Farm near Erongarìcuaro, Puebla, D.F. (Mexico City)

I hope this blog post finds everyone well... I`ll catch you all up on what we`ve been doing over the past couple of weeks. The celebration of Mexico´s bicentennial continues, there are still decorations up everywhere, and of course advertisers are still pushing the whole thing as a reason to eat tacos, grow out your moustache, drink Coke, etc.

Erongarìcuaro

Wednesday before last we traveled from Pàtzcuaro to Erongarìcuaro. It was definitely an interesting ride; we caught a colectivo, which is like some sort of hybrid between a taxi and a bus. When we got in the colectivo van (about the size and shape of an old toyota van) there was only one other couple, but that soon changed. Of course we had all of our stuff, see pictures in earlier posts if you can`t picture this. The colectivo stops at deisgnated stops and pretty much anywhere else someone flags it down along the way, which seemed like every 50 feet. The driver stopped for everyone, despite the fact that after a while it would have been difficult to fit even a fly into the van, let alone an elderly lady with all her shopping, a couple of high school students, etc. After feeling like I was on the other side of the clown car stunt, it got to the point that even the people waiting along the road thought the driver was crazy for stopping and decided to wait for the next one. The driver seemed quite pleased, in his big seat all by himself, since it is a fixed fare, so the more people he picks up, the more money he makes. I counted 22 people in the van plus the driver at one point, and that was just the people I could see, there might have been another layer of people under them. I would have taken a picture had I been able to move any of my limbs enough to get the camera out. The moral of the story is that colectivos are an affordable way to travel, but if you aren`t comfortable with strangers sitting in your lap, or with sitting in a stranger`s lap, colectivos might not be for you, at least not at the hour that school gets out.

We arrived in Erongarìcuaro where we were picked up by the host of the second farm where we volunteered. The farm is not in Erongarìcuaro but the ride to the farm was a little more comfortable than the colectivo considering there were only three of us in the vehicle. We arrived and ate a giant salad and brown rice, which was a dream-come-true after all the meat and cheese and tortillas we`d been eating in the cities on our quest to remain parasite-free. Our friend Luis, who we met just before leaving the US and who returned to Mexico shortly thereafter, met us on the farm.

The environment was very different from El Chuzo; much more rain (although it only falls for six months of the year), mountainous, and different flora as a result of all this and the fact that it is much farther south. The farm was very cool. When our host purchased it there were some trees and a structure there already, all of which have been incorporated into the farm quite nicely. There are hundreds of avocado trees (another dream-come-true for me), many pear trees, peach trees, apple trees, quince trees, orange, lemon, grapefruit trees, herbs, bees, worm compost, some veggies (we planted a lot more!), and some more tropical plants like passionfruit and chile peròn (spicy!!!) in the greenhouse. The larger greenhouse is attached to the main house where the host lives and there is also a smaller greenhouse (a fenced-in area covered in shade cloth) in the orchard. There is a beatiful view of Lake Pàtzcuaro from the farm and, like on our land, you can really see the weather coming.


View of the orchard from the main house

Rainbow and (misty) view from the farm

Sunrise on Lake Pátzcuaro from the strawbale house loft window

Bees

Honey (sold locally)

There are many living spaces on the farm which also serve as examples of sustainable construction methods. The house where the host lives has several rooms to accomodate guests or housemates, a huge room for sleeping, yoga, massage, classes, etc., an awesome kitchen (for example: one rack for dishes to dry and be stored, we are definitely going to implement a similar system in our kitchen one day!), a cozy living room with a fireplace (that we used most nights), windows all along the south-facing wall, a solar hot water heater (to heat the rainwater used for showers and sinks), solar electricity, a bathroom with an Aerolet composting toilet, another adjoining composting toilet (of the more traditional style), and a large covered porch. This house is combination of log cabin and adobe, and an excellent example of how a traditional, existing structure can be retrofitted to have a smaller ecological footprint and be more comfortable and efficient. Luis stayed in the old stable, which has been converted to another living space (it has a kitchen, living space, sleeping space, composting toilet, and shower). Koki and I stayed in the newest structure on the farm - a hexagonal strawbale building with a loft. It has a woodstove and will soon have a kitchen, and it has its own composting toilet and outdoor shower. There is also a wood-burning sauna on the farm with an adjacent outdoor shower attached to an avocado tree (sweating in the sauna and then taking a cold, moonlit shower surrounded by avocados is pretty sweet).

Left to right: solar panels, greenhouse (attached to main house), sauna

Greenhouse attached to the main house, with solar oven and the top of a cistern in the foreground.

The strawbale house where Koki and I stayed.

Because it rains fairly heavily for six months of the year and little to none for the other six, water catchment is a priority on the farm. There are many cement ponds of various sizes and a canal system connecting them; these will likely be used to rase tilapia at some point in the future. There is also 100,000 L of storage volume in various ferrocement cisterns that collect water from the rooves of all the buildings. The most recently constructed cistern stores water from the strawbale house that we stayed in. This is a unique cistern in that it is open and in its shape - around 6´ wide x 5´ deep x 25´ long. In accordance with permaculture principles, also practiced elsewhere on the farm, the cistern has multiple functions: not only is it storage for water than can be gravity fed to the orchard below, but it also serves as a lap pool when full! (Kind of like the dish draining and storage rack.) The rainwater is cold and sooooo refreshing on a hot afternoon. This is another idea we plan to implement on our land.

Rainwater cistern/lap pool... stacking functions is the way to go...

On the farm we worked on reclaiming zone 1, the greenhouse attached to the house and the beds just in front of the house which were in need of some attention. For those of you not familiar with permaculture, zone 1 is the zone closest to the house where things you need the most are planted/located. Common sense, right? That´s what permaculture is all about. So, we weeded and weeded and repaired rockwork and planted lots of fall crops (greens, carrots, onions, beets) in the beds in front and some summer crops (tomatillos, basil) in the greenhouse. We contributed to something that will benefit the farm in the coming winter, when there can be frost and the plants will be watered by rainwater that will be stored before November when things start to dry up.

