Melissa's Travels

MEXICO FLASHBACKS

When I think of my trip to Mexico and Guatemala in October, I think in imgaes, colors, scenes, and it is because of this that I mourn the loss of my camera and all of the photos. But then, perhaps, this is an opportunity to recapture what has become a lost art in current times: writing. And so, from time to time, as I am writing entries in this blog, I will enter in images as I remember them. The chronological order of the trip is not so important, but for those who are interested, it went like this: Three days on a bus from Nicaragua to Veracruz, ten days in Veracruz at a bird conference, a day on a bus to San Cristobal, Chiapas, five days in San Cristobal, five days traveling through Chiapas, five days in Guatemala, 2 days on a bus back to Nicaragua. And people of importance, for those of you whom it angers when I just mention names:

Ashley: old friend whom I met again at the bird conference. He taught me how to band birds in Louisiana in April of 2004. That site was completely decimated by Hurricane Katrina

Daniel: man I met in Veracruz, very nice, he is from a town nearby on the coast

Alex: tour guide and friend whom I met in San Cristobal. Originally from Monterrey

Alonso: archeoastromoner, part Mayan, part New Yorker, incredibly knowledgable of many things Mayan. And a good cook

Melanie: German girl I met while traveling in Guatemala. Invited me to Octoberfest where she promised to introduce me to a tall cute German

French-Canadian:FC for short. Also met him while traveling in Guatemala, but his name escapes me now- Sebastian? This is why I should write things down.

MIMES

The zocalo in Veracruz is very beautiful, a large plaza with a cathedral on one side, the government palace on another, one side is the street, and one side is all hotels with restaurants that put tables all along the outside, a wonderful place to sit and just watch the people pass. One day, after the end of the conference, I was walking along the zocalo,watching everything. Little street vendors selling cigars and candy, some with large bouquets of balloons and foams animals for children. Indian women setting up stalls where they would sell cloth, clothing, ceramics, and jewelry at inflated prices to Mexican and foreign tourists. I was walking, absorbed in my own thoughts, as I often do, when I began to realize that people were smiling at me. I was confused for a bit, until I realized I was being accompanied by a mime, a small balding man with a bit of a panza (belly). He was pretending to be my boyfriend, and I laughed right out loud when I saw him. I think he thought I looked sad. So we joked, silently of course, and then I went on my way. I sat in a café, watching the foot traffic, again those ubiquitous girls in party dresses, staring. I drank my café con leche, which, it is true, is the best I've ever had, when I realized something was going on in the plaza. I walked over and watched quite an impressive display of dancers, tall beautiful women in large yellow and white skirts, dancing to the music of live marimba, while the master of ceremonies described each dance before it took place. The men in impossibly white pants and shirts, with straw hats and yellow scarves, dancing that fast paced stompy tap dancing footwork that makes everyone applaud. Again, absorbed, taking films, when a man to my right spoke to me. It was the mime! I was surprised that he was vocal, but he informed me that he was off the clock. He spoke well good English, because he had lived in the states (who hasn't?). I think he tried to ask me out, but it was a confusing blend of teasing mixed with flirting. I suppose mimes aren't very suave when it comes to picking up women. With words, I mean. Maybe if he put himself inside an invisible box and pantomimed us having dinner I would have understood better. Or perhaps my English is now worse than my Spanish. Anyway, we did not end up going out, mainly because short bald men in stripey shirts with facepaint and white gloves don't appeal to me.

TIRES

I am walking down the street of a small dusty Guatemalan town, the streets full of very small people, the women in the most amazingly beautiful huipiles I have ever seen. Intricate, and I mean intricately embroidered white animals densely populating bands of green fields and black earth. I walked by a car repair shop, with its open garage facing the streets, oily bits of cars and dirty rags littering the floor. In front stood a man, leaning against a wall, grease stained clothes, smoking a cigarette, engaged in an animated conversation with a little old man sitting in a pile of tires. Sitting IN five tires stacked up, and he, like a miniature king on a throne, sitting such that his torso sat sticking erect from inside the tires, while his little legs splayed haphazardly out as well, as though someone had stuck a puppet in a cup. A wrinkled old man with coke bottle glasses, the gummy inward sucked lips that old men without teeth have, chattering away, waving his hands about, long and brown and hardened and angled and knobbed by years of hard work. He looked so comical to me, that I laughed, in spite of myself, at how sometimes life feels like a surrealist painting.

LANGUIDITY

Ashley and I are walking down streets, attempting to find the mythical alley where music is played live outside. We follow the strains of a mambo, and turn down a narrow alley, that opens up upon a small plaza, strung with lights and surrounded by tables chairs scattered without a sense of order. Across the plaza, up a few steps, to a concrete platform are six middle-aged men, framed by crumbling colonial walls. A band, a group of friends, playing with an ease and precision only seen in those who have played together a very long time. In the center dance the couples, slowly, gracefully, with an ease and precision seen only in those who have danced together a very long time. The music stops, and very carefully the couples return to their tables, chatting with each other and their neighbors. They sit, the men sip from their beers, the women open their fans and cool themselves. Only does it seems the break has begun when the music begins again, and with the same grace the couples put down their drinks, close their fans, and return to the center. Like a well orchestrated waltz, the pauses as much a part of the performance as the dancing. A single word comes to mind: languid. The air dense and humid. There is nothing rushed here. There is no sense of urgency, no looking about to see who is watching. It is not the planned display of bodies and skill that you see at hip discotecas. The dancers are immersed in the music, and in each other. And I think, it is not so bad to grow old, to enjoy the small things that life brings you, to still get dressed up, to still preen and flirt and show off, but with a confidence not seen in young people. As if, at the end of the night, the shell falls apart, and all that is left is the music and the touch of your partners hand. And then you see the solitary old men, still living in their youth, in flashy shirts open at the chest, maritime chains and charms of saints who guard sailors flashing amid the white hair. The wiggle, they prance, they entice lithe tanned tourist girls from the audience of watchers to dance with them. They try and teach the dance to the smiling girls, who are charming in their gracelessness. But then they are so amused with themselves these men, the proud bantam roosters of the night, that their bodies betray them, and they too dance to be seen more than they dance for the music. And I think, maybe we don't change that much as we grow old. Well, perhaps not men at least.

Snake Oil salesman

Literally. Well, not quite, since I guess he was selling snake POWDER. The point being that in a dusty plaza in a small Guatemalan town of Nabaj, a man stood, surrounded by a crowd, handling snakes. He proceeded to wrap them around his wrists, let them slither on the ground, batting them into place by tapping them with a stick. All the while spinning his web about the power of powdered snake venom. He placed the snakes in a bag, and brought out the product. His sales banter consisted of many dirty jokes. The audience was mainly old, small men, of indeterminable age, with young boys off all ages, poking in between the stoic adults. The older boys stood with arms crossed and one hip flung out in a cool detached manner, belied by their eyes on the snakes, apprehensive, mesmerized. The younger boys, all smiles and nervous energy, jittery movements between the legs of larger men. While the older men stood, as if they had seen this all before (as might well they had since it’s a weekly performance), weary, and afflicted. And if they bought the product, it would be because where there is pain, discomfort, and poverty, there is always hope that a miracle cure can be bought for less money than the pills at the pharmacy.

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