning his plans, and had not visited Mexico in four years. 

He used to love to travel through Mexico, he told me, by bus and by car. He wondered whether it was safe to do that any more, and asked for my take on all this.

From far away, given the U.S. press, these questions are understandable. But people in other countries aren't the only ones hesitating or fearful to drive in Mexico. Residents right here in San Pancho have voiced the same concerns.

So I'd thought I'd write today about why people still travel into and through this country. During the past week, a number of my friends here have taken road trips. Manny and Joe drove from here to Barra de Navidad, then south the next day to Zihuatanejo, a twelve hour total trip. They turned east from the coast to Patzcuaro, stopped in Tlaquepaque, then home, making a giant loop.

Two other women friends are currently on the road, driving from San Pancho to Morelia.

Last week, I drove two hours from San Pancho to Tepic, the capital of Nayarit, to meet a friend from the States who wanted to see the coast.

After checking into rooms at the Hotel Real de Don Juan...

we time-traveled to a charming old building with a bar overlooking Tepic's Plaza Central.

Okay, so we didn't really time-travel...but the feel of the buildings and the plaza itself were decidedly old-fashioned, in a good way.

Couples, mostly not young, danced in a dignified and stately waltz to the sounds of a band in the bandstand. One of them approached us, the husband wanting to practice his rusty English, both of them cordial and kindly.

The hotel was delightful, staffed with friendly, helpful people who not only pointed us to this sweet bar and vantage point, but also directed us the following morning to the block of cowboy hat and boot stores near the Mercado so we could buy new hats. An old building, remodeled enough to be very comfortable but not enough to ruin it, it maintains its ornate colonial architectural details and features an assortment of fascinating statues, including this giant in the lobby.

I chose a road recommended by Lidia for the trip back to the coast. This tiny two-lane highway winds down from the city on the plateau, curvy all the way, but smooth and gentle and shaded by trees. Tiny pueblitos nestle on either side of the road, some with colorful and artistic fruit stands, none mentioned on the map.

The map (the Guia Roji, the Thomas Brothers of Mexico) labels the highway as route 76, but we didn't see that designation at all at the turn-off in Tepic. The sign only said "Miramar". Fortunately, I'd had a peek at an online map before the trip, so Miramar rang a distant bell. We ended up there, where highway 76 tees into the coast road from San Blas to Las Varas. And "there" was a tiny cluster of palapa beach restaurants and unfancy hotels on a little cove, hardly the kind of town one would expect to be pointed to on a city signboard. It's likely a very popular place for Tepic residents who crave some beach time, and will always be the same for us due to the oyster beds that adorn the south side of the cove. 

I pulled in to a parking spot between two beach restaurants, each covered by palapa, each with tables on paved floors and more down in the sand. The proprietors of both smiled and greeted us, waving their hands at piles of fresh oysters heaped on the concrete. Which to choose? It was a coin toss situation, so we stepped into the one that had a table occupied. The loser was perfectly gracious at our decision. The winner allowed us to choose the size of oyster we wanted: small. He proceeded to shell a giant platter of them and present it to us tableside. We chose a few on the half-shell and sent the rest to the kitchen to be fried. They were brought back in a few minutes with a side of french fries, limes and hot sauce, and were so delicious that they will be worth a drive back there one day just to eat more.

This is why I drive in Mexico. You already know, as a reader of this blog, that in all my driving trips alone or with companions I've yet to have a bad experience. To pass up the opportunity to experience Route 76 and Miramar out of fear would, in my mind, be a major mistake.

My friends here who travel freely, to Patzcuaro or Guanajuato or the Guadalajara area, even into Mexico City, would feel the same, I'm sure. The rewards are consistently so great, the dangers consistently so imaginary, that we have no other option. Surely, one must have common sense and not do idiotic things, but isn't that the same anywhere one goes?

Mexico is a beautiful and diverse country filled with curious, intelligent, cordial people. We travel to see it and to learn it.