Orchard and herbs (yes, those are rosemary TREES!)

The host of this farm would like to continue to develop it as an educational facility, so if anyone is interested in its use for biology, sustainable development, appropriate technology, sustainable agriculture, permaculture, yoga, Spanish, etc. etc. classes there, let me know.

Puebla

Last Wednesday we went to Puebla, where we stayed with Koki´s friend Ingrid, who he met at a permaculture course. She and her family were very generous hosts and excellent guides of the city and surrounding areas. We visited Tonantzintla and saw the church with impressive gold leafed carvings, many faces with an indigenous look to them. We went to Cholula and saw what can be seen of the pyramid there that the Spanish covered up with soil and then built a Catholic church. This was after killing most of the indigenous people, some by tying them up and letting dogs rip them apart (I´m not making this up, there are paintings of it in the museum). The pyramid is an impressive structure, as is the church, in a different way. Interesting to see how one culture´s faith completely squashed another´s, literally and figuratively. We also visited Puebla centro, which is very pretty. Ingrid took us to Yaguar Cafè where we finally bought some organic Mexican coffee (grown in Puebla and Chiapas), surprisingly hard to find here (I have been shocked by how many people drink Nescafe instant coffee here!).

Church in Tonantzintla

Pyramid with catholic church on top in Cholula

Along with the bicentennial decorations in Puebla, these days you also see advertisements for chiles en nogada at almost every restaurant. This is a traditional, seasonal dish in Puebla. Ingrid`s mom very kindly prepared chiles en nogada for us, which is quite a process. The dish consisted of poblano chiles (spicy seeds and veins removed), stuffed with a mixture of pears, peaches, raisins, almonds, and other ingredients that I can`t remember right now, dipped in egg and fried, served in a sauce made of heavy cream and ground nuts of a certain variety (taste similar to walnuts) that are only available this time of year, with pomegranite seeds sprinkled on top. Traditionally something green (e.g. parsley leaves) is also sprinkled on top so that the plate has the colors of the Mexican flag. It was delicious and quite an honor, chiles en nogada are only eaten off of fine china with silver in the dining room in many families; this dinner was a little more laid back but very special.

Chile en nogada

Mèxico (the state)

Last Saturday we visited Teotihuacàn in the state of Mexico, the remains of an entire city. Wow! It is hard to describe it. The pyramids are huge and there are many other structures (remains of offices, houses, etc.). The teotihuacanos definitely had a good understanding of astronomy and many of the structures correspond to planets and the sun and moon. The ruins are in very good shape (oxymoron?) and have been rebuilt in some places so you can climb pyramids and enter some of the other buildings. It is hard to imagine not only how all of those rocks were brought there and put together, but the radius from which they must have been gathered. It was impressive, but not enough to make me dance around and chant like some of the other hippies I saw there. I wanted, for just a minute, to buy one of the little clay flutes that were being sold when we came in, they sound like birds, but after I heard them non-stop and had them shoved in my face by agressive salesmen for hours on end, I decided I never wanted to see one of them again. Really? Do you think I want to buy something from you when I`ve seen the same crap, probably made in China, for the last two hours from five thousand other vendors? I don´t mean to be rude, I know people are trying to make a living, but really, someone should try to come up with a new marketing scheme (like try to sell something that you actually made and don´t step right in front of me and make me walk around you), I might have considered buying something from them.

Teotihuacàn

Teotihuacàn (pyramid of the sun on the right, pyramid of the moon on the left).

On the way back to Puebla we had our first encounter with the infamous Mexican police (these were state police). The car we were in had out-of-state plates, which was the (un)reason they stopped us. We were driving from one federal highway to another, both of which are for use by anyone with plates from any state, in the state of Mexico, where the only license plate restrictions are in and around Mexico city. (In an attempt to reduce traffic and associated air pollution, only certain plate numbers are allowed in the city during certain hours). Ingrid`s father (who is German) was driving and got out of the car to talk to the cops. When he didn´t come back after they´d seen his license, we realized they were trying to extort money from him, and Ingrid`s mom (Mexican) got out of the car and joined the conversation. Ingrid`s mom could be a lawyer! She woulnd´t give them any money unless they gave us a ticket for something (which means there is a record of it and it has to be legitimate). We couln´t hear all of it from the car but we learned that, once they realized they weren´t going to get anything using the first BS infraction, they accused Ingrid`s dad of being a taxi driver (what else would a German be doing with tourists in the car?), and that he was going to have to pay for that. Ingrid`s parents both returned to the car, then they called her dad out again, but her mom went right behind him. Then they came right back to the car and we left. Ingrid thinks that crooked cops aren`t as confident with extorting money from women and that it doesn`t happen nearly as often as it does with men, and that sure seemed to be the case in this incident. We also stopped at the Tembleque acueduct, which was much cooler than the encounter with the police.

Tembleque aqueduct

Mèxico (the city)

