Do You Believe in Magico?

Wood carver from a Pueblo Magico

 On this sojourn, we have traveled to a number of Pueblos Magicos.  On first hearing that title, we thought of tidy little white-stuccoed pueblitos perched on mountaintops where folklorico dances take place on the hour, while demonstrations (and sales) of local crafts, catering to the tour bus crowd, constituted the primary activity of happy, colorfully dressed nativos. We didn’t stitch that vision strictly out of whole cloth. In fact, the brochures offered by the Tourist Information kiosks in Puebla and other larger cities seem to promote that Edenic notion pretty consistently.

By no means did we turn our noses up at the idea of visiting these places just because they might be tourist Meccas. Many of the places we’ve been to over the last few years – much more cosmopolitan - do a healthy tourist trade, and yet almost always have something truly unique and rewarding to be discovered. Still, this time, we thought we would make a real effort to get to some of the more out of the way places and try to see what puts the magic in magico.

Lynn & Pico Orizaba

To get our feet wet, we visited a couple pueblos magicos outside of Xalapa, (Xico and Coatepec) which we mentioned in a previous blog. We also spent several days in Orizaba, a pueblo magico at the foot of Pico Orizaba, an impressive 18,000 ft volcano jutting up from the Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range. All three of these places were easy to get to by bus and certainly had their charms. Orizaba was probably the most scenic and had the most noticeable mix of beautifully dressed folks from the nearby Atlas Mountains and city dwellers. 

Lynn has a panic attack in Orizaba

In Orizaba, we particularly liked the riverside walk that felt almost European with rows of colonial houses on either side of the river. Bridges, both stone and the more anxiety-inducing rope bridges, made access to both sides of the river very easy. The rope bridges were kind of fun but they did seem to sway back and forth and sideways with an alarmingly unpredictable motion, especially when large Mexican women taking giant steps would follow closely behind Lynn  – jump, swing, lean to and fro – Madre de Dios! The walk also had a zoo strung along either side with a pretty impressive assortment of birds and mammals. It was fascinating, sad, and/or beautiful, depending on how you feel about zoos. We found some parts heartbreaking. The awesome jaguars pacing frantically back and forth in their cages, for instance, seemed totally wrong to us. Still there was much to see.

Climbing up up up...

We took the teleferico ski lift up to an ecological park and viewpoint above the city and climbed a kind of fire tower to get a good look at Mt. Orizaba. 

We stopped and talked with a native woman who was in traditional dress and who, very sweetly agreed to let us take her picture in her finery. She explained that each decoration on her blouse had meaning - her pueblo, marital status, how many children she had could be interpreted by other Atlas mountain villagers

Traditional dress of Atlas Mountains

.

Coffee at Eiffel's Iron Palace

In the city itself, we paid the usual visit to the main cathedral. Where the hell did they get all that Palacio de Hierro  (the Iron Palace) that had been designed by Gustave Eiffel. It was an elegant building that had a great outdoor café that was perfect for people watching - an unlikely site in a small Mexican puebla. We saw a particularly touching interaction while having coffee there one afternoon.

A kind hand from a poor woman to a friend

An elderly beggar woman had taken up a spot on the sidewalk, directly in the sunlight. Another elderly woman, possibly some kind of health worker, or just a concerned citizen stopped to talk with her. The gist of the conversation seemed to be that the helpful woman was very concerned about the amount of sun the beggar lady was getting on her skin. After a good 20 minutes or so of conversation, she managed to get the woman to move just a few feet further down the sidewalk to a shady spot before wishing her a good afternoon.  Later, the woman gave a handshake to an equally needy friend. We’ve seen these interactions before in other places and we felt a kind of wistfulness about it. How rare that seemed at home.

?????

Of course, like every Mexican city, Orizaba had a grand park, lots of benches, fountains, pedestrian-only streets, and strange cartoon sculptures. By the time we left, we felt it was the best magico we’d seen so far. It was beautiful, small and friendly. Yet, we did not feel quite connected to it. We had only managed a few interactions with the locals, the best one being a bargaining session with a couple from the Atlas Mountains who were selling scarves and blouses in the artisanal Mercado.  In fact, we didn’t actually bargain, we never do that. We just kept trying to find excuses to keep talking to them while Lynn took pictures and Eric posed questions about family, work and life. But we wanted to get a better feel not only of what day-to-day life was like in such a place. We still wanted an answer: what was magic about the magicos? We looked towards those mountaintop villages north of Puebla that we had read about -maybe we should just go there.

