Trip #1

We took a trip to the Sierra Norte, one of the mountainous areas surrounding the Valley of Oaxaca. Dan has given a series of lectures to foresters about community forestry, and one of the students (actually a couple) invited us to come up to a village festival of the "relatives" (quite loosely defined here, the folks we stayed with seemed to be remotely related to the fater of Maria Delfina, the wife of the student Norberto). We had been more or less safely ensconced in the City of Oaxaca for about 3 months now and were looking for an adventure.

The drive up took about 4 hours, but for a group of Mexicans it's about an hour less. The colective taxis zip along the extremely curvy road, but we can't do that because both kids and I get carsick. I drove most of the worst curvy secsions, which slows us down quite a bit, since I drive so carefully. It's a steep climb through a pine forest up to a gorgeous lookout point, where we saw the slopes below covered with clouds. From there we descended into the cloud forest landscape with huge tree ferns and other plants that thrive in the wet micro-climate. When we turned off the dirt road to the Chinanteco (Chinantecs are one of the indigenous groups in Oaxaca) village, Zololapam, it was already dark.

There was no way to contact our hosts before hand, all we had was the name, Mario Lopez Pena, a comisariado, elected post of the village serving for the honor. His family seemed startled but was very polite. It turned out we broke the protocol by not going to the village office first but they said it didn't matter. The family lived in a large house. The most startling thing about the large kitchen/dining room/living room was that it had a large wood oven (an alcove made into the inside of the house in which fire is made to cook), satellite TV, and a microwave. When we arrived the grandmother, who is monolingual Chinanteco speaking, and the only grandson of the house (who seemed to me was spoiled rotten, was heard barking orders to his mother) were staring at the TV. There is no water in the house; all the water is outside, piped in from the surrounding hills. There was a state-of-the-art ecological toilet outside, and a primitive shower stall made with plastic tarp.

The most remarkable thing about this trip was the family's hospitality. They took us in, strnagers from Oaxaca and the U.S., fed us, gave us their beds (we brought our own sheets), shared everything they had. The food was great. Simple food in the country in Mexico is the best. There were hand-made tortillas of three different colors (made from yellow, white and blue corn) . At every meal there were people from outside of the household, and 2 or 3 women serving us, urging us to eat more.

We went to the festival early on, when the traditional fireworks with the stuff attached to a wire shape of a bull that a young man carries on his back and prances around. We met a man and his teen-age daughter who were visiting from Los Angeles. He rattled off well-known street corners (i.e. Venice and La Cienega) in L.A. and said he owned apartments there. It was startling to be speaking in English in the middle of nowhere in the mountains of Oaxaca, where most other people were speaking in Chinanteco. Then it was basically time for bed; the kids and I were tired from the trip, although the dance was to start later and go on all night. Mai went to sleep fairly quickly but Joji kept crying. The mother of the grandchild came in to the bedroom and did a "limpia", a traditional cleansing ritual. She stroked his body with a bunch of basil, which smells very good, and rolled an egg around his body. This is said to cure him of whatever was keeping from sleeping. He was whimpering at this point from fatigue, I nursed him and he went quickly to sleep. Now there is no way to know if the limpia soothed him to sleep or the other thing, but it was a show of their caring nonetheless.

Late in the night the couple who connected us arrived. They took us on a walk to see the river Zoyolapam, a big rapids fed by water gathering from the cloud forest. It was cold but refreshing to swim in it. Joji was tired from his tirades the night before so he slept on the river bank for 2 hours. We went back to the house for an almuerzo (a cross between breakfast and lunch) of eggs, beans and tortillas, said our good-byes and took off. They had warmed up to us by then, particularly to Joji who was starting to utter some words in Spanish.

The next morning the kids woke up early and we went for a walk around the village. A man invited us into his house to have chocolate and bread for breakfast. We didn't know what to make of this gesture. There were other visitors eating in the kitchen and so we thought maybe they're operating an impromptu eatery, but the payment Dan offered was refused. When we left we were told the senora was trying to follow up the sweets with eggs.

Maria Delfina, her nephew and husband Norberto lead the way to visit a spectacular waterfall on the way back. It was one of the most beautiful I'd ever seen. I think it would be a major tourist attraction if it didn't take a grueling drive on the mouintanous terrain and then some more on a dirt road. It was cold to feel the spray of the water, standing at the bottom. It was slippery on the wet rocks, and Mai fell, made her clothes wet and cried. A man from the communal authorities who opened the gate to the waterfall took some water from the waterfall in his mouth and sprayed it up and down her body. That is another way to give a limpio, to avoid "susto", what you don't want.

We said goodbye to Maria Delfina et al and drove, but when we stopped by in a freezing restaurant for dinner we found Mai has a high fever. So we cancel our plans to stay in another village and push to get home the same night. We were exhausted, but it was a good trip overall. The hos