On Saturday we met Luis in el D.F, the Distrito Federal, a.k.a. Mexico City. Wow. It was just as insane as I had imagined. The first ridiculous experience was the metro. Wow. Getting to the metro itself is an adventure, when things get really busy they have separate entrances (and cars) for men and women, so on the way back in the afternoon a cop tried to tell me to go on through the entrance and Koki and Luis to keep going, and we asked why, and first he said because women have priority (while he coralled Koki and Luis away with his metal detector wand), but when Koki asked then where the heck were they supposed to get on the metro, the cop realized we weren´t from around there and told us to all go through, that sometimes foreigners get priority too. Interesting system. The next time we ran into that I just went with the guys. So, after getting through the entrance we approached the boarding area, along with approximately one million other people. When the metro arrived, there was a mad push outward as people got off, pushing pushing pushing, little old ladies and all. At some crucial point the tables turn and the people waiting on the platform start start pushing and overtake the people leaving the metro. Then its push push push to get your butt on that metro before the doors close rather violently, which happens quite soon after they open if you ask me. After seeing all the other groups of people get separated by the doors of the first metro to arrive, we made a plan for how to find eachother should the same happen to us, and we got ready to push. We pushed pushed pushed our way onto the metro and all managed to get inside, quite an accomplishment. There is a whole world inside the metro, people selling CDs (part of the strategy being to play really loud music through speakers in their backpacks), toys, gum, toothbrushes, whatever else you can think of, people handing out messages of salvation (which mostly seemed to end up as litter on the ground and thus did not really strike me as a message of salvation), a 2.5´ man, a sad clown talking on a cell phone, etc. etc. There are also musicians who perform in the metro but unfortunately they weren´t on the same train as we were. It wasn´t quite as crowded as the colectivo to Eronga, but it wasn´t a weekday, afterall. We made it out of the tunnel of madness to the zòcalo, where there were only approximately half a million people. Tourists, school groups, indigenous people playing drums and dancing and cleansing people by blowing smoke over them (not quite sure about the details of that one), police, people, people, people. We were going to go into the cathedral but there was mass going on so we couldn`t enter (good thing I`ve already seen around 50 other churches on this trip so far). I became somewhat of a local celebrity with the middle and high school English student demographic. A group of students approached me and one of them asked me if I spoke English (nice for a change, that it isn´t just assumed) and then if he could interview me for his English class. I said sure, karmically and academically I felt obliged, I had to interview a native Spanish speaker for my conversational Spanish class many years ago. He interviewed me while his compañeras videotaped... was this my first time in Mexico, did I like Mexico, where had I been, did I like music, what is the US like - that was a hard one to answer concisely, etc. etc. He spoke English very well and was very polite. After that we made it about three steps farther and another kid asked me if he could interview me for his English class. He had lost his compas so Koki ended up being the camera (phone) man. Did I like Mexican food, how old am I, what are my hobbies... After that we made it almost around the corner of the cathedral when another group asked me the same. Two boys interviewed me while their teacher or mom or something filmed. What was my favorite band, my favorite food, what has been my favorite place in Mexico, where else am going (that was a long answer)... A group of young women gathered around to listen to and watch this interview, one of them interpreting for the rest. I thought they were students, too, but apparently they were just some random people. Finally we made it to the bus stop we were trying to reach and while we were waiting for the TuriBus (which ended up being a total waste of 40 minutes and would have been way more expensive than a taxi), a crackhead gringa asked if I spoke English, and I thought really, this can`t be another student. She had some story about not being able to buy a bus ticket without an ID and waiting on a phone call from her mom and she only needed two hundred pesos to get outta here, all the while in her winter jacket, fidgeting with her burnt hands. Sketchy. I told her no, although I was tempted to tell her if she hung out around the corner maybe she could get some pesos out of some high school students in exchange for an interview. She probably had more interesting answers than I did, too. We went to el Bosque de Chapultepec, a park in the city, becuase that´s how we roll. It was not exactly the island of nature I was hoping for, at least there´s something that resembles a natural environment there, but how sad is it that for a lot of people, that´s the only forest they´ve ever known? We walked around for a bit, saw two squirrels, a few Montezuma cypress (Taxodium mucronatum in case Howie is reading this), a bunch of exotic Casuarina trees, and around five million bipedal mammals. That was pretty much it, we ate some tacos and braved the metro again to get back to the bus station to get back to Puebla. And that was our experience in the Distrito Federal, aside from riding the bus for around an hour before actually getting out of the concrete jungle. It sounds weird, but I was disappointed in the relatively clean air the day we were there after having learned about the infamous Mexico City smog during my years in air pollution research.

El Zòcalo in Mexico City

My 15 minutes of fame.

Cool collection idea for plastic bottles.

We`re now in Oaxaca (in the city of Oaxaca, the major landslide was elsewhere in the state of Oaxaca), but I`ll tell you more about all of that in the next post...

Zacatecas, Guadalajara, and Pàtzcuaro

Hola amigos, an update of our time between farms...

Last Wednesday we traveled from General Cepeda to Zacatecas for two nights. The first afternoon we saw a parade right by the hostel, some combination of indigenous dance and the Catholic church, interesting:

Dancers in a parade in Zacatecas

There was a lot going on, as there is everywhere we`ve been, due to the upcoming bicentennial. The hostel in Zacatecas, Hostal Villa Colonial, was in a cool old building and the people who worked there were cool, but other than that it was unimpressive (i.e. the bathroom in our room had not been cleaned since the last guest, the toilet barely worked, etc.). The fact that the bus ride to Zacatecas totally sucked did not help the experience overall (again, serious bathroom issues, like they really shouldn´t even pretend they have one on the bus!). On Wednesday night we went to the fiestas, going on from 2-19 September for the bicentennial. It was kind of like a patriotic state fair, not really my cup of tea but it was fun. We heard many local mariachi bands and other singers which was great. While we were enjoying the music and a Corona Familiar (yes, apparently there is such a thing as family-sized beer), a guy from a local newspaper took our picture (we never did get the actual paper, oops) - here it is:

Feria Nacional, Zacatecas

Appreciating art outside the cathedral in Zacatecas

On Thursday, after getting our picture taken at breakfast by someone from another newspaper (didn`t get that one either), we rode the telefèrico (gondola/cable car, built by the Swiss) over the city to the park Cerro de la Bufa. Our time there was definitely the highlight of our Zacatecas experience, it is a beautiful place, full of nature and history. We did some birdwatching and waited out a big storm. The cable car was cool, except for the obnoxious `driver` (really `door opener/closer) who, as soon as I responded that I was from the US, proceeded to ìnform` me that in Mexico there are United States, too, and that Mexico is part of North America, too. Yep, I know all of that, which is why I hadn`t said anything to the contrary. It made me realize that its not just other gringos that perpetuate the US-centric stereotype, there is definitely some prejudice that forces the stereotype on some of us. Anyways, Zacatecas is an interesting city, lots of square, colorful buildings in between the hills, and of course lots of churches (interesting architecturally, but not something that entertains me all day).