She tells him how to write our receipt - some things never change!

Locals travel by foot and collectivo

Getting there. Um, yeah. No problem if you want to sign up for a guided tour and spend a day   Or, if you are intrepid (read that f***ing crazy), you can rent a car and drive there. People do that and some magicos are fairly accessible, but, from our perspective and from our steadfast determination to collect EVERY LAST PENNY of Social Security that we could, we flatly rejected the rental car option (or actually Eric rejected it – Mr. Race Car Driver, huh.) and Lynn went along with it. After all, it’s not an appealing idea to drive yourself when you want to get way back into the hinterlands. The mountain roads are REALLY mountain roads, treacherous and unregulated, except by Darwinian laws and gravity. The locals drive them with varying degrees of abandon- often in mechanically dubious vehicles- and, apparently, with an unwavering belief in the afterlife. Even the bus drivers have crucifixes dangling from their mirrors or plastic saints, virgins, what have you, adorning their dashboards. Not exactly confidence builders. So, the only realistic plan we could agree on was to take public transportation and stay several nights someplace taking it all in and then go from there. Even with that plan, you cannot count on any kind of bus service from one mountain top magico to the other. The locals have their way and, in some cases it can be done, but it takes a lot of savvy to make it work. For example, to travel between pueblos magicos Cuetzalan and Zacatlan – not a long distance as the crow flies -requires knowing which collectivo to board, which crossroad to get off of to wait for another collectivo (in the mountains mind you) that will get you to a bus that takes you there. Given that there have been State Department reports of  “criminal activity” in the area – more on that later- the best laid plan seems to require an exhausting excursion back to a big city, such as Puebla, reboarding a bus that takes you directly to the other mountaintop, something like 5 hours to go a few miles.
digging the village vibe while being stewarded around then return to the big city by nightfall. The one-day guided tour bus thing just isn’t our way.

Collectivos are mom & pop operations that typically charge about 12 pesos (50c) to go any distance. Nicer collectivos even have color coordinated themes but no seat belts!

With all that to think about, we settled upon a multi-day visit to Cuetzalan. We decided that if there was some urgent reason to extend our trip further into the mountains, to other magicos, we would find a way, even if it meant doubling back, etc, etc. From everything we had read and heard, we thought that Cuetzalan would be our best choice. So here we go…

Volodores plan their flight

After a whirly gig bus ride, we get our feet back on solid ground, check into our rustic hotel and head out to see what we can see. There is a mountain mist circling the village, which gives it an even more isolated feeling.  Through the mist, we see some unusual activity going on up in the zocalo and decide to check it out. Hmm. Voladores again, only there is something very different about them. First of all, there is no big crowd around. The flyers are quietly preparing for a performance in a corner of the zocalo close to the church, but what’s the occasion? In another corner, there is a huddle of people fooling around with a serious looking video camera and, good grief, a drone!

Traditional woman & techno drone meet

Everyone in the huddle seems to be deferring to a middle-aged fellow who is shuttling between the voladores and what is, we finally realize, is a film crew. We watch the fellow as he straps a Go Pro camera on the wrist of one of the flyers. Our curiosity is so piqued, we have to get to the bottom of this. So, naturally, we zero in on the middle-aged fellow, who courteously greets us and invites us into his busy corner. Turns out he is Mexican director, Ricardo Benet, who is making a documentary about the voladores using cutting edge technology to look at this ancient performance from heretofore unseen angles. He seems to pick up on the disconcerted glances we exchange. Go Pros, drones? Really?  He’s obviously aware of the discontinuity and reassures us that this project is the culmination of a lot of discussion and thought between him and the voladores.  He invites us to hang out with him and even offers to let us watch the performance from the perspective of the drone. Quick note here: something like this would NEVER, EVER happen in the US with a Hollywood director and crew. The area would be cordoned off and guarded. You wouldn’t be able to watch from a block away. Yet, here we are, director by our side, offering minute-to-minute commentary on what is about to happen. Amazing.

90 feet, no net

Even though we’ve talked about voladores before, we learned that the tradition first began in Cuetzalan. Instead of the usual metal pole, like those we’ve seen in Cholula and Papantla, this pole is actually made from a huge tree – about 90ft tall. Each year, a tree is cut, hauled down from the mountains and placed in the deep hole in the plaza just in front of the church. Before it goes in, a live turkey is dropped down the hole along with assorted herbs and vegetables. This is done in case a voladore should fall (they don’t work with nets). The turkey and trimmings are a pre-Columbian tradition to ensure that the unfortunate voladore will have food for his journey to the next life.  

