Plans for this summer

Living in Salt Lake, I have great mountains right next to town. It's great. I mean really really great. There are 3 different foothills with 1,000 to 2,000 feet of elevation gain that I can climb on weeknights as a nice workout. All the trailheads are within about 2 miles of my house.

On weekends, I've been doing a little snowshoeing but I've been keeping away from the big peaks because I don't know anything about avalanche safety. But the snow's starting to melt (or was, until we got two epic storms this week) and I'm getting antsy to get out. And so, I present my goal for this summer:

The Wasatch 11,000 ft peaks

Zacatecas

I am in Zacatecas, a wonderful old mining town in Zacatecas state dating back to the 1500s. I took a guided tour this morning of one of the old silver mines and I think I annoyed the tour guide with my myriad technical questions. Then I found a bunch of other mine adits and shafts where the locals seem to have been dumping garbage for years.

I'm on a computer right now that has a card reader, so here are some pictures from my camera:

I take a hydrometer reading at a tequila distillery in the town of Tequila

Crocodiles in Chiapas state.

Hanging out in the oh so touristy but still fascinating Mina el Eden in Zacatecas

I just realized I haven't been taking many pictures of myself.

Back in Mexico City

I'm back in Mexico City for a quick stop after the 14 hour overnight bus ride from San Cristóbal. I was seated near the back, where I caught a good whiff every time somebody opened the door to the lavatory. On top of this, there was an obnoxious group of loud people next to me who wouldn't shut up. I didn't really want to come back through Mexico City, but it's a pretty major transportation hub so another visit was practically unavoidable.

I ought to be back in New Mexico in about 5 days or 6 days, barring any unforeseen obstacles such as a bus driver strike, guerilla attack, etc. On my way back I'm going to wind through some of the old mining towns in the northern mountains.

San Cristóbal

is a pleasant small city in the mountainous forests of Chiapas. That's where I am. I'm still alive, in case anybody was wondering.

Oaxaca

Sorry I haven't updated in a while, but I've been too busy having the time of my life. Last Thursday night I went to the Ska-P concert which was beyond amazing. They only have about 9 fans in the US, so you haven't heard of them, but they're a brilliant ska-punk outfit from Madrid. These guys are huge down here; I've never been to such a massive, energetic ska show. It was worth hanging out for 4 days in Mexico City to wait for it.

Then, after a quick 6 hour jaunt by bus last Friday, I arrived to the much smaller and more pleasant town of Oaxaca. This town has managed to suck me in and keep me here for a week. It's up in the mountains, the weather's great, and I've been spending the days volunteering with a charity that runs a small kindergarten for some of the poor children, gives them a meal, and helps them get into primary schools around the city. So far I've spent two days in the kitchen, washing dishes and performing other menial kitchen tasks that even I am capable of. Yesterday they started me translating the children's letters to their sponsors. Here's the best of the best of what I got to translate:

"It's very very cold out. I almost freeze in the morning when I go to school. I even drink hot coffee and I'm still cold. Maybe I should start eating pure chiles and the spice will make me forget about the cold."

"I'm doing well in all of my classes, except for Spanish, physics, P.E., math, history, and English."

Also, since I've been here, I've been trying out various local dive bars and have found a clear winner. I'd tried out a couple that weren't terribly exciting, but then one night a couple of the more intrepid travelers staying at the hostel went out and found another one to try. We walked through the old-fashioned, saloon style swinging doors and everybody looked at us kind of funny. Looking back, that was the first sign that we'd struck gold. The patrons were actually quite friendly, one proudly telling us in English "Welcome to Oaxaca" and we chatted for a couple minutes. We ordered a round of beers, and partway through the bartender came over and showed us a bottle of mescal (liquor kind of like tequila) with dead scorpions floating in it. He buys the mescal himself and throws the scorpions in live. He claimed it was an aphrodisiac, which he emphatically illustrated by holding his index finger limp in front of him and then quickly pointing it up. It's a hell of a drink, but an aphrodisiac it is not.

Mexico City Part 2

I´ve done a lot of things in Mexico City, and am having a surprisingly good time considering how I tend to feel about large, polluted, overcrowded cities.

Day before yesterday, a few of us went to visit the pyramids at Teotihuacan. I got to climb the 3rd biggest pyramid in the world!

Yesterday, I went to the Leon Trotsky museum. The museum is in the house he lived in when one of Stalin´s men found him and killed him with an ice pick. I got to see his study (where the murder went down) as well as the rest of the house, which has been preserved pretty much how it was on the last days of his life. (They do seem to have cleaned the blood stains out of the study, however) Those of you who knew me in high school may recall that I once played Trotsky in a school play. His ashes and his wife´s ashes are kept in the yard under a Soviet flag.

Today I went to the anthropology museum, which was very impressive, even to a guy like me who has little to no interest in anthropology. There was an excellent display of Mayan and Aztec art, especially stone sculptures of their gods with several explanations which body parts of who were sacrificed to which gods. These folks seriously sacrificed a lot of people to their gods.

Tonight I´m hitting the Ska-P and Panteón Rococcó concert, then tomorrow I head to Oaxaca.

Mexico City

is big.