The Telefèrico and part of Zacatecas, with Cerro de la Bufa in the distance

At the meteorological station on Cerro de la Bufa, overlooking Zacatecas

On Friday morning we traveled from Zacatecas to Guadalajara, another crappy (literally) bus ride. The taxi we got to the hostel had some Soda Stereo and other rock (in Spanish) cranked, a really wonderful change from banda and norteña, which are fine in small doses, but that`s all we`ve been hearing lately. Oh, speaking of music we hear all the time, there`s some sort of marching band with what sounds like 500 cornetas going by at the moment. We checked in at Bed`n`Travel Hostel, southwest of the center of Guadalajara. The staff members were awesome and the place was clean, but there were a few weird things: people steal stuff, so there were no lighters for the gas stove in the kitchen (which is on the roof - cool), no toilet paper unless you ask for it, etc. The clientelle they have received so far apparently don`t understand the hostel etiquette, too bad. On Friday night we went to Tlaquepaque, a suburb of Guadalajara, and heard some live mariachi music and saw a ballet folclòrico. On the way there a bus driver slammed the door in my face and almost ran us over, but after that people were very helpful in guiding us to the three buses it took to get there. On Saturday we went to downtown, saw La Catedral and Mercado San Juan de Dios and walked around, then hiked what felt like a million blocks to Parque Agua Azul. It was pretty lame, we were hoping to do some birdwatching but the only birds to be found were in cages or grackles in the various exotic trees. After that we walked what felt like two million blocks to get back downtown (wrong turn, got to see the auto parts zone of Guadalajara, though, woohoo) and hear some mariachi music at the Plaza de Los Mariachis.

La famosa Catedral de Guadalajara

Mercado San Juan de Dios, Guadalajara

Yummy food from a taquerìa in Guadalajara
(cheaper and better than the fancy restaurants)

On Sunday we went to the nearby town of Tequila and toured the Las Alboradas distillery (on Facebook). This is a small distillery which uses a more traditional process than the larger distilleries like Cuervo and Sauza. They use organic agave but it sounds like there are some things they could do to be more sustainable, at least its a step in the right direction. We wanted to visit their agave fields but weren`t able to. We learned at the tequila museum that one of the problems associated with the way almost all the distilleries do things is that they don`t allow the agave to flower, because once it flowers it is no longer good for making tequila. This means that there is very limited sexual reproduction and that the bats and hummingbirds that depend on the plant for food have much less to eat than they could if more agaves were allowed to flower. The plant produces clones which are used to plant the next crop. The blue agave only flowers every 7-9 years, so it takes planning ahead to have a crop ready for tequila production. We ended up buying El Gran Jubileo Reposado. We learned on the tour that the lime and salt tradition started to actually hide the taste of crappy tequila and that much more appropriate companions are orange (for tequila blanco, the youngest), strawberry (for reposado), and chocolate (for añejo, the oldest). We tried their tequilas with oranges and chocolate and it was definitely a million times better than Cuervo with lime and salt! They also make cookies with some of the agave sugar and fiber. The distillery has won prizes over all the big distilleries, not surprising. We also visited a very old distillery, their tequila wasn`t as good but they had some interesting, impressive equipment. I wish I could have brought my chemistry students on a field trip to a distillery when they learned about distillation!

Tequila!

Blue agave

Yesterday we traveled to Pàtzcuaro, a small town in the state of Michoacàn. It is a very picturesque place with lots of interesting, pre-columbian and hispanic history. We might come back here after our time at the next farm, which is about 30 km from here. Last night we stayed at Hotel Valmen, a very sweet (and clean!) little hotel in the historic downtown. At noon today we`re going to the bus station to meet Luis, a new friend we met just before we left NC through one of my oldest and dearest friends, Jess. Luis returned to Mexico about the same time we began our journey after living in the US for half his life. He and his family are about to begin an agricultural undertaking they have been planning and working towards for some time now. The three of us will work on the farm near Erongarìcuaro together for the next week or so.

Hotel Valmen, Pàtzcuaro

Rancho El Chuzo, General Cepeda, Coahuila, México

Hola mi gente, I hope everyone is doing well. A summary of the past week...

We arrived at Rancho El Chuzo last Sunday afternoon, just after the other WWOOFer had arrived. I´ll get the negative part out of the way now: the other WWOOFer sucks, total lack of conciousness and work ethic, if you ask me (or Koki). It has been part of the learning experience, though, as it has prompted us to discuss what we would do if we received such a WWOOFer on our future farm. Okay, onto the good stuff... The family who lives and works on the farm is made up of Bernardo (father), Anne (mother, French), Numa (son, 3 1/2 years old), Limaya (daughter, 9 months old), and José Luis (Bernardo´s father). Bernardo and Anne are the same ages as Koki and me; we are at very different points on very similar journeys. Anne came to the farm as a volunteer; she calls herself a permanent volunteer. They are a wonderful, welcoming family and we have become friends.

The house at Rancho El Chuzo

Anne, Bernardo, and Limaya in the garden

Aragon (a.k.a Numa in a costume made by Anne)

Rancho El Chuzo is located behind the General Cepeda town cemetery, about a five minute walk to town. On the farm there are cows, pigs, chickens, there was a burro until yesterday (someone bought it who could use it more, if they don´t work they can be a pain in the ass, pun intended), two Scotty dogs, a windmill that was for the well but has been replaced with a solar pump since there often wasn´t enough wind, solar panels for electricity, a graywater system (under construction), a blackwater system, a composting toilet (more like a latrine), impressive gardens (especially for such an arid region), reforested areas, lots of magueys (a type of agave, a crop older than corn with many uses), and an orchard (mostly peaches). The house is technically José Luis´, Bernardo and Anne have the foundation in place for their house but haven´t been able to continue with construction for some time. The house is very cool, adobe, carrizo roof, nice and cool in the day and cozy warm at night, they have a dorm-type room for WWOOFers where we slept the first night but since then we´ve been sleeping in the tent, the breeze and the stars and the giant orange moon were too enticing. They are off the grid, I mentioned the water and electricity, they cook and refrigerate (dorm fridge) with gas. We´ve adapted well to using little water and electricity and to living with intermitent use of these luxuries when there isn´t enough sun, which has been the case the past couple of days. Its kind of like going back in time in many ways. We all eat lunch together in the main part of the house, cooking and sharing meals has been a fun part of getting to know the family and the farm.