Once the pole is in place, the finish work is completed. Volodores carefully tie ropes around their waists before climbing steps up to the top that are simply rough pieces of wood nailed into place. At the top, from the perspective of the drone, one can see a small rotating square of wood upon which all of the performers sit except the piper. He stands on the very top of the pole on a one-foot circle of wood in the middle of the wooden square. He performs a ritual that requires him to play the flute while leaning almost in the shape of a “C”. At one point, he stretches both arms, still leaning over backwards and chants an invocation. Looking down from the drone at this is hypnotic and absolutely terrifying. That done, the piper then tends to the preparation of the flyers, who with nothing more than a rope strung around their waists and through their legs, begin the falling, spinning dance.

We are watching this through the mist and fog, so the flyers seem to slip in and out of the clouds. Without being able to see their ropes from time to time, it literally looks like they fly around the pole. The eerie buzz of the drone with its black silhouette and green flashing lights add to the otherworldliness of the ritual. It is almost too much for us.

Safely on the ground once again, the young flyers are jovial and chatty and generous. They pose for pictures and go about their business seemingly not aware that they have done something so courageous and so spiritual that it’s enough to bring tears just trying to speak to them. Director Benet is happy with the take and congratulates the performers as he retrieves his Go Pro. Within a matter of minutes, he and his film crew disappear, the voladores melt away, and the zocalo fills with local vendadores, and other townsfolk. Had we arrived just a half hour or so later, we would have never seen this.

Pyramid behind the swing

Angelique makes a sale

Over the next few days we let ourselves swim in the life of the puebla, taking in a neighborhood ruin believed to be a precursor and model for El Tajin. It is very small. Just next door is a school and a playground with children on swings, just feet from the steps of one of the pyramids. In the cab, on the way back, the driver stops here and there so that we can take in the stunning mountain views and Lynn can take pictures. At one place, we take in the view and watch a family in the distance trodding a footpath into town. The senora carries some kind of load on her back while the children skip along behind her. It feels like a timeless moment. Again and again we come back to the zocalo. It’s just what you do here. While hanging out one afternoon, we encounter Angelique. She is a sturdy street vendor who clearly has the selling game down. She starts with the usual trinkets, one of which we buy so that Lynn can take her picture. She happily obliges, but Eric notices she has cast an avaricious eye on him. She knows she has a live one. One load of trinkets disappears into her wrap and out comes another, bigger one. Not getting the “buy” sign, she pulls out some leather goods she has stowed. Still without success, she reaches deep into her shawl and produces a five-pound bag of oranges. At first glance, she seems like a nice, plump village lady until we realize that much of her bulk is trade goods. She is not the least bit deterred by our refusals, but she is also not insistent. She talks to us for some time and then resumes the hunt elsewhere. When we see her later, she still tries for a sale, but when we decline again, she bids us a good afternoon with a big smile, no hard feelings whatsoever. We keep having encounters like that in the most unexpected places.

Yum! Eric enjoys gift from Miguel y Miguel

One night, we go to dinner at a promising looking café. We sit down, order drinks and food. At another table two young guys are reading the menu and one of them requests a round of drinks. He looks over at us, makes the universal sign for cheers, and then asks in Spanish, he speaks no English, if we have ever tried a couple of local specialties: vino de café, and Yolixpa (herbabuena) liquor. We have not, so he orders a round for us.  We invite him and his companion to our table. Both are named Miguel, so by agreement we call one Miguel A and the other Miguel B, which seems to suit them just fine. We struggle a bit with our Spanish but eventually learn that A&B work for CFE, an electrical company that brings Wi-Fi, TV and all things “wired” to this part of Mexico. They are very interested in us and, as the drinks loosen our tongues (Yolixpa is one hell of a drink!), we hit upon a plan to visit the local ruins together and then have dinner after they get off work the next day. So sad to report that it was not to be, for try as we did, we could not work out a satisfactory meeting place or time using text messaging and our lousy Spanish. Nevertheless, they kept in touch for several days after we left Cuetzatlan, finally wishing us “Buen Viaje”.