We travel to see this...

and this...

and this...

and this.

We travel to go from here...

to here...

and from here...

to here.

We travel to meet him...

and him...
and her.

How could we not?

 

Age Matters

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter. Mark Twain

I imagine you’ve noticed, if you’re a woman living in the United States, what happens when you reach your fifties and edge into your sixties: let's call it the Invisibility Effect.

I was beginning to notice this phenomenon when I lived full time in the States. My white hair and the lines in my face seemed sometimes to act as an Invisibility Cloak. Not necessarily in a good way, either. Not like an invisible super-heroine who could rob from the rich and give to the poor without ever being seen lifting files from a slick corporate office or striding about a hyper-mansion helping herself to jewels and rare coins.

This other invisibility is insidious. It lurks in our popular culture, which so idolizes youth and model thinness in women that those of us who are of a certain age are passé, not worthy of attention or a second look. Some years ago, I read an article regarding this state of affairs written by Tina Brown, editor of Newsweek and thedailybeast.com, when Susan Boyle, the post-middle-aged Scottish singer, won Britain’s Got Talent in 2009.

You women know what I’m talking about: the constant clamor that women be young. This phenomenon commands magical weight-loss and cellulite-reducing products, endless plastic surgery, trophy wives, and all the other male-centric oppressions that encumber women in so many cultures. Values that are skewed, if not screwed.

So now imagine my delight entering this particular culture to discover that not only am I seen, but I am often admired outright despite--or maybe even because--of my age. I noticed it immediately, and I notice the contrast between the Mexican and U.S. cultures every time I travel back and forth. I like the attitudes better here in Mexico.

One day in Bucerias, at a beach restaurant I’d never been to, I was treated to an admiring ogle by the host as I approached. “Where have you been?” he said. “I’ve had your table ready for two hours!”

Now, surely, one takes these comments with a large grain of salt and plenty of laughter. But really, who can resist being escorted with a flourish to a table in the sand and assured that anything I needed was mine without question?

Another day, at another beach restaurant, a handsome young jewelry vendor came to my table. I expected him to pass by when I told him I wasn’t buying. Instead, he stopped to chat. “Are you married?” he asked. “Yes,” I replied, as I was at the time. Then he asked in a combination of Spanish and English, “How do you say “que lastima”? I replied in English, “‘It’s a shame’”.

“Aahh,” he nodded, then said in English, “It’s shame you are married. I like you much and soon I think I will love you.”

This kind of thing happens a lot here. Mexico, of course, is the land of machismo, which often drives me crazy. But never have I felt accosted, insulted or threatened by the looks and comments I receive. They are often sweet and always respectful, including the gazes from workers who stop what they’re doing as I pass and watch me walk by. I always greet them with a ‘buenos dias’, and they invariably reply in chorus. Kind of cute, really.

Political correctness doesn’t exist in backwater Mexico. It may not exist in any of Mexico. I find it rather refreshing, to tell you the truth.

Some women might actually prefer invisibility to a cab stand full of lounging taxi drivers shaking their heads as I pass and saying, “¡Qué bonita!” or “¡Mamacita!” I don’t. It’s fine with me. I’m a mature women. I can take it.

I've also noticed lately that some American men my age can see me. I'm glad. It means they haven't all swallowed the company line. In fact, now and then a man comes along who actually cherishes the evidence of experience in an older woman, who likes a face with lines in it and a shared cultural history, who is not craving youth for himself or for the women around him. Makes me think all that Women's Liberation stuff we did way back when wasn't all for nought. Makes me think some men get it.

This is my birthday post, by the way. My own birthday, not the blog’s. As I add another year, I wanted to tell you these stories. I’m reminded every day of my life that age is relative, as is beauty. So today, I wanted to remind you.

xo

C

Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art. Stanslav Lec

It takes a long time to become young. Pablo Picasso