Piggies

Milk, yogurt, and cheese thanks to this baby´s mama

Burro

We have been working hard on several projects... We have been cleaning (mowing? weeding? I think I´m losing some English) the orchard with hand tools: machete, sling blade, and the rosadera (small toothed hand sickle, awesome tool!) to clean carefully around the bases of the trees. The other really hard physical labor we´ve been doing is working on the new graywater system (the old one didn´t work out, we´ve already learned some things to do and some things to not do when it comes to graywater). The new system will take graywater (from sinks and showers) to a small canal behind the house. The canal will lead to five trees that will be planted in holes we dug surrounded by a canal which will be filled with organic material. The water will thus be used to water the trees and the mulch will help anything besides water be composted and turned into soil. Digging the holes was a tough job, lots of rock, but we´re ready to plant trees now. These two jobs (orchard and digging holes) have been our morning jobs, before it gets too hot.

Working in the orchard

In the afternoons we´ve been cleaning cascavel chile peppers that are used to make the chorizo that they sell. This inolves cutting the stem off of dried chile peppers, cutting it open, removing the seeds and veins, and tearing the pepper in half. Its not so bad as long as I have gloves (which I didn´t the first day we did it, ouch!). Unfortunately they won´t be making chorizo while we´re here so we won´t actually get to participate in the rest of the process, but we do have the recipe! We have learned how to make lots of other yummy things and almost have quite a collection of recipes after just a week... granola, yogurt, several different cheeses, nopales (prickly pear cactus pads), Irish cream, all of these from José Luis. One day we made bread with Anne, starting by washing, separating, and drying the winter wheat they grew on the farm, then grinding it, making the dough, starting the fire in the adobe oven, and finally baking the bread there. We made several flavors, all with ingredients from the farm: granola, garlic and oregano, rosemary, fennel. In the end it was kind of dry (we forgot to put cups of water in the oven with the bread) and is definitely WHOLE wheat bread (the first batch of flour that we ground was extremely coarse).

Cascavel chile peppers for chorizo

Bread, ready to go in the adobe oven

We have been eating almost entirely from the farm, we love it! They grow wonderful tomatoes, garlic, onions, peppers, herbs, greens (arugula grows wild here!), peaches, pomegranites, cucumbers, corn... plus the dairy products, chorizo, and a few eggs. Peaches, apples, and pecans are all grown locally; we´re definitely still in North America! It rained on Friday night and yesterday, not a typical desert downpour, but a nice gentle rain most of the night and day, just what the gardens need. They plan to build a rainwater catchment system at Rancho El Chuzo using the tank that was part of the old graywater system to take full advantage of the sparse rains. Things definitely look much more alive today and lots of plants are flowering.

Yummmmmmmm

Last night we were all invited to a lamb roast at Rancho La Gloria, owned by the same family (Sofía and Emilio and their children) that owns the restaurant Los Portales that I mentioned in the last post. It was a wonderful evening! The lamb was delicious, raised and butchered on the farm, cooked over maguey leaves in a metal box with the fire built on top for about 4 hours. We also had tequila drinks with fresh quince fruit juice and cajeta de membrillo for dessert, all very typical. We were going to go to a baile (dance) before heading back to El Chuzo but we ended up staying at La Gloria until late and we were tired. There was a wedding yesterday evening and the baile was the reception. The tradition here is that everyone in town is invited to the party after a wedding. It would have been nice to go to the party and learn some new dances, but at least we got to hear the music from where we were (right up the hill from the baile). The party was at el castillo (the castle), a house (really, it is more like a castle) that was in the family many years ago, then sold, then bought by the family again. We´re planning to go back to La Gloria on Tuesday to really see the farm, including a machine they have to treat milk with pressure instead of pasteurizing it with heat to prolong shelf life in order to market it outside of General Cepeda (where many folks have their own cows) without destroying its delicious flavor. It sounds like Bernardo and Anne will sell their milk this way, with the milk from La Gloria, which will save them the time they currently spend selling the raw milk door-to-door in town.

Lamb and Rito, the cook

We have become friends with the family, it will be sad to leave on Wednesday. My birthday was last Tuesday and the family (and Koki) sang me the traditional Mexican birthday song, Las Mañanitas. I felt very much at home and will definitely never forget my 29th birthday. Sweet little Limaya has gotten very comfortable with Koki and me, fun but also useful as we are able to take care of her sometimes if Bernardo and Anne need to do something with both hands. Numa is a wild child, but so intelligent, I really can´t believe he isn´t even four years old. After kindergarten he goes to La Casa de Jugar (the Playhouse), run by Bernardo´s mother Tobi, where there are several rooms with different activities that the kids take part in as they please. This is not only important for the development of the children who go there, but for their mothers, who otherwise are homebound in the afternoon. Anne pointed out that in France, school lasts all day, giving women much more freedom, compared to Mexico where short school days and many other things basically prevent women from having much freedom. They have talked about moving to France, life seems like it would be easier in some ways (more like-minded people, less corruption, etc.) but they have invested so much here that it would be very hard to leave just now, too. Bernardo and Anne have both traveled and WWOOFed in many countries and are very knowledgeable, creative, hardworking people. We really hope they´ll be able to come visit us in Costa Rica one day and we definitely hope to come back to General Cepeda.