Traditional market costume for men

More days pass. We meet an American couple just passing through on their way to Oaxaca and spend a pleasant afternoon conversing without translation. Later, after a friendly chat in the zocalo, Lynn finds a local, English-speaking guide, who doubles as a part-time shoe shine man, willing to take us on a nature hike to a swimming hole and waterfall up in the mountains. At first, the idea sounds good and we agree to it. Alas, Eric’s paranoia about the recent violence throughout Mexico, along with his homegrown hyper vigilance, causes him to spend a sleepless night pondering the idea of being lead into the wilderness by a stranger…etc, etc. Bottom line, by the next morning, Eric is a mental and physical wreck. Lynn, ever the adventure girl, is still up for the excursion, but Eric is insistent. Finally a compromise: Lynn will go with Jaime (the guide nee possible murderer) to some of the local spots, but ONLY in and around town, while Eric collapses in a heap to get some badly needed sleep and to restore his shattered perspective. Nobody said travel was easy.

Jaime's friend chats with us at the market 

We all meet up later in the day and Lynn is positively glowing. She has had, with Jaime’s help, a series of encounters that were utterly authentic and deeply revealing. Her photographs (Eric speaking here) capture the intimate, person-to-person moment of encounter: a man holding with hand-carved birds, a local fruit vendor, and an elderly gentleman with such a look of sagacity and acceptance it is almost Buddha-like. Jaime has acquainted her with the proper etiquette for taking photos and given her a much better sense of the mutuality and tolerance that are part of life in this place.

She sells cinnamon bark, vanilla, homemade liquor & blouses

Eric, for his part, finally recovers his senses, including the humor one, and finds a coffee spot to people watch, write and continue to contemplate magico.  Oddly, The Beatles are playing in the background.

On the corner there’s a café near the zocalo, where the locals come and go, and stop and say hello…a policeman plays a tune on his whistle but who is it for? The cars ignore him and the people just go their way. Very strange! Coffee smells swirl through the air, balloons strain at their strings, kids laugh, voladores fly, people hawk their wares. Ah, yes, the magico…a parade for the ears and the eyes here beneath a turquoise Mexican sky. Nothing to do, nothing to look for, no fear of missing out. Here it comes. Take a seat.

The Pinata of Nada

Jack-in-the-box pinata head wants to give Lynn a lap dance...

Gran Café de la Parroquia

We come into Veracruz after another extended bus ride, Lynn jammed into the window and Eric origami-ed into a tortured Quasimodo. We reach the Hotel Meson del Mar, a few blocks from the center of town just at dusk. We are greeted by a young, charming and slightly ditzy clerk. She appears anxious to please, but, at the same time, not quite sure how to do so. She is as puzzled by our Spanish as we are by hers.  Eventually, we work out enough details to secure the room and park our bags. Hungry, we follow her suggestion to the Gran Café de la Parroquia, a few short blocks away. It is long and brightly lit. Outside the entrance, musicians are lined up waiting their turn to go inside and entertain. There are guitarists, fiddle players, even a band sporting a xylophone totted about by two strong roadies. Just now, as we step inside, a heavyset tenor is wrapping up an operatic number accompanied by an iphone and speaker. His voice is glass-shattering and magnificent. He concludes to waves of applause and then quietly circulates through the café accepting propinas with quiet grace. As he leaves, the next group moves into place, and so it goes.

The masters of the pour

During our stay in Veracruz, the Parroquia will prove to be our salvation. It becomes the one place we are drawn to again and again for the simple but excellent food and, of course, the famous coffee lechero. Quickly we learn the ritual for this wonderful house specialty. The waiter brings each of us a large drinking glass with a small amount of strong coffee in the bottom. Then, when we are ready, we bang the side of the glass with a spoon. Quickly a waiter materializes with two large silver kettles; one with more coffee and the second with hot milk. He pours the milk like a waterfall, filling the entire glass right to the very, very top. The precision is amazing, and they do it perfectly every time. Not a wasted drop.

We sip our elixirs with deep pleasure. With usual foresight and efficiency, Lynn pulls out a schedule that has the time and place for the various upcoming Carnaval celebrations. We already see that the celebrations are not set to begin for a couple of days and won’t really kick into gear until the weekend. The full implication of this escapes us for the moment. What the heck, we’re a little early. There will be plenty of things to do before the party starts, right?

We walk back to the hotel satisfied with a loosey goosey plan to hop on a city tour bus, the usual first step for figuring out our excursions, and see what strikes our fancy. As we walk, Eric notices a strange monument in the courtyard of a building. It is a bronze statute of a perfectly rendered machine gun pointing out at the harbor. Lying beside it, also in bronze, is a dead naval midshipman. We make a note to check it out at some point. The other thing Eric notices is just the slightest twinge in his lower back. No biggie, but still…

Where the hell are we going (Spanish translation: Donde??)

The next morning, after desayuno at Parroquia, we cross the street and board the Chi-Chi bus that, by all appearances, looks to be the usual city tour bus. We pay up and climb aboard. Two young Mexican women on holiday, greet us with smiles and pleasantries. One is named Maria, the other ‘s name is unpronounceable. We call her Amiga. After an odd warmup with a Jack-in-the-box character in an oversized head mask who switches back and forth between playfully molesting the passengers and performing an odd pole humping dance at the front of the bus, we’re off to the city. Yay! But no. Instead the bus leaves the city, hangs a sharp right at the stunningly ripe sewage treatment plant and makes toward a brooding complex of fortresses out in the harbor: San Juan de Ulua.

Our guide speaks no English, but does speak rapidfire Spanish. She says something about the fort, something about paying, something about being in the sun for an hour and a half. With the help of signage we get that this fort was built some time in the 16^th century from stones that were part of a sacred Totonaca pyramid torn down by the Spanish (per usual).  The unusual walls were made from pyramid pieces and coral plucked from the harbor and cemented into huge, 8-foot thick blocks. It truly looks impregnable. It had its own internal water canals for receiving ships and even its own waste management system – large sharks that once plied the canals between the sections of the fort.

Of all of the uses to which the fort was put: defense, navigation lighthouse, storage, customhouse, the most harrowing was its use as a prison during the late 18^th and early 19^th century. The guide leads us through room after room, each one darker, dirtier, and more hellish than the last. At one point she singles out Eric to demonstrate how prisoners were shackled to the wall with their necks cuffed and forced into an upward posture It is excruciating to hold a few minutes, let alone hours or days, even without the guide’s hand firmly shoving him into the coral encrusted wall. It is impossible to imagine how anyone could have survived here at all. In its heyday, it was crowded, rat infested, constantly wet, and dark as night. At one point, during a bit of playacting, the guide lets out a scream that nearly clears one of the dark rooms of all of us tourists. We, along with our two women companions, burst into the blinding, hot sunlight with genuine gratitude. Then it’s over. We hop the bus. Yay, now we'll se the city. But no. We turn left at the sewage plant and we’re back to the starting point on the Malecon without the slightest clue about the nature of Veracruz City itself.

Lynn gives herself a bad case of Tourista

In the days to follow, we flounder about the local neighborhoods. We visit the Naval Museum and learn that the sculpture of the dead midshipman was a monument to the young cadets who tried to defend the city against American forces who invaded Veracruz in 1914, the so called Tampico Affair. Otherwise, we find no celebrations whatsoever. Even the main zocalo is all but deserted, with stacks of unassembled bleachers and cordons of cops circling gigantic amps and stages. At one point, we break out of the Parroquia routine and order coffee and lunch near the zocalo just to try to do something different. We try to re-strategize. But our conversations are broken up by wave upon wave of street vendors.  Says Lynn “Why don’t we try…um, oh no gracias, to go to…um no gracias…the…um no gracias, no gracias, no gracias, no gracias. Each vendor ignores our dismissals, each one pulls out item after item and finally relents with an eyeroll only after we have declined almost everything she or he is carrying.

The Old Man and the Fee

One older gentleman comes to our table, taps Eric on the shoulder and produces a book of yellowed 3x5 cards that appear to have names written on them. He says something undecipherable and begins moving his finger down the list. Eric is completely baffled. Every attempt to understand with basic Spanish questions is thwarted. Somehow, Eric gets the notion that these must be music venues or groups and that he is trying to sell us tickets. We consult the program we have with us, but nothing matches. We express our puzzlement. He looks Eric in the eye and then again moves his finger down the page. More questions, more confusion. Finally, there is nothing to say. He looks at Eric, Eric looks back at him. He shrugs and walks slowly away, seemingly baffled. We continue to try to have an uninterrupted conversation, but to no avail. We dearly wish we had not ordered lunch here. Lynn, reduced to silence, studies a woman sitting next to us who is not plagued by the same mobbing as we are. She watches and sees that as the vendors approach her, she merely raises a finger, wags it, shakes her head, and the vendor caroms off without a word. Could it be so SIMPLE?