Koki learning to make queso chiuhuahua from José Luis

José Luis is a national treasure, a curator of the living museum that is northern Mexico. We have had many wonderful discussion with him on a wide variety of subjects and we have learned a lot about life in Mexico, a completely different reality than that of the USA or Costa Rica. He used to publish a newspaper as a way to educate people about the history of this country... true stories were taken from the national archive and published in a newspaper, just like present day but with the historical information and dates, including classified advertisements for selling slaves and such. José Luis is a trained and passionate historian, most interested in stories of everyday life and not of heroes. He worked in political campaigns for some time as well and shared with us some of his views on the political environment in Mexico. One party, PRI, was in control of Mexico for around 80 years (not the party he worked with). In those days there was one cartel that had a relationship with the government, was basically paid to do the government´s dirty work, and as a result dominated the other cartels. When things changed and PRI was no longer in control, this relationship changed, supposedly an end to the corruption, but in the end it just meant that the smaller cartels gained power and there is still tons of corruption in the government at many levels, and look where we are in terms of the narcos. To me, as an ecologist, it somewhat resembles the removal of a top-level predator from a system, the balance that existed, even though it might not have been ideal for everyone, was upset. Even this small town doesn´t escape the tight grasp of corruption. On September 15 Mexico will celebrate 200 years of independence, 100 years ago the Mexican revolution began, and in 2010 Mexico is again at a crucial point in its history.

Buenas noches...

Also check out Koki´s blog

Some GOOD news from Mexico

This is another long one, sorry folks. So much for posting every week or two, that was harder than I thought it would be in the USA, but I´ll get to that...

Goodbye Carolinas

We had a lovely time in Brevard NC with my mom. Next we spent a week in Iva SC with my dad and stepmom and visited my grandfather Perky and my great aunt Elaine in Anderson SC. It was sad to say goodbye but we had a really nice visit with my family. My mom came down at the end of the week to see us off. It seemed very fitting that I departed from the place I lived for the first six years of my life for this adventure. My dad and stepmom drove us to Atlanta on the 21st to catch our first train...

Train travel, welcome to NOLA, Lafayette

We are definitely fans of train travel! Our tickets instructed us to arrive 30 minutes prior to the departure time and we got there over an hour early. Right when we got to the Amtrak station in Atlanta there was an announcement: three minutes remaining to check baggage (so much for 30 minutes!). We hurried over to the counter but in the 30 seconds or so it took us to get there the bagagge checker had already closed up shop and we couldn´t check bags. Being accustomed to traveling with airlines, we freaked out a little, especially when the man at the desk said we could just send our bags on tomorrow´s train (not an option as we weren´t going to be in New Orleans when the next day´s train would arrive). He could tell we were freaking out and told us to chill, that we could just take our bags on the train with us. I specifically asked if this was an option when I bought the tickets and was told no. We took our bags on the train and everything was totally find. Amtrak might be a little disorganized in some ways but in the end it was super easy, approximately 100 million times better than traveling with an airline.

Riding the Crescent train was a fun experience. The staff on the train are super friendly and you get to see the countryside. That was interesting; Alabama was pretty depressing because it seemed so depressed economically (and because the entire train corredor is completely covered in kudzu). I´m sure this economic depression reaches much further back than the recent recession, back to the time when many factories moved overseas, even back to the days of slavery and abolition. Most towns were practically deserted, made up mostly of closed factories and shops. Mississippi seemed to be in better shape.

We saw a beautiful sunset and the cemeteries as we arrived in New Orleans around 8pm. We stayed at India House Hostel, definitely a funky place, not the dirtiest and not the cleanest hostel I´ve stayed in, lots of character. We stayed in the Voodoo Room, very small and hadn´t been cleaned since the previous guests, but it wasn´t a big deal because they give you clean sheets when you check in and that´s really all I care about. We hung out at the hostel that night and met some very cool people: Esteban from Mexico City, Derek from southern California, Eduardo and Veronica from Brazil (they live in Rio de Janeiro and invited us to stay with them on the southern portion of Adventures in America, to take place in 2014). The last three are traveling together and we hope to see then in Costa Rica one day soon.

The next morning we were picked up by the Avis shuttle, which we shared with what has to be one of the rudest, most obnoxious boys on the planet, the English version of the most obnoxious fratboy you can imagine. At least it wasn´t a gringo that was the most embarrassing human being around for once. Very rude to the driver, cussing up a storm, pitched a fit with the Avis agent when he couldn´t pick up a car that was being paid for with his friend´s credit card. Definitely provided validation that its best to just relax and go with the flow, don´t let those bumps in the road get you all bent out of shape. We (very calmly and politely) rented our Ford Focus and headed out to Lafayette to visit my great aunt Jeanne (Elaine´s sister, both my maternal grandma´s sisters). We stopped at EcoCafe on Canal St. for breakfast. What a great restaurant! Lots of local/organic ingredients and water/energy saving features (efficient toilets, real towels, exactly the right amount of cream for your coffee, etc.) in addition to many original features in the remodeled building (my favorite being the floor to ceiling hardwood pocket doors). The restaurant supports NOLA Green Roots, a very cool initiative, as well as local farms.

On Sunday afternoon we arrived in Lafayette at Jeff and Tana´s house (my second cousin, once removed, I think, and his wife who is from Thailand)where my great aunt Jeanne is living. We spent the afternoon with them and had a lot of fun playing knucklehead with Jeanne and Tana. We spent Sunday night at the Blue Moon Guesthouse and Saloon, what a great place! We were supposed to have a double bed in one of the two dorm rooms, but before we arrived a group of five girlfriends checked into that room. Shelly, the manager, felt sorry for us and thought we would be more comfortable in another room so she cut us a really good deal on the Gallery or Cowgirl room (private double with private half bath). The hostel is really nice, cleaner than my house has been on the average day, saloon in back of the house where we enjoyed some live music that night. On Monday we visited with aunt Jeanne some more and showed her some of our gear. She and her late husband, Russ, did lots of traveling and camping, so she definitely had something to compare our new gear to in terms of weight, etc. She shared some wonderful stories, including that of the first time she went camping (which did not go quite as planned and involved hot chocolate for dinner and sleeping under the stars on the side of a mountain instead of the cabin they were supposedly hiking to, but it didn´t turn her off from camping!). On Monday we had a fabulous lunch at Tana and Jeff´s restaurant, Pimon Thai. We were treated like VIP and got to try the specialties of the house, all made by Tana, who is a very talented chef. My dream of a giant bowl of Tom Kha came true and Tana even gave us a big container to take with us. We also tried the soft-shell crab, fish (the whole thing), beef and vegetables in oyster sauce, shrimp-fried rice, and Sriracha shrimp. Possibly the best part of the meal was dessert: homemade coconut icecream with palm fruits and fried bananas.