A vendor moves in. Lynn lifts her finger and shakes her head. The effect is instantaneous. The woman stops as though she has been Tasered. She veers away from the table. A lucky shot? Another one approaches from the opposite direction. Lynn takes aim. POW a direct hit, she totters away. The only one who seems immune is the old gentleman who returns again to Eric. Again, he points his finger, moves down the list, but this time, there is nothing to say. The second staring contest ends with a shake of his head. Having nothing else to do, Eric watches to see what clues he can gather as to this strange man’s intent. Finally, he sees him strike up a conversation with a small band of guitar and sax players standing in the shade nearby. Answer: he is asking if we have a musical request. Just as our lunch is served, he is back once again. Almost with relief, Eric pulls out a few pesos and points to a song. He returns to the band, the song plays. Then, the old fellow begins to hit up the other tables for the song Eric has requested. No one complains, but we had to wonder how much they appreciated the social obligation Eric had just saddled them with.

By the time we leave, Eric is slipping into sickness. He will spend days in bed waiting to mend for Carnaval . But it will never come because we forgot to secure the room for even the first night of festivities. The hotel, and every other is booked solid. By the time Eric is on the mend, we have to board a morning bus back to Puebla. What we thought would be the main event in our trip, was nothing but quiet streets, museum tours and a bit of rain. Veracruz? We don’t know what to tell you. We don’t think we’ve been. Almost at the very moment we pull out of the bus station, the Desfiles De Los Ninos, the kickoff to the celebrations, gets underway out on the Malecon. We think we hear fireworks.

The Place of the Noisy Birds

We descend out of the clouds and cold of Xalapa and swoop into friendly, small Papantla – portal to the ancient city of El Tajin and home to voladores, vanilla and noisy birds. As with many of the mountain pueblas we are seeing on this trek, Papantla itself boasts few must-see attractions, but we don’t mind a bit. The hum of a small village just rumbling and honking through a typical workday suits us just fine. Besides, it’s warm!

Our no-frills, but comfy, hotel, the El Tajin, perches on a high hill that overlooks the bustling zocalo and the main church – everything seems in order. Unlike the rather cockeyed layout of Xalapa, we ‘get’ this place right away. We know where to go for ice cream, coffee, food, and people watching.

Because we have had to spend much time and energy rearranging our itinerary due to uncooperative bus schedules and a certain amount of backtracking on our part, we don’t feel compelled to spring into action. We decide to kick back; sleep in late and just let the city wake us up when it damn well pleases. It works. After a long night and a lazy morning, we begin to research how and when to get to El Tajin. On the advice of a cab driver, we decide to say manana and take the rest of the day parking ourselves here and there around the zocalo, Lynn with camera and Eric with ice cream cone. Writers have it much easier than paparazzi.

The city swirls around us as we take a walk through some of the neighborhoods. Apart from the occasional glance at Eric’s tallness and/or Lynn’s un-Mexican wardrobe (stylish wide brimmed hat complemented by hiking boots) no one seems to pay us much mind. On one corner, a gang of ninos is laughing and playing with balloon toys. Across the street from them, a hog is offloaded in front of a butcher shop and quickly figures out where he is bound. He desperately tries to climb back into the pickup squealing horrendously. It is brutal, but its unvarnished life not presented in cellophane and styrofoam ala Fred Meyer.

A little later we find a great restaurant that overlooks the zocalo. There is a parade of music, people, honking cars, and dogs. On a hill above it all, yet another troupe of voladores – one of whom is a cab driver we spoke to earlier –spin around and around in the sky to flute music and drums. What visions they must have!

Original National Geographic illustration of the city

The next morning, we hop a cab and make our way out to the El Tajin archeological zone, yet another UNESCO World Heritage Site. It’s early enough that we find ourselves almost alone. A guide at the gate asks us in Spanish if we would like a tour. Preferring to wander on our own, and thinking that we might have to struggle with Spanish language explanations, we beg off. As we discover later, this was a mistake.

As we walked into the first main plaza of the old city, we are struck by its utter uniqueness. It is so unlike anything we have seen up to this point.  What’s more, no one seems to know who actually began construction of the city around 100 AD. Although the Olmecs were nearby, there doesn’t seem to be much evidence that they were present in sufficient numbers to have built it. Other Gulf Coast peoples, the Totonacs, and Xapanecs were present, but based on what we could learn, it seems like the neighboring Huastecs were the primary builders and occupants throughout the thousand years or so that the city flourished. Its construction is basically rock covered with painted cement. A few examples of the walls remain with smudges of primary colors. The city must have been stunning in its heyday. Most intriguing is the strange niche designs that cover the buildings, believed to have been related to a kind of calendar. In fact, the main “attraction” of the site is the so-called Pyramid of Niches, a spectacular work of art that has exactly 365 niches carved into its walls. There is nothing else like it throughout Mexico.

Eric's pano - note the regularity of the hills suggesting buried structures

At first glance, the site seems small when compared to Uxmal, Palenque or Calakmul. There are no comparably sized pyramids here, although there are something like 20 ball courts throughout the city – more than have been found at any other site - where the ceremonial game known all through Mesoamerica was played. It’s an easier site to get around. The few places where you can climb the structures are gradual stone stairways. The walkways are wide and level, though cobbled, and the layout of the city center feels compact. But this is an illusion. The city once contained hundreds of thousands of mixed ethnicity people. It wielded enormous power throughout the area that is now Veracruz state and beyond. It’s hard to believe unless you take a long second look through professional eyes at all of the surrounding environment. Enter the guide, Juan, whom we had turned down earlier at the gate.

Inverted cornices & niches unique to El Tajin

We were taking a quick water break perched on a bench near the main part of the city when he approached us and asked Eric, in Spanish, where he learned to speak Spanish. Eric replied. Then, Juan began to talk to us in letter-perfect English! It felt like a small, friendly joke, so we began to chat with him. Clearly he was waiting for the tour buses to arrive and had some time to kill. As the conversation continued, we expressed our fascination with the site and the curious regularity of the hills around us. He immediately responded with a stunningly detailed explanation of how enormous the city had actually been, how the rotational farming developed by the inhabitants made it possible to sustain huge populations, when the city flourished and fell, and on and on. He knew all of this, not merely from academic study or from attending guide school, but because he was one of the people who actually helped excavate the place, building by building.

Central plaza with ball court & original walkways

Within 30 minutes, we were gazing around us with new eyes. Look at the fossils in the walkways, yes they were deliberately set there, look at the detail of the construction, notice they used river rock, a sacred material, to build the inner walls, see these fragments of paint here…it was almost too much to absorb. If only we had taken the time earlier to talk to him a little more instead of plunging headfirst into the city, we might have come away with an even deeper sense of awe than we already felt.  He walked us back to the entrance as the tour buses rolled up. He wasn’t sure whether he would be hired. It was a day-to-day thing. Although he didn’t ask for it, we paid him about what a full-guided tour would have cost. It was well worth it. If any of our blog readers ever go to El Tajin, please seek out Juan. You can’t miss him. Smiling, friendly and genuinely passionate about the work done there, he will give you the special lens to see what is hidden in the stones.

We return to Papantla, again greeted by city bustle and by the flocks of noisy birds, which seem to occupy every inch of telephone wire, tree branch, and rooftop eve in town.  We watch and listen.

Cold Feet in a River of Time

Getting cold in Mexico?  
Ridiculous! And yet, as we stepped off the bus in Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz state, that’s exactly what we felt: cold, damned cold in fact. In past years we’d chuckled a bit about how the Mexicans in other parts of the country often bundled up when the temperatures dropped just a few degrees into what we would call comfortable. But as we made our way to the handsome little hotel just off the main part of town, Posada Del Cafeto, we took stock of our respective wardrobes – light jackets, summer tops, quick dry pants, etc. and quickly realized that we might well have to put on every single thing we brought –including bathing suits - or spend the next several days shivering in the chilly mountain air.

Even our spacious tile-floored, two-room suite was an icebox. Air conditioning? Si. Central heating? Lo siento, no tenemos.  At night the temperatures dropped to the 30s – enough to make our teeth chatter like canastas. Walking to the bathroom was a bit like tiptoe-ing over blocks of ice. Nevertheless, Xalapa was a must see town and the gateway to several fascinating pueblos magicos nearby. We huddled over our tacos at The Best Taco Stand Ever – Tacos Chema – and dug in for our 4-night stay. Chema was recommended by the taxi driver who drove us into town from the bus station. He said it was a must go kind of place, and it was. Waiters dressed in crisp white aprons and wearing surgical masks took orders for tacos con chicken, two types of chorizo, and any number of other tasty meats whose names we couldn’t translate. Once delivered, customers walk back to the front of the little café to slather on white beans, spicy marinated vegetables, guacomole with jalapeno, etc. It was a race to see if we could consume the delicious tacos before they disintegrated on our plates. Either way, we won.