Jeanne and Fern

N´awlins

We arrived back at India House Hostel in NOLA on Monday night and checked into Alan´s Amen this time. Ugh. Not cleaned since the last guest, again, and I saw a mouse trying to get into our bags. It scurried away into a hole under the bed, where we also saw a giant cockroack (the kind referred to as skateboards in Koki´s family); that was when we decided to set up the tent on top of the bed (the only place it would fit). On Monday night we hung out at the hostel and made some new friends, Franches from France and Boston Jay from... Boston. Jay had an awesome harmonica and we all enjoyed some tunes played on it by Jay, Franches, and Koki.

India House Hostel, NOLA

On Tuesday we rode the Canal streetcar to the cemeteries (interesting, but we ended up there because we got on going the wrong direction, oops). We went to the French Quarter and wandered around the French Market, where we had piña coladas and gumbo and heard some live music. Koki was video taping the band and the singer held up a sign. He thought it was the name of the band and zoomed in, only to realize it said "No video taping" or something to that effect. Oops. He did get some good video of a guy dancing with his broom to the music. We went back to the hostel to take a nap and get ready to head back downtown for some music and nightlife later on. We saw some of the friends we had met previously and everyone was headed to a $12 show, out of our price range (unless we weren´t going to drink, haha), so we were just going to head downtown and see what there was to see for free. We started talking to Julien, from France (but living and working in England), who was also going to wander downtown. We ended up talking until 3am and never went out, too bad we missed the N´awlins nightlife but we had one of the best conversations ever. It was really interesting to share stories and travel tales from the perspectives of people from three different countries, discuss how stereotypes of our three countries compare to reality... Julien was impressed with the warm, friendly people he has met in the USA, not at all like the stereotype he hears in Europe. It was refreshing for me to hear this, I definitely have some shame associated with the stereotype of ´Americans´, because unfortunately many who go abroad fulfill this stereotype of... the world is mine mine mine gimme gimme gimme. Julien also shattered some stereotypes, e.g does not sport a Speedo. I went to bed feeling like theis world is a really good place despite the negativity we see on the news.

Train ride and San Antonio

Observation car on the Sunset Limited

On Wednesday morning we caught the Sunset Limited train to San Antonio. In the NOLA Amtrak station we met Roger, a very interesting and kind train traveler. He has traveled extensively on mountaineering and sailing trips and now travels by train very frequently. He gave us some tips about getting good train fares (definitely helpful, as this is how I will travel when I take long trips within the USA in the future) and showed us his room in the sleeper car, very cool. This train was a little fancier, very nice observation car with seats facing huge windows and a dining car where we had dinner with Roger. I didn´t get much sleep (never do in a seat, might shop for a room or roomette if I take a long train trip at night again) but luckily we arrived earlier than expected in San Antonio.

We took a taxi to the KOA and set up the tent, trying to avoid the billions of ants that were absolutely everywhere, a challenge, but easier than avoiding the smell of sewage that was also everywhere. Does KOA legally have to call it "kamping" because its not really camping? We got some sleep and headed to downtown San Antonio on Thursday. What a cool city! We went to the Greyhound station to print our tickets for the next day and to purchase tickets out of Mexico, supposedly an immigration requirement for entering the country. We walked around the Riverwalk and had lunch at Zuni´s (the highlight was the prickly pear margarita). We visited the Alamo and went to the post office in the federal building(i.e. going through airport-type security to mail a book, god forbid I carry a pocket knife!). We then started what turned out to be a fruitless journey to use the internet. We waited to catch the streetcar to the library, the only place with internet and computers for people to use. We waited for a while, and when the streetcar arrived the driver told us it was better to catch the streetcar going the other direction because it would drop us right in front of the library. We waited for a while and caught that streetcar, and the driver told us no, it would be better to ride the original car we tried, which would take 8 minutes and get us two blocks from the library as opposed to 30 minutes to the library door. So, we waited again, and the driver seemed mad at us that we were taking the other guy´s advice and not his. We finally made it to the vicinity of the library and even to the actual entrance, which was completely disguised by construction and almost impossible to find. Wow, we were there! We went in and asked about using the computers they had available. We were given a ticket with a guest username and told to sign in on the main computer. We headed over to the 8 (yes, EIGHT) computers that are available for the computerless general public of San Antonio Texas USA. There were 16 people in line ahead of us, each allowed up to two hours on the computer. So, that is why I have not posted until now. The whole wasted afternoon made me realize how different it is to travel in the USA like we are traveling: no vehicle, no laptop. Very disappointing. Catching a bus and finding an internet cafe are two relatively easy tasks in many other countries. We headed back to the KOA for a dip in the pool and to do laundry. While I was getting stuff packed up in tent (safe from the ants), a woman approached the tent from one of the many fancy RVs. She had made us some snacks because she "knew we were camping" (like its some sort of handicap or something). Martha gave us with two sandwiches she had made, a bag of goldfish crackers, and a quart of organic unsweetend soy milk, because she´s "into organic food". I told her about our trip and found out she is originally from Guadalajara Mexico. Wow, we hadn´t even arrived in Mexico yet and already the image of Mexico that is portrayed lately on the US news was being turned on its head by Martha and Esteban.