Eric's lips are blue in chilly Xalapa

Unlike virtually every Mexican town we’d visited in the past, Xalapa did not have the usual layout of a big central zocalo, church on one side, government buildings on the other that we had grown accustomed to. There were verdant green spaces bordering the central district and a beautiful park just a few blocks from the town center, but not really a space where large numbers of folks hung out doing their thing, other than Chema and a few coffee houses serving delicious Xalapa brews.

But there was a museum and what a museum it was! We wanted to see it as a way to prep ourselves for our visit to El Tajin, an archeological site further north near Papantla. We were intrigued by the history of the rather mysterious Olmecs and wanted to learn as much as we could about the evolution of that culture as well as the rise and expansion of the Totonac and Huastaco  and other Gulf Coast peoples who were the founders of El Tajin.

The ultramodern layout is constructed like a canyon slicing down into layers of time with side tunnels that open up into rooms filled with artwork, both large and small that clearly define the different cultures that rose and fell from about 1500 BC up to the apotheosis of the Spanish conquistadors of the early 16^th century who were believed to be returning gods. Adding to the feel of tumbling down a cascade of living history are outdoor areas adjoined each cultural period that exhibited statuary as well as the indigenous flora of the primordial jungle.

Counterintuitive as it may seem, the “top” of the museum is not the most recent history; it is the most ancient. The first things you encounter are the famous Olmec heads that glare regally and disdainfully at us lowly visitors. These people, originating in the southeastern part of Veracruz state at the site Tenochtitlan or San Lorenzo, were apparently the first Mesoamerican “super” culture numbering tens or hundreds of thousands of souls. As such, the Olmecs are considered Mexico’s “mother” culture. The most significant finds so far are the formidable Olmec heads. We discovered that, unless you see them together, it is hard to appreciate the individuality of each head. They are all likely representations of rulers from various time periods that are clearly distinct. The faces show heavy scowls and prominent parted lips showing teeth. And unlike art from later evolving Mayan sites, each face captures unique emotions and human qualities.

Honoring mothers who died in childbirth

As you coast down, down, down the museum “river”, you see more examples of art, tools and pottery from the Gulf Coast peoples like the Totonacs and Huastec who emerged, rose, and fell in epochs succeeding the Olmecs. All of these cultures clearly show individual differences in style but, at the same time, all seem to have a familiar humanity overlaid with a baffling alien-“ness”. It’s strange; the art is certainly not “primitive” in any way. Yet, it can’t be said to be “naturalistic” like, say, Greek statuary. Perhaps “representative” is the best word. You can see real human expressions – terror, pain, death, joy, laughter – but the figures seem to hold us at arms length. In one exhibit you see the statues of mothers who died in childbirth, considered heroic in these cultures, with their faces conveying the repose of death, yet they are cast in strange, totemic poses with highly detailed and ornamented dress. They are dignified but distant. In another exhibit you see figurine after figurine of delicate smiling “babyfaces” with odd, slightly inhuman bodies and limbs. Over there is a whimsical statue of an old man leaning on a cane.
Turn around and there is a fully cast statute of a victim literally being skinned alive, screaming in agony, it’s body encircled with hundreds of tiny scalpel-like incisions. How does one sympathize with such visions that are so powerful they can make you laugh out loud or give you a terminal case of the willies?

At the end of the day, we feel completely spent by the time travel through the museum. Fortunately Xalapa is beginning to warm up – just as we fork over pesos for jackets and sweaters!

On a final excursion day before leaving Xalapa, we book an English-speaking guide, Armando, and head up to the hinterlands to see a coffee plantation outside of town and a pueblo magico: Coatepec that is perched on a mountaintop nearby.

The coffee plantation is a wonder. We taste some truly outstanding coffee while Pepe, the owner and chief engineer, walks us through the coffee growth and production process. The requirements for good coffee, we learn, are complex and very technical. The plants themselves grow under the shade of banana groves and produce a fruit, the seed of which is the actual coffee bean. At present, the coffee production in Mexico is, unfortunately, declining due, in large part, to climate change and to a fungus that is killing off the indigenous coffee strains. Pepe shows us some of the new varieties of plants that are now being introduced that appear to be immune to the infestation.

For lunch, Armando takes us to Coatapec, which is a small, very tidy pueblo magico that has a healthy and varied artisanal trade. We sample locally made tacos dorados - cheesy thick tacos that truly melt in your mouth - and wash them down with freshly made jugo fruta.  We’re back in Xalapa in time for an afternoon rainstorm and decide that it’s high time we crank out a blog before we pack up and head north to Papantla and the prehistoric city of El Tajin.