Cactus ´rita

Bus, border, Mexico!

We caught a bus to Laredo Texas on Friday morning. We changed buses in Laredo and headed for the border. We met some really nice folks on the bus who were traveling to various parts of their home country, Mexico. We were definitely somewhat nervous about this portion of the trip, things are rough around the border now as I´m sure you all know. We just kept in mind all of the positive things that had happened on the trip so far and chatted with the folks we had met. Crossing the actual river was a breeze, then we stopped at immigration; this took about 15 minutes for Koki, me, and the only other non-Mexican on the bus to get processed. They never asked for our bus tickets, oh well, the peace of mind was worth the $5 we spent on tickets from Nuevo Laredo Mexico to Laredo Texas. We then headed to customs, where they ask for a volunteer from the bus to exit the bus and push a button: if the light is red, they search everything on the bus; if the light is green, we all go on. The light was green! We changed buses again in Nuevo Laredo and went through one more of these customs stops on the way to Monterrey, and the light was green again! We changed buses once again in Monterrey. The trip was beautiful. I hadn´t been in the desert/semidesert environment since I spent the summer volunteering through SCA with the trail crew in Big Bend National Park in Texas when I was 17. We traveled to Saltillo with the Sierra Madre mountains on either side of us. We arrived in Saltillo but didn´t make it to the bus terminal until about an hour later; the city is definitely larger than I had imagined. Esteban (who we met at India House the first night) had told us that Saltillo isn´t a great place (and also told us about some great places in northern Mexico). We had considered spending the night in Saltillo to arrive in General Cepeda where our first farm is located early in the day, but we decided to try to catch the bus to General Cepeda after seeing how huge Saltillo is and we arrived just in time to catch what we thought was the last bus (although apparently it wasn´t, not a surprising disrepancy given the total lack of interest in customer service on the part of the woman who sold us the tickets). On all except the bus to Saltillo we were able to carry on our big backpacks, which is good for peace of mind (the bus to Saltillo didn´t stop anywhere so no chance for them to disappear when the stow compartment is opened). There was no option to check our backpacks even if we had wanted to on the bus to General Cepeda, luckily it wasn´t too crowded because we take up a fair amount of space with all our stuff. We met a very nice woman named Miriam who suggested a hotel in General Cepeda and even told the driver to leave us at the door. We wanted to arrive well-rested to work on the farm.

We stayed Friday night and last night at Hotel Salvador, owned by Gloria and Luis. They are very sweet and Gloria is the interim director of the local technical high school which has a very strong agronomy program. She has invited us to visit the school one day while we are here to see what they´re doing and for us to share some of what we know that might be of interest to them. One thing we´re going to learn is how to make chorizo! We told her about WWOOF and encouraged her to look into it for the school. They know Bernardo (of Rancho el Chuzo, our first farm) and called him to come meet us yesterday. He told us they don´t work on Sunday so it would be fine if we show up this evening to start work tomorrow morning.

General Cepeda is a very nice little town, around 4000 people. It is beautiful, typically Mexican, adobe structures, burros hee-hawing all the time, norteña music everywhere at all hours. The people are so friendly, everyone says hello when you pass on the street. I definitely stand out and get looks, especially from little kids, but they seem intrigued and I haven´t felt disrespected at anytime. Yesterday afternoon we went out to find a cold beer and ended up meeting some guys at the beer store - Juan, Oscar, and Luis. We drank a few beers with them at Gerardo´s place, around the corner from the hotel. It is like most of the houses here, you enter from the street, go through part of the building, and then into the open central courtyard surrounded by the house. It was somewhat run down and he had some cocks for fighting, obviously not something I agree with, but they seemed very calm and well cared for. Gerardo is a cowboy: hat, big moustache, typical shirt with patterned yoke, big belt buckle, tight jeans, and of course boots. Everyone was so nice, we had a lot of fun talking to them about our trip, we even got the map out to discuss our route and they told us good places to visit and where they had been. Gerardo has never left this part of Mexico but I think all the rest of the 15 or so guys who showed up (probably to see the spectacle of these crazy foreigners) had worked in North Carolina at some point. They were so hospitable and generous (although we politely declined tequila drinks with ice) and interested in learning about us. I used the dirtiest bathroom I have ever seen, despite the gentlemanly efforts of Gerardo and Luis to clean it with 5-gallon buckets of water. I can see how this might sound scary to some of you based on what you hear on the news in the US, but we are in a small town, which I think keeps people honest, nowhere to hide. We are already running into people we know on the street and it is a good feeling. Koki was invited to play football (the real kind) with the guys on Tuesday and we´ll probably go have a beer after for my birthday.

Amigos en General Cepeda

We had dinner at Los Portales, where they have a big painting on the wall entitled "¿De dónde viene tu comida?" ("From where does your food come?"). It was a map with the locations of farms that provide food for the restaurant, and the chorizo comes from el Chuzo! We met the owner, Sofía, and asked her how they prepare the raw vegetables. She said they purify the water with drops and wash everything. We each ate a torta de choriqueso (chorizo and cheese sandwich) on the bread they make there. We ate the lettuce and tomato that came on the sandwich and hopefully we won´t regret it. So far so good on the digestive front, taking our GSE several times a day and using our Steripen UV water purifier. People are surprised that we don´t want to eat and drink everything, even though there is (a little) forein tourism here.

I understand there have been some terrible killings near the border in the past few days, very sad news. We were originally going to cross in our pickup at Matamoros and I am so glad we changed that plan. So far the trip has been wonderful and we have met wonderful people. Please keep this in mind when you see the news of horrible things happening in Mexico, there are really wonderful things happening here all the time, too. Tell people about what a positive experience we are having so far, spreading the good news is one way to combat all the negative things that are happening and the attention they are given on the news. We should be able to post again next weekend about our first week of work at el Chuzo.

Un abrazo fuerte,